MOONSHINE

Fast Dancin’

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“Dance like there ain’t no tomorrow, son.” I’m near seventy, how old does someone have to be to call me son. I’m old…he’s damn old. I also thought, if there is to be no tomorrow, I plan to be doing something other than dancing.

The old man was dancin’…dancing around a bonfire that should have been warming a cool, fall evening. Instead, the roaring orange and yellow flames were adding to the oppressive heat we have been experiencing this last week of September. As I watched the embers dancing in the smoke, I worried about the red flag burning alerts that were being ignored. We haven’t had any appreciable rain in the area for six weeks and my little piece of heaven is suffering.

As I watched a hand-rolled cigarette being passed, I realized “red flags” might not be the worst law being broken. This group certainly was not suffering…unless it is from a hangover tomorrow.

The heat didn’t seem to slow the old man. He was a member of the overalls over tie-dyed crowd…a crowd I’ve only begun to embrace in my later years. I was always the “more” conservative guy in amongst the hippy types until I reassessed and from too many years in education, “monitored and adjusted.” I’ve found the tie-dyed crowd to be infinitely more caring and loving…and accepting. Seems to be the “old fart” hippy types are just more fun. I now consider myself a “middle of the road” human.

Wiry and bent, he wore faded and patched “Oshkosh By Gosh” bib overalls over a tie-dyed tee shirt in pink and green. Jerry Garcia’s bushy hair peaked out around the bib. He wore leather brogans and a leather western style hat which failed to cover his own Jerry Garcia-like hair. Tuffs like white cotton balls peaked out from under a floppy brim.

He had skin like tanned shoe leather, ancient and cut with crevasses rather than wrinkles. His face narrow, his nose hawk-like. His smile lit up his entire face and showed irregular teeth. It pulled tight over his cheek showing a lump from a “chaw of tobacky.” I never saw him take it out…and I never saw him spit. I doubt he has to worry about tapeworms.

Earlier in the day, he had been holding court on organic, sustainable farming. He regaled us on many subjects. I paid rapt attention when he enthusiastically informed us, “Chicken and bunny shit makes for the sweetest tomatoes.” Inquiring minds want to know. I saw the old POW bracelet when he pointed at someone and silently wondered what had happened to the similar one, I used to wear. Mine had been a Navy flier lost over Laos in 1967. I quit wearing it when my skin began to react to it…but not until he came home.

My new friend had bushy salt and pepper eyebrows. Like mine, uncontrollable and wild when left to grow. His eyebrows had been left to grow for a while. I found them distracting as we shared a bit of conversation and a sip or five of white liquor. The unaged spirit of this past summer’s corn bounty exploded in my stomach causing my perspiration to perspire. The old boy looked at me and smiled, “Smooth ain’t it?” I nodded as my eyes watered.

He had a bit of a snake-oil salesman’s delivery as he tried to convince me, “It’s organic and natural. Consumed in moderation, medicinal. Consumed in excess…well, what don’t kill ya makes ya stronger.” He laughed at himself and slapped me on the shoulder before going back to dancin’ with a group of little girls who called him Pappi Tom.

I watched him as he allowed his internal child to run wild. Janis’s voice, tinny from the speakers of an ancient boom box, lamented her lack of a Mercedes, a color TV, and a night on the town.

I’m lamenting my tight assed self. I watched the old man fast dancin’ with anyone nearby and realized what I’ve always known, “I have issues about turnin’ loose.” I don’t have an internal child and I want one. I needed to join the group that was passing the odd-smelling cigarette around. I’ve never been able to quit worrying about who might be watching.

Dancin’, religion…getting undressed in the light of day. Yeah, I am one tight assed forker of mortar. There is a quote by Howard Phillips Lovecraft, “Almost nobody dances sober unless they happen to be insane.” My new friend is not suffering from sobriety, and I feel the need to join him.

Don Miller is a retired teacher and coach who writes to pass the time he no longer has. His writer’s page may be accessed at https://www.amazon.com/Don-Miller/e/B018IT38GM.

Not Real Neighborly

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It’s mid-March and it’s cold.  I know, I know, I know.  You Yankee types pull out lounge chairs and sunblock whenever the temperature gets above thirty.  According to my new Dollar Store thermometer, it’s twenty-nine this morning so don’t you bring out the bikinis yet…well, the thermometer only cost a dollar.  It could be off just a bit.

