Moonshine: A Cultural History of America's Infamous Liquor

211 Pages·2014·7.79 MB·English

by  Jaime Joyce

001-208_C70365.indd 1 Job:02-40642 Title:MBI-Moonshin2e/ 11/14 3:31 PM
(PMS 476U) 02-C70365 #175 Dtp:225 Page:1
001-208_C70365.indd 2 Job:02-40642 Title:MBI-Moonshin2e/ 11/14 3:31 PM
02-C70365 #175 Dtp:225 Page:2
001-208_C70365.indd 3 Job:02-40642 Title:MBI-Moonshin2e/ 11/14 3:31 PM
(PMS 476U) 02-C70365 #175 Dtp:225 Page:3
acknowledgments
I’d like to thank Erik Gilg for making this project happen and the
New York Public Library for being the irreplaceable resource that it is.
I’m also grateful for the assistance of several people:
Mari Keiko Gonzalez, Don Heiny, Paco Joyce, Tami Brockway Joyce,
Bartram Nason, Katy Olson, and Ginia Sweeney. Thank you all so
much. Cheers!
First published in 2014 by Zenith Press, an imprint of Quarto Publishing Group USA Inc.,
400 First Avenue North, Suite 400, Minneapolis, MN 55401 USA
© 2014 Zenith Press
Text © 2014 Jaime Joyce
All photographs are from the author’s collection unless noted otherwise.
All rights reserved. With the exception of quoting brief passages for the purposes of review, no part of this
publication may be reproduced without prior written permission from the Publisher.
The information in this book is true and complete to the best of our knowledge. All recommendations are
made without any guarantee on the part of the author or Publisher, who also disclaims any liability incurred in
connection with the use of this data or specific details.
We recognize, further, that some words, model names, and designations mentioned herein are the property
of the trademark holder. We use them for identification purposes only. This is not an official publication.
Zenith Press titles are also available at discounts in bulk quantity for industrial or sales-promotional use.
For details write to Special Sales Manager at Quarto Publishing Group USA Inc., 400 First Avenue North,
Suite 400, Minneapolis, MN 55401 USA.
To find out more about our books, visit us online at www.zenithpress.com.
ISBN-13: 978-0-7603-4584-9
Digital edition: 978-1-62788-207-1
Hardcover edition: 978-0-76034-584-9
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Joyce, Jaime, 1971-
Moonshine : a cultural history of America's infamous liquor / by Jaime Joyce.
pages cm
ISBN 978-0-76034-584-9 (hardback)
1. Drinking of alcoholic beverages--United States--History. 2. Distilling, Illicit--United States--History. I. Title.
GT2893.J69 2014
663'.5--dc23
2013047071
Editor: Erik Gilg
Design Manager: James Kegley
Cover Designer: John Barnett
Layout Designer: Brenda Canales
Printed in China
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
001-208_C70365.indd 4 Job:02-40642 Title:MBI-Moonshin3e/ 11/14 2:30 PM
(PMS 476U) 02-C70365 #175 Dtp:225 Page:4
acknowledgments
Table of Contents
Prologue Bangin’ in the Woods 6
1 “The Pernicious Practice of Distilling”
in Early America 16
2 Whiskey Rebels, “Watermelon Armies,”
and President Washington 28
3 War on Whiskey: Taxing Liquor
and Defying the Law in the 1800s 42
4 Prohibition’s Rise and Fall,
and What Happened in Between 60
5 Moonshine on Trial 74
6 “Death Defying Ding-Dong Daddies
from the Realm of Speed”:
Moonshine and the Birth of NASCAR 88
7 “Popskull Crackdown” 106
8 Moonshine Renaissance 122
9 Making Mountain Dew 142
10 Moonshine in Pop Culture 154
Epilogue Moonshiners Reunion 168
Notes & Sources 177
PHOTO & music CREDITS 200
Index 204
001-208_C70365.indd 5 Job:02-40642 Title:MBI-Moonshin2e/ 11/14 3:31 PM
(PMS 476U) 02-C70365 #175 Dtp:225 Page:5
PROLOGUE
BANGIN’
IN THE WOODS
Well, the deacon drove by in his auto so shined,
Said his family was down with the flu.
And he thought that I ought to get him a quart
Of that good old mountain dew.

