Moonshining as a Fine Art: The Foxfire Americana Library (1) Read online

  1. Since cold running water is an absolute necessity, stills are often high up on the side of a mountain near the source of a stream. Water on the north side of a hill flowing west was preferred by many. Some count on the inaccessibility of the spot they chose for protection. Others, however:

  build a log shed over the still and cover this with evergreen branches (see Illustrations 1 and 2);

  bend living saplings over so they conceal the still. The branches continue growing and their leaves provide cover;

  find a tree that has fallen over a ravine or gully and build the still under it, adding branches, if necessary, for additional coverage;

  find a ravine, dig out its bottom, place the still in, and then set branches and saplings over the top like a roof. They should be arranged so that they blend in with the landscape;

  find a cave and cover up the front of it;

  find a large laurel thicket, crawl into the center of it, and cut out a room right in the middle of the thicket big enough for the still;

  find a large spruce and put the still under its branches so it can’t be seen from a plane.

  2. The legend has grown that all one has to do to find a still is follow a likely looking branch up into a cove and then poke around until uncovering something suspicious. Moonshiners have countered by locating many stills in so-called “dry hollows.” They find a cove that has no stream and pipe in the water they need from a higher, “wet” cove. Using all the hiding devices mentioned above, they:

  buy two-inch piping, and run the pipe underground, around a ridge and into the dry hollow;

  get plastic pipe and run it under leaves, or in a trench;

  forget about the cove, and put the still right out on the top of a dry ridge, or in a laurel thicket, and pipe the water from a higher source.

  3. Other moonshiners get far more elaborate and actually dig out an underground room big enough to stand in comfortably. Rows of beams are set in overhead, covered with dirt, and plant materials are actually planted overhead. A small trapdoor in the center of the roof, also covered with a growth, lifts up, exposing a ladder which goes down into the room. A vent pipe, cleverly concealed, carries off fumes. Some rooms are even wired for electricity.

  4. Another way to avoid detection is by moving constantly. Some men follow logging jobs, figuring that the loggers will destroy all signs of their moonshining activities. In fact, loggers themselves often run stills in conjunction with their logging job.

  ILLUSTRATION 1 This log framework was built in the woods to conceal a still. When finished, it was covered with branches.

  5. Some men set up in a site the revenuers have just cut down believing that they won’t be back for at least two months unless they get another report of activity there.

  6. Others place their stills right in existing buildings that are not often visited, or would not normally be suspected—barns, silos, smokehouses, tool sheds, abandoned homes or buildings, even the basements of their own homes. Others run right in the center of town behind a false-fronted store or in a condemned building.

  7. One man we know, believing that the revenuers will be looking for his still to be concealed, has it right out in the open, near the main highway, with only a few trees in front. He hasn’t been caught yet.

  8. Smoke, too, is a problem, but only at the beginning of the run. When the fire begins burning well, it gives off heat waves rather than smoke. Thus, often the fire is started just before dawn and is burning well enough by daylight to escape detection.

  Others, however, worried about smoke, “burn their smoke.” A worm or pipe which runs out the side of the furnace and back into the firebox recirculates the smoke and makes it invisible. We also have heard of a man who somehow piped his smoke so that it came up underwater—this supposedly dispersed it so effectively that it could not be seen. Others counted on the leaves and branches over their shelters to disperse the smoke.

  Now any conceivable problem of smoke has been wiped out with the use of fuels such as butane or kerosene.

  9. A dead giveaway as to the location of a still is a “sign” or trace of activity. Moonshiners constantly guard against this. An empty sugar bag, the lid from a fruit jar, a piece of copper—all can reveal their location.

  An even bigger problem is that of trails. There are various ways they have dealt with it:

  if the still is in the woods, always enter the woods from the road at a different point. Then, one hundred fifty yards up the hill, cross over to the main trail which begins as many yards or so off the road.

  enter stills that are in a cove or hollow from the ridge above the still, instead of coming uphill from the front. One man who lives at the base of a high ridge said he could sit on his porch on a summer night and sometimes hear the voices of men, on the way to their still, shouting at the mules that were carrying in the supplies. If he looked carefully, he could see their lanterns winking high up on the ridge as they came in the back way to keep from being caught.

  locate the still on a stream that runs into a lake, through brush, and far away from any road. Then always enter the still at night, by boat.

  find a cut in the road the top of which is capped with a rock ledge, and is either level with or a little higher than a pickup truck bed. Load or unload from this rock to prevent leaving trails.

  use fuel like butane gas to prevent leaving signs such as stumps of trees and wood chips and clipped off foliage.

  ILLUSTRATION 2 A huge still operated under this shed for over a year before it was discovered and cut down by federal officers.

  Once a man was caught selling whiskey. He had painted some of the jars to look as though they contained buttermilk, but then he ran out of paint and had to use clear jars for the rest of his supply. When the revenuers caught him, they confiscated the clear jars; but so convincingly were the others painted that they did not even bother to open them. They simply left them behind, and the salesman was able to clear a profit, despite the loss of part of his wares.