March cold in the foothills of the Blue Ridge is a different kind of cold from the rest of the winter.  The cold is driven by the March winds coming in like a lion and the moisture it collects.  It’s not a dry cold just like in the summer it’s not a dry heat.  The wind is heavy with moisture this morning.  Why we’ve been known to get late March snowstorms that totally shut down the area with its half-inch deposit.  The dairy and bakery businesses revel in their collusion with Mother Nature’s late-season lessons in capitalism.  (If you don’t know what that means message me, I’ll explain.)

Today was clear, no late season snow, and I felt good…really, really good after a winter of arthritic pains, Afib, and seasonal affective disorder.  Good enough to walk the old logging road that connects my home on the Scenic Highway with the more scenic sounding Chicora Road a mile and a quarter to the north.  I walk it when I feel good and when it’s not hunting season.  I walk it when I feel good because I need the strength.  The road begins with a third of a mile thigh and hamstring hammering trek up the side of a small mountain…or steep hill.

I don’t walk it during hunting season for obvious reasons.  One of those crazy AR-15 toting hunters might mistake me for a Buck or a Tom and turn me into a sieve.  My name is Don anyway.  Today I had no excuse.  I felt good and it’s not hunting season.

The old road meanders through a mixed forest.  I was almost immediately greeted by a Pileated woodpecker working the top of a hollowed-out hardwood.  He must have thought I was funny huffin’ and puffin’ as I was.  He laughed and laughed as he flew away.  They are beautiful birds and I do love their distinctive call.

I’ve walked this old road for thirty years now…when I’ve felt good.  It’s changed little.  I’ve got a few more downed trees I need to remove so I can get the tractor or the jeep through.  One of these days…maybe…they’re easy to step over.

What has changed is the ownership of the road.  I don’t own the whole road, there are three of us whose land it runs through.  On the Chicora end, old Vessy has leased his seventy some odd acres out to hunters.  They have turned ole Vessy’s cabin into “a hunting lodge” complete with a new burning pit.  It’s right nice for a hunting lodge…but I wouldn’t like to live there.  There must be a slew of them because the road is now marked with deer stands reminding me of watchtowers.  I actually thought of Jimi Hendrix singing “All Along the Watchtower.”  Understand now why I don’t walk here during hunting season?

Seems they might be doing something else during their offseason.  I smelled the tangy fragrance from a quarter mile away.  Snatches of the sour aroma of fermented corn being carried by the March wind.  I should have turned around then but curiosity got the best of the old geezer.

I saw the smoke wafting above the chimney and they saw me before I saw them.  Three ‘good ole boys’ of ample girth, in camouflage and baseball caps…all carrying hunting rifles.  I should have been afraid…and I was.  Chills chased each other up and down my spine.

Maybe I can disarm them with my smile and winning personality.  Cheerfully I greeted them with a “Morning!  How y’all this fine March morning?”

“We’s good.  You’re trespassin’.”  Not a “How are you?” or so much a “La-di-da.”  I decided not to ask any more questions myself and realized my smile and personality meant nothing to them.

“I’m Don.  I live at the other end of the old logging road.  I’ve been walkin’ it for thirty years and always check on Vessy’s cabin when I come by.”

“Well, we check on it now and with us huntin’, it might be safer if you stay on your land.”  The speaker jutted his chin out and nodded.  His two friends followed suit and jutted out their chins and we all became a cluster of bobbleheads.

Continuing to nod, I decided not to point out, “I ain’t huntin’ season.”  They weren’t very neighborly at all.

The leader of the pack continued, “Yeah, iffin I wuz you I’d probably just stay on your land,” and without so much as a “by your leave” or an offer to taste their homebrew, turned and headed toward the cabin with his two companions in pursuit.

“Well bless your heart.”

Addendum-two days later

It’s not as cool in the foothills of the Blue Ridge this morning.  A bit of warmin’…and pre-April showers on the way.   I feel good but I’m not walking the old logging road today.  Seems like we had a bit of a commotion on the upper end of Chicora yesterday.  Zane, from across the road called me to let me know, telling me a story that brought a smile to my face.

“Revenuers breakin’ up a still you say?”  Yes, I know we don’t call ‘um revenuers anymore.

Hum.  Believe I’ll call ole Vessy and see if it’s safe to walk tomorrow.  Wonder how they found out ‘bout that still?  Maybe those ole boys learned a lesson ‘bout bein’ neighborly.