—Bascom Lamar Lunsford, “Good Old Mountain Dew,” 1928
(recorded in 1947 by country artist Grandpa Jones
and covered by the alternative rock band Ween
on their 1999 concert album Paintin’ the Town Brown:
Ween Live ’90–’98)
66
001-208_C70365.indd 6 Job:02-40642 Title:MBI-Moonshin2e/ 11/14 3:31 PM
(PMS 476U) 02-C70365 #175 Dtp:225 Page:6
PROLOGUE
Hanging on a white-pine-paneled wall inside
Dawsonville Moonshine Distillery, in Dawsonville,
Georgia, is a large, framed photograph of an
Appalachian moonshiner. The old man is seated beneath
a tree in a high-back chair nestled in a thicket of tall
grass, looking country sharp in blue denim Red Camel
overalls, a plaid shirt buttoned up tight to the collar, and
a little brown crumpled hat, the type that people in these
parts refer to as a moonshiner’s bonnet. His pose—chin
up, unsmiling, head turned halfway to a silhouette, while
gripping a flask of clear corn whiskey with both hands,
BANGIN’
one on the body, the other on its neck—suggests a
craftsman’s pride. It also looks as if he’s about to twist off
the lid and take a sip.
IN THE WOODS
In a different setting, the portrait might seem like a
marketing gimmick. But here, it’s personal history. The
man in the photograph is a Georgia moonshiner of some
renown, by the name of Simmie Free. He was Cheryl Wood’s
granddad, and Dawsonville Moonshine Distillery is Cheryl
Wood’s baby. She opened the place in 2012, after nearly a
decade in management at AT&T. “It was my family business
forever, but it was an illegal family business,” Wood says of
making moonshine. “I had an idea to take it legal.”
Wood also had the idea to open the business in the same
building as Dawsonville City Hall, which also happens to be
in the same building as the Georgia Racing Hall of Fame, a
shrine to local legends like Lloyd Seay and Roy Hall, both of
whom got their start running homemade liquor from Dawson
County to shot joints in Atlanta, some 60 miles to the south.
So Wood—a friendly blonde, whose nickname, “Happy,” sums
up her cheerful demeanor—met with mayor Joe Lane Cox,
and made her pitch. “He thought the town needed it,” Wood
says. “He called it the missing piece.”
77
001-208_C70365.indd 7 Job:02-40642 Title:MBI-Moonshin2e/ 11/14 3:32 PM
(PMS 476U) 02-C70365 #175 Dtp:225 Page:7
The plan made perfect sense. Decades ago, Dawson County
earned the title Moonshine Capital of the World for the unusually
large number of stills uncovered in the area by federal revenue agents,
and since 1967, Dawsonville, the county seat, has hosted each fall the
Mountain Moonshine Festival. One highlight of the annual event is a
parade of vintage cars—mostly Fords, which were popular for their
powerful V-8 engines—the very ones that once sailed through the
hills on the way to market, tail ends heavy with the weight of Mason
jars and gallon-size tin cans filled with liquid corn. Always notably
absent from the festival, however, has been legal moonshine.
Legal moonshine, of course, is something of an oxymoron. By
definition, moonshine is liquor for which taxes have not been paid.
Purists say it’s made from corn, though moonshine can and has been
produced using nearly anything that ferments. Moonshine is used to
describe a beverage made at night—by the light of the moon—in an
attempt to avoid detection by law enforcement agents eager to arrest
shiners and bust up their stills. Another definer: Moonshine is unaged—
young and raw. It’s clear, like vodka or gin, not amber or brown, like
whiskey, which is matured in white-oak barrels to mellow the taste
and give the spirit color. Moonshine has been described as whiskey
without the wood. Traditionally, it’s associated with the South.
Today, moonshine has entered the mainstream. A growing
number of legal distilleries, big and small, across the United States,
from Brooklyn, New York, to Seattle, Washington, to Buena Vista,
Colorado, are making it. Drinkers are eager for a taste of America’s
homegrown spirit, and if it’s made by small producers out of locally
sourced ingredients, the appeal is even greater.
Some distillers, like Heather Shade of the upstart Port Chilkoot
Distillery in Haines, Alaska, call their product moonshine and
embrace the drink’s renegade past. “It’s a new product that’s giving
a tribute to a traditional one,” Shade says, rejecting the literalism of
critics who contend that if you’re paying taxes on your whiskey you
can’t call it moonshine.
88 Prologue
001-208_C70365.indd 8 Job:02-40642 Title:MBI-Moonshin2e/ 11/14 3:32 PM
(PMS 476U) 02-C70365 #175 Dtp:225 Page:8