  FINDING THE HIDDEN STILL

  Law officers have used many methods for finding hidden stills. Each time one became popular, the blockaders countered by hiding it in a different way. Here, however, are some of the methods used.

  1. They are always alert for signs. A brick dropped in the middle of the woods is an obvious one. Why would it be there except for a furnace? Spilled meal or sugar on the side of a road is suspicious. A ladder left at the top of a high cut in the road is an obvious signal; probably it is used to load and unload supplies from the back of a pickup. Other signs include an empty sugar bag, a broken jar, a place in the woods where trees have been cut, a pile of charcoal, an empty cement bag, a broken shovel handle, a barrel stave, a burlap sack.

  2. With an officer on either side of a backwoods dirt road—each two hundred yards away from the road, walking parallel to it—they search for a place where a trail begins.

  3. With a boat, they search the edges of a lake. They look for signs of activity near a place where a branch empties into the lake. Such signs might be places where a boat has been pulled up on shore or slick trails made by dragging heavy feed bags.

  4. They stake out a road and watch for signs of unusual activity in the early morning hours. They follow any cars heading up little-used roads. Or an officer might stake out a section of woods and listen for sounds such as a hammer against metal, the sound of a thump barrel, etc.

  5. Usually areas where moonshine is being made have a distinctive smell. Law officers may detect that while walking through forest.

  Many stills are found by people like hunters who spend much time in the woods and merely stumble across one by accident. Others are found by searching small branches that flow from hillsides through heavy growth.

  The most prevalent means of finding stills, however, remains the informer. Often, they are people with a grudge or an axe to grind. One moonshiner characterized them as people, “who don’t have enough of their own business to mind, and so they feel obligated to mind t
h’ business of other people. Th’ lowest man I know,” he continued, “is one who wins your confidence, buys your liquor, and then turns you in. I believe there’s a special place for people like that after they die.”

  Some informers hardly deserve such criticism. A mother whose young son comes in drunk and inadvertently tells her where he got the whiskey might well try to do something about it. A man who finds a blockader operating on his property without his permission has a right to ask the sheriff to remove him.

  A more common motive, however, is jealousy. Sheriffs told us story after story in which a man whose still had just been cut down would turn in another out of spite. “They’ve cut mine. I’ll fix it so they’ll get some others too. If I can’t be running, I don’t want them running either.”

  Another ex-sheriff told us the following story. “While I was in office, a man who owned a still invited a neighbor to come in with him and make a run of apple brandy. When the run was finished, they ended up with thirty-nine gallons. The owner of the still took twenty, and gave his neighbor nineteen. The more the neighbor thought about it, the madder he got. What really irked him was that the owner of the still already had a buyer for his twenty gallons; he had none.

  “They took their brandy and hid it in separate places. That night, the neighbor came to me and told me that he knew where twenty gallons of fresh brandy was hidden and wanted me to do something about it. So I got out of bed and went and poured the brandy out, like I’m supposed to do.

  “Later I found out that when the buyer came to get his twenty gallons, the neighbor stopped him, told him that the sheriff had already found it and poured it out, and then sold him his nineteen. I found out all about it from the owner of the still who came in here as mad as any man I ever saw. I just did keep him from going and killing that neighbor.”

  Sometimes the stories take surreal twists. The same officer also told us this story, and swore that it really happened. “A man that lived around here while I was in office knew of an underground still that was a beautiful thing to look at. He wanted the rig himself, so one night he broke the lock on the trap door, got into the underground room, and took it. The next day he came to me saying he knew where a still was that I should cut down, and he’d even come with me to show me where it was. I was suspicious, but I went.

  “When we got there, I saw right away that the lock on the door was broken, and when I got inside, I saw that the still was gone too. Well, I broke up what was left in there and then came back out and told the man that the still wasn’t there. He really carried on when I said that, but I knew right away what was up. He had taken it, and wanted me to bust up the place so that the owner would think that I had gotten his still during my raid.

  “I went back to the office, and not too long after that, the owner showed up and asked if I had gotten his still. When I told him I hadn’t, he wanted to know who had stolen it. I knew all the time, but I never said anything. I never once let anyone know who I had gotten information from. It just would have caused trouble.

  “Finally the man who owned it asked me if I would just keep my eyes open for it. He didn’t want it back necessarily—just wanted to know when it showed up out of curiosity. Then he told me how he had dropped it one day and broken a piece of the collar. Said he had put a “V”-shaped patch on the broken place, and that’s how I’d know it was his.

  “Well, I found out later that the man who had taken it in the first place had taken it home and put it in the loft of his barn. Two boys working for him loading hay found it up there, and they stole it from him.

  “Several days later, there was a robbery in town, and that night I was in there looking around to see if I could pick up a clue or something. Just keeping my eyes open. While I was in there, these two boys came along. I got back out of the way out of sight, and these two sat down on some steps not far from me. I could hear everything they were saying. Turns out they were still laughing about this new still they had gotten and wondering where they could set it up and when they could get it running. You won’t believe this, but they finally decided to set it up on a vacant piece of land that I owned—said I’d never look for it there in a hundred years. They’d make four or five runs and then they’d move it somewhere else.

