Because I grew up in Iowa, I never encountered any moonshiners. The only ones I ever saw were on TV: Grannie who made her "rheumatism medicine" on The Beverly Hillbillies and the moonshiners who kept Otis sauced on The Andy Griffith Show.
Mountain Spirits by Joseph Earl Dabney (364.133 DAB) gives a fascinating history of making and selling this corn alcohol. The author interviewed quite a few old timers who used to make and/or drink moonshine and lament the fact that good moonshine is so hard to come by nowadays. Their stories are just a riot. Here are some of the quotes:
"A mountain man likes his coffee strong enough to float an iron wedge, and likker strong enough to make a rabbit spit in a bulldog's face."
"I had a '34 Ford. It was a cold night. I put a few pints of corn whiskey in the radiator and put some in my own radiator. A Yankee was riding with us, and said he was freezing to death. We gave him a drink. It was over 100 proof. His tongue lit up like fire bugs. He tried to holler. We stopped the car and he broke off ice in the ditch and ate it."
"Yeah, I drunk a lot of corn likker in my time. Now you can't hardly get it. The people don't make corn. They don't make nothin' right no more. Now, good sugar likker's good, though, if it's made right. But all this old bastard beading stuff they make it out of these days, hell, it'd kill a dead snake. Make it on old tin, sheet arn, anything but what they ort to. It'd kill a dead snake."
Not all of the book is humorous, though. There were plenty of problems between moonshiners and the "Revenue." According to the author, in 1972 (when I was in high school), the U.S. Treasury Department's Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms destroyed 2,090 illicit distilleries and poured out almost one and a quarter million gallons of fermented mash. 3,191 people were arrested.
c Waterloo Public Library 2008
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