Names and location were changed to protect the innocent.

Image from http://www.hotel-r.net/us/moonshine-cabin

Give a little love and follow Don Miller’s writer’s page at https://www.amazon.com/Don-Miller/e/B018IT38GM or his facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/cigarman501/

 

TIME HONORED TRADITION

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It was 5 am when I stepped out my front gate a decade or so ago. A pre-dawn fog still hung low. Swirled by a light breeze, it periodically blotted out a particularly bright September full moon that glowed brightly enough to cause shadows. There was just a hint of chill in the morning air to mark the change in seasons soon to come. I would walk and jog an hour until Linda Gail joined me for a forty-five-minute walk before I showered, shaved and began my thirty-seven mile drive to work.

There was just a hint of an aroma hanging with the fog. As I stretched before beginning my jog I tried to recall what I might be smelling. As I inhaled the redolent odor I found it almost “tasted” sour in a pleasing way. It was almost familiar. At that moment the fog briefly cleared revealing a beautiful full moon and like a “light bulb” going off in my head I had it. Corn whiskey being made “by the shine of the moon.” Sour mash being turned in to “moonshine,” “white lightnin’” or “corn squeezins’”. The making of illegal corn liquor was, AND IS, a time honored tradition in these foothills of Appalachia called the Dark Corner of the Carolinas.

We have a rich tradition of “boot legging” in the United States. From “rum running” to avoid the British tax on molasses to the Whiskey Rebellion when George Washington would again ride at the head of his army to “compel” Pennsylvania farmers to pay the first federal excise tax and remain in the infant United States. Folks in the United States just don’t like having to pay taxes on…well…take your pick but in this case it was home brew. During Prohibition and the Great Depression, making “shine” became a way to make ends meet for Dark Corner farmers who could not have survived without it. According to local historian Dean Campbell, the Squire of Dark Corner, a poor farmer, and they got no poorer than those in the Dark Corner, could expect to realize a profit of about two dollars and fifty cents on five bushels of corn. The same amount of corn could be turned into twelve gallons of moonshine and a twelve-dollar profit with no “spoilage”. I ain’t no mathematical genius but…that would be nearly a four hundred percent increase in profit.

Through the depression and into modern times, the Dark Corner was known for its production of moonshine. Not just any moonshine but what has been described as a particularly “fine moonshine.” That is not an oxymoron. The smoothness supposedly came from the water. In the late Seventies it was also known for producing a particularly high grade of “killer weed” known as “Glassy Mountain Gold.” Despite capturing the “Best Domestic” award in a magazine catering to those activities, “GMG” did not replace moonshining because moonshining was the traditional drug of choice and “them good old boys ain’t about to change.” I also wonder how I might know such things.

Linda Gail and I have spent many hours engaged in exploration, in and around our little piece of heaven. We have seven, year round streams, three which bubble to the surface on our land. Over several millenniums I guess, all three have cut deep ravines. If you explore, back into the deep and dark recesses of those ravines, you will find the metal barrel hoops that held wooden barrel staves together along with newer metal barrels with curious holes shaped like those made from “buck shot” or an axe. I wonder if those damn “gubment” revenuers paid the moonshiners a visit sometime back in the fog of time. Recently we added a three-acre parcel of land to our little piece of heaven mainly to keep people from moving in next to us. Yes, we are hermits. While exploring, I think we found the still I smelled “cookin’” a decade ago on the wide stream at the base of our waterfall. Not in good enough shape to fire up but in good enough shape to be recent.

I was somewhat shocked to see the face of a distant neighbor pasted across my TV screen on the Six O’ Clock News. He was, and is still, a respected “gentleman peach farmer” of high means. His offense? Making “shine.” His defense was that his daddy had made it and his daddy before him had made it and…. He did not need the money to pay his taxes or even take the kids to Disneyworld, nor did he appear to be very apologetic or remorseful. It was a time-honored tradition to make the “family recipe” free of “gubment” taxes and he was “sot in his ways.” My guess is that despite the hefty fine that he paid, he is still “sot in his ways.”

This is an excerpt from Don Miller’s soon to be released book THROUGH THE FRONT GATE. For more humorous non-fiction go to check his site at http://www.amazon.com/Don-Miller/e/B018IT38GM