  “The next day I went up on the land where the boys had talked about setting it up—in some laurels up there—and sure enough, there it was, and there was the patch. I got it and took it into town to the office.

  “When I saw the original owner again, I called him over. Said I had something to show him. Boys, his eyes popped right out of his head. That was it all right. I didn’t tell him how I got it, but we had many a good laugh over that later on.”

  The fact that hogs love the corn mash that whiskey is made out of is legend. Often moonshiners were forced to put fences around their stills to keep hogs, who were kept on “open range” then, from falling into the mash boxes and drowning. Once a two hundred-pound sow fell into a mash box where she drowned. The men running the still found her body in there several days later, but went on and made whiskey from the same mash anyway. From then on, if whiskey was too strong, the man drinking it would say, “That must’a had a dead hog in it.”

  A GLOSSARY OF STILL PARTS AND TOOLS

  Bale—wire or chain strapped across top of cap to keep it from blowing off during the cooking process.

  Cap—the top third of the still. It is removable so that the still can be filled after a run.

  Cap Arm—the copper pipe connecting the cap with the next section of the still; it conveys steam to this section.

  Cape—the bulge in the main body of the still. It is the point of greatest circumference.

  Collar—the connection for the cap and the body of the still.

  Condenser—a two-walled, sealed pipe which is submerged in water. Steam forced into the top condenses and flows out the bottom.

  Flake Stand—the container through which water is constantly flowing for final condensation of the steam. Holds the worm, condenser, or radiator, depending on which apparatus is being used.

  Funnel—usually holds whatever material you are using to strain the whiskey. Whiskey passes through it and into the jug or jar.

  Furnace—stone structure in which the still sits for heating.

  Headache Stick—the long thump rod.

  Heater Box (or pre-heater)—a device which heats the fresh beer which will be used in the next run (see diagram on this page).

  Long Thump Rod—an open-ended copper pipe which conveys the steam into the bottom of the thump barrel where it is released.

  Mash Stick—the stick used to break up the cap that forms over the mash and stir up the contents of the barrel. Sometimes it is made of a stick which has a crook in the end. Several holes are drilled in this crook, and pegs are inserted to form a comb-like device. It can also be a stick with several nails driven in the side.

  Plug Stick—a hickory or white oak stick with a bundle of rags fastened to one end. The rags jam into the slop arm thus sealing the bottom of the still.

  Proof Vial—a glass tube used to check the bead of the whiskey. A Bateman Drop bottle was the most popular as it held exactly one ounce, and was just the right shape. Others used now are bottles that rye flavoring comes in, or a government gauge.

  Relay Arm—the pipe connection from the bottom of the relay barrel back into the still.

  Relay Barrel or Dry Barrel—a fifty-gallon barrel with connections for the cap arm, relay arm, and a long thump rod. Catches “puke” from the still during boiling and conveys it back into the still.

  Still—the container into which the beer is placed for boiling. Also called the Evaporator, Boiler, Kettle, or Cooker. The name can also refer to the entire operation from the evaporator through the flake stand.

  Swab Stick or Toothbrush—a hickory stick half as thick as your arm and long enough to reach from the top to the bottom of the still. One end is beaten up well so that it frazzles and makes a fibrous swab. This is used to stir the bee
r in the still while waiting for it to come to a boil, thus preventing it from sticking to the sides of the still, or settling to the bottom and burning. If the latter happens, the whiskey will have a scorched taste.

  Thump Barrel—also Thumper or Thump-Post—a barrel which holds fresh beer, and through which steam from the still bubbles thus doubling its strength. The strengthened steam moves from here into the short thump rod which carries it either into the heater box, or into the flake stand.

  Worm—a copper tube, usually sixteen to twenty feet long which is coiled up so that it stands about two feet high and fits inside a barrel. Water flows around it for condensing the steam which passes into it from the still.

  A GLOSSARY OF SOME OF THE EXPRESSIONS AND TERMS USED IN STILLING

  Backings—also singlings and low-wines—what results after beer is run through a thumperless operation once. They have a good percentage of alcohol, but they won’t hold a bead.

  Beer—the fermented liquid made from corn meal bases which, when cooked in the still, produces the moonshine.

  Blockaders—men who made moonshine. The name is a holdover from the days in our history when blockades were common, as were blockade runners. Also gave rise to the expression “blockade whiskey.”

  Blubber—the bubbles which result when moonshine in the proof vial is shaken violently.

  Breaks at the worm—an expression used at the moment when the whiskey coming out of the flake stand turns less than 100 proof, and thus will no longer hold a bead.

  Dead devils—tiny beads in the proof vial which indicate that the whiskey has been proofed sufficiently. Stop adding water or backings at the moment shaking the proof vial produces dead devils.

  Dog heads—when the beer is almost ready to run, it will boil up of its own accord in huge, convulsive bubbles which follow each other one at a time.

  Doubled and twisted—in the old stills, all the singlings were saved and then run through at the same time thus doubling their strength. Whiskey made in this fashion was called doubled and twisted.