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If you think white lightning was only made in the mountains, think again…

By Jerry Alexander

There is an age-old assumption that all Carolina moonshine was (or is) only made beside a gurgling stream deep in mountain hollows by hillbillies and that their sole occupation was to keep one eye on the cooking corn or sugar mash and the other one watching for the law. But in fact, moonshine was made all across the Midlands by all sorts of people, just as it was (and may still be) in those ivy thickets and rhododendron bushes of the Blue Ridge Escarpment. Some could have even been made in the woods near where you live.

When Scotch-Irish settlers first sailed to America, tucked away in their little leather trunks amid precious family mementoes from Ireland, were often little bottles of hooch made the old fashioned way. When some immigrants reached these shores, many settling in Appalachia, their thirst was greater than before they left so they soon started cooking Indian “maize” mash into booze by the light of the moon. Hence the term “moonshine.”

Yes, it’s a mistaken notion that “flatlanders” rarely cooked moonshine. Of course they made it. Over the years there have been many telltale smoke spirals from moonshine stills wafting over the swamps of the S.C. Lowcountry and even the remote piney woods of the Midlands. And yes, determined revenuers were watching with field glasses and just plain old lawmen’s instinct for any sign that something alcoholic and illegal was being distilled. But most of that kind of thing is pretty much a part of the distant past.

Just the same, today, people never seem to get their fill of stories about the little moonshiner cooking white lightning around the next turn in the creek as the law walks by within 50 yards and never sees him. It’s just natural for people to root for the underdog. And, the topic of moonshine has taken on a whole new, national folklore status in recent years, especially now that moonshining is in a steep decline. Many feel they have lost a part of their history and culture.

As a newspaperman, I frequently wrote about illegal whiskey-making operations found and cut (put out of business). Back in the 1960s, 70s and even into the 80s, many law enforcement officials, state and local, were steadily busting alcohol-making operations. Especially in particular counties when a sheriff’s election time was nigh.

Forty years ago, there was indeed a lot of illicit whiskey cooking going on. Consequently, there was a determined, statewide push started by federal, state and local officers, called “Operation Dry Up,” which pretty much ended moonshining on any large-scale basis in S.C. Many retired officers will remember it. Some 3,000 rigs were said to have been put out of business and scads of moonshiners arrested over a two to three-year period, which pretty much broke the cycle of cooking Rot Gut across the state.

But there are areas in other states where a small amount of whiskey cooking has continued. In Rabun County, Ga., Sheriff Don Page, Chief Investigator Cary Thomas, and their men, working closely with Georgia state revenuers, have busted a whopping 170 stills in the past 25 years. And they haven’t quit looking for them. Indictments were issued just a few months ago for men caught cooking whiskey on U.S. Forest Service land up there.

Most veteran law officers know exactly where to look for suspected moonshiners and can tell when a batch of corn or “sugar likker” mash is ready to be cooked. A “still hunter” skilled in the search for illegal booze can literally smell the sour mash odor wafting through the woods for up to a mile when downwind of a still. Telltale smoke from a cooking fire is not the only dead giveaway; there are plenty of other signs. Tire tracks from a pickup truck used to haul heavy sacks of cracked corn, hog shorts, sugar and other ingredients to the site are just one giveaway. Or something as simple as finding several cigarette butts along a rural road where they should not be, often alerts the law to the possible presence of a still.

Veteran moonshiners were hard to deter, though, often hauling their heavy sacks of “makings” by truck to within a few hundred yards of a remote distillery site. After being unloaded, the pickup was quickly driven away. But it returned at an appointed time to pick up the moonshiner. Sometimes hunting dogs were carried along as passengers in the truck bed to try and give the impression of a hunting trip underway. Disguises for liquor still sites and methods of hauling the finished product are almost endless. Some say the fast “likker cars” used to transport the illegal juice were forerunners of today’s stock car racing sport.

Dedicated deputies and state revenue officers might “lie on” or “stake out a still” for several days until the moonshiner finally came to start up his distilling operation. In other cases, a still might be accidentally discovered when the fermented mash was only a few hours from being ready to be cooked. Over the years, veteran lawmen came to know as much about the process as did the moonshiner. Any experienced officer could dip a finger into a barrel of mash, taste the stuff and tell you when it would be ready for cooking. And therefore when the moonshiner likely would be approaching. After arrests were made, parts of the still apparatus and whiskey supply would be confiscated and the rest dynamited or otherwise destroyed with picks and axes.

I have become a pal to several retired moonshiners over the many years. In fact, some of them agreed to do anonymous interviews for my new book “Where have all the moonshiners gone?” It covers illicit whiskey making across the Appalachian Mountains and midlands of six states, including Georgia, the Carolinas, Tennessee, Virginia and Alabama and is loaded with tales, furnished by my old moonshining pals, like “how to abandon a moving likker car.” (In fact, I interviewed a legendary NASCAR driver about running liquor who really tells it like it is).

One particularly funny story I heard involves a half blind, alcoholic mule from Virginia that would lead officers to working still sites. He could smell the alcohol in the air, it seems. He would suddenly blunder into the still at a dead run in the stillness of the night, braying loudly and knocking full barrels asunder, heading straight for a refreshing drink of fermented mash. In all the bedlam, an unsuspecting moonshiner might lose every speck of wits he ever had. The next event would be the revenuers arriving.

These days, the deadly scourge of modern-day illicit drugs such as Methamphetamines and Cocaine have completely replaced moonshining on the “most wanted” list of law enforcement agencies, as any law officer will tell you. But with that said, officers have not yet forgotten about “shine” and when working area woods hunting for marijuana, meth labs or other drug-manufacturing operations, they take every opportunity to look out for possible illegal liquor activities as well…

Jerry Alexander worked as a news bureau chief for 13 years with the Anderson Independent and owned The Pickens Sentinel for 25 years, before retirement.