“White Lightning…. Stump Likker…. Old Stump-Blower…”

It’s all moonshine, made for sale or personal consumption, without a distillery license, federal inspection, or payment of taxes due. Such laxity irritates Uncle Sam.

Folks who automatically connect moonshine to rough-and-tumble mountain men are partly right, but only back as far as the late 1700’s. Before then, the serious moonshine-makers were still in Ireland.

In 1610, England’s King James confiscated three million acres of Irish farmland, booted the people out, and replaced them with thirty thousand Scotsmen he thought would be easier to govern. The displaced Irishmen gradually worked their way to “The Colonies,” through Pennsylvania, then along the deeply-furrowed Alleghany Mountains and as far south as Alabama.

Today’s legends of moonshiners have pretty much outlived the reality of small, labor-intensive mountain stills. Making moonshine for sale has lost its luster. It takes too much time, the market’s shrinking, the risk is high and the profits are low.

At one time, getting caught meant eleven months and twenty-nine days in the Chillicothe, Ohio slammer. Stopping short of a year preserved the ‘shiner’s right to vote. If the moonshiner had a wife and kids at home, some rural judges occasionally adjusted jail time to the seasons. They sentenced the offender, then paroled him long enough to plant and harvest a crop that would get his family through the winter. The lawbreaker reappeared on the assigned date and served his time. But things have changed. Now, the possession of whiskey-making equipment or grinding sprouted grain (used only to make whiskey) can bring ten years in prison and $10,000 in fines.

The destroyed remains of five moonshine stills are just a short walk from our house. Within sight of our front porch, a backhoe operator dug up and crushed three 250-gallon tanks where three large stills were once kept very busy.

During 1925, at the height of Prohibition, revenue agents destroyed 30,000 stills, and arrested 76,000 people. But in 1972, they demolished just 2,000 stills and arrested 3,200 people. Even so, the estimates of total production in that year alone, was more than nine million gallons of illegal whiskey, on which $97 million of taxes due weren’t paid.

Sheriff Mike Caudill tells of his being invited along on a raid when his father was sheriff. The still was inside a large truck hidden not far from the Blue Ridge Parkway. Still-busting axes had been replaced by plastic explosives that were much more final. Mike, then eighteen, still recalls the experience.

“The agents placed the charges and came over the ridge to where we were. When it blew, I saw the truck’s radiator heading for the moon and gaining altitude every second!”

A defiant newspaper photographer who took shelter closer to the explosion came away drenched in smelly fermented mash.

The runner’s cars were heavily modified to handle the loads and still be fast. Though a 1940 Ford coupe was often the vehicle of choice, one “tripper” in a 1932 Ford barely stayed ahead of the pursuing revenue agents. Unfortunately, the chase car’s driver missed a curve and sailed off the road, sending the agents to the hospital. A few days later both received flower arrangements. Their cards were signed, “The Coupe.”

Traditionally, a customer made arrangements to buy at a particular time and day. He went to a specific stump, picked up his merchandise and left the money. Another ‘shiner had the customer park at a certain tree and blow his horn. Several minutes later, a mule walked up with the ‘shine in sacks draped across its back. The man dropped his cash into the sacks, and the mule plodded back to the barn.

Many art shops sell pictures of well-known moonshiners and the officers who pursued them. Some show the stills in operation; others, the chases that followed. The participants’ signatures appear on the pictures. But that’s the amusing part of whiskey-making. It also had a deadly side.

Buyers usually shook up the jugs to watch bubbles form. The more bubbles, or “bead,” the higher the alcohol content. But some moonshiners diluted their product to get more merchandise. Then they added household bleach to increase the bubbles and make it appear stronger. Little or no thought was given to the drinker’s health.

Production was often increased by distilling it through soldered car or truck radiators. The solder contained lead, which leached into the moonshine, slowly poisoning the drinkers.

Sometimes toxic chemicals were added to moonshine to give it more “kick.” The worst case was in Atlanta, when poison-laced moonshine was delivered to the ghettos. In one weekend, thirty-five people were rushed to the hospital in convulsions. Within hours, they had gone blind, suffered excruciating pain and died.

Folks may always connect the mountains to moonshiners, but the stories didn’t always have happy endings.