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Running moonshine... any good stories?

Discussion in 'The Hokey Ass Message Board' started by 4t64rd, Jan 23, 2005.

  1. adamabomb76
    Joined: Aug 5, 2007
    Posts: 280

    adamabomb76
    Member
    from York, Pa

    Don't have any stories about runnin'. I remember stumbeling on to one of a buddies' Grandpas' rotting remnants of a still in the corn crib behind his grandma's place. I also had kin in W. Virginia back before it ever mattered that brewed their own, but used it for personal, or to barter w/. I have a pretty good incling that it's still alive and well though. Got two quarts just for New Years. It's low-grade, but it was cheap. Happy New Years!!:D
     
  2. brandon
    Joined: Jul 19, 2002
    Posts: 6,368

    brandon
    Member

    just did a show car sign for a guy that ran shine.... did it in a 66 fairlane gt....definently built for speed , as it had a big dome piston , roller cam , med riser 427 headed 390 and a 4 speed in it....said he delivered the goods for 2 years....the car was also , stolen and recovered 2 times in this time period... brandon:D
     
  3. sliderule67
    Joined: Nov 4, 2005
    Posts: 367

    sliderule67
    Member
    from Houston

    The older timers like me in this group need to write down some of this oral history for the younger generation before we leave. I have a couple of mild antecdotes; my grandfather made whiskey in South Arkansas in the late '20s for the reasons already mentioned. My dad told the story that they were supposed to deliver a load one Sunday, but couldn't get the truck started (Model T?). They ran out of daylight, and quit for the night. The truck started and ran fine the next morning without any further tinkering. Not supposed to trade in whiskey on Sunday. Also, I had an old man tell me one time, decades after my grandfather died that my grandfather made the best whiskey he ever tasted; home made or store bought. My son is third generation in chemical plants; must be something in the genes about distillation.....slide
     
  4. Bugsy
    Joined: Dec 27, 2008
    Posts: 1,299

    Bugsy
    Member
    from Kansas

    During the prohibition years, my great grandad, Clyde and his brothers used to make runs from up in Canada down into Wisconsin and Illinois. They hauled mainly whiskey and some moonshine. They would bring it down in trucks to a central pickup point and from there the cars and drivers would pick and it would get dispersed even further from there. He was just a hired driver. On his last load, he decided that he would just keep the load for himself and sell it. This was al pre-arranged. His family, wife and seven kids plus his 2 other brothers were already on there way to Pennsylvania. This is where they relocated after the heist. I have no idea of how much they made from that load but it was enough to risk it and relocated the family. The boss that they were hauling for was an underling of Capone. In the years following, grandad Clyde ran a road crew and my Grandma Ruby cooked for the crew as they moved along building the roads. A man that started for them recognized Clyde and started talking to some others. My grandma Ruby shot and killed him. She claimed that he was trying to put the make on her one day in the cook tent. That man was supposedly buried right in the road as they moved along.

    Bothe Ruby and Clyde passed away in the early 60's. I never knew them but the family is full of tales of their lives which are all as colorful.
     
  5. jc555247
    Joined: Jan 1, 2009
    Posts: 29

    jc555247
    Member

    My Farther was born into a family of rum runners and moonshine brewers. He ended up joing the Navy and left the clan, except for occasional summer visits. The were from Ohio where they ran rum down from Canada. There were 4 brothers with about 6 sons each. Two of my second or third , or what ever cousins. moved to Nova Scotia and started up boating rum down as far south as Cape Cod. One of them hooked up with a woman named Stackhouse and his brother john ended up getting caught climbing out of the bedroom window of some sea Captain who was not supposed to be coming home that night. Cousin John then ended up being the first prisoner locked up in the new county jail on Cape Cod. Their farther would always say they they were good boys and kne how to make a good brew but had a weekness for the women. He should not have talked though, He met a hill woman who was named Ethyl, and he called her Fast Ethyl. He had a 40 Ford he would call fast Ethyl, untill he almost got caught and had to move his still. He ended up going south to West Verginia, and eventually Kentuckey. He also had a love of dirt track car racing and he was racing a Ford that he called Fast Ethyl and who showed up at the track down there but Ethyl. As the story goes Ethyl shot at him and winged him in the right arm. He then moved down close to Chatanooga TENN and changed his name and the name of his car. In later years he would always refer to Ethyl as FAT Ethyl. I never drank any of his product but I loved his cars, especially a 34 5 window he had a Caddy engine in.
     
  6. My papa moved to Loop Road in Pinecrest, FL (Everglades) back in the sixties. You have to google the place to get a feel for it. It was basically lawless because Monroe County covers Pinecrest which is main land between Miami and Naples. Monroe County covers the Keys also. The law was in the Keys which was a good three hour drive away. Al Capone had a brothel / speak easy / hunting lodge out there because of that fact. Loop Road was a haven for bootleggers, smugglers, poachers, hunters and non-conformists. Nobody out there really cared much for anything government.

    I am now thirty-four and my papa is seventy-five. I lived with him and my granny until I was six and spent every school holiday and summer there until I was eighteen. Living out there was not for the faint of heart. We had no water heater or phone until I was in fourth grade. I recall going on the airboat at night with my papa. If you saw flashlights out in the woods you promptly turned around. I also remember a couple stills on the way to our house. My aunt and uncle owned a bar called the Gator Hook Lodge. I've read that the place is scary. I loved it cuz my uncle always gave me a ton of candy there.

    Anyhow, I was visiting my papa up in Live Oak (the good ole' park system made him leave the glades in 95). While we were on our way to pick up a pizza he starts telling stories. One story right after another. He really got my attention with this "Yeah, I used to run shine to this one juke joint. I stopped when I saw a white girl selling herself to black men" (no offense).
    I was shocked but shouldn't have been. His resume is really impressive. Frog gigger, poacher, carpenter, hunter, snake charmer (he worked with Bill Hast at the Serpentarium. He let a hooded cobra strike the side of his face cuz it can't bite a flat surface. He now thinks that was stupid. I have a newspaper clipping about it), trapper (I'd wake to find a duct taped gator in the living room. He'd catch them for the miccosukee to wrestle. Never understood why they couldn't catch them themselves). Sorry for rambling. I am homesick for a place and time that is no more.

    I am going to visit my granny and papa in April. I am going to get a digital recorder and get the stories that can't be forgotten. I'll be sure to post them.
     
  7. 390Merc
    Joined: Jun 29, 2008
    Posts: 659

    390Merc
    Member
    from Indiana

    A rare option for old Ford Galaxies, highly sought after these days....
     

    Attached Files:

  8. cowman
    Joined: Jan 28, 2005
    Posts: 38

    cowman
    Member

    To be so young, I actually knew a lot of moonshiners. I didn't consume, nor did any of my family, but we did know many men who either made a living making 'shine or supplemented their income delivering. Speed was nice, but the law used radios that could outrun the fastest car. They even used planes and helicopters for survelance. The most sucessful runners used deception, and wanted big cars that blended.
    The two best examples I heard of were an old hearse and a school bus. The bus was the best. The guy who used it would go down to the still early in the morning. load up and deliver during the day. The sherrif though he was picking up kids. The bus could carry a lot of whiskey, and since it was designed to carry great weights it never looked "loaded." The bus moonshine rumnner was even stopped by ATF agents one morning annd questioned if he ever saw "suspicious" activities as he ran his bus route. He made sure he talked to the agents outside the bus, because he had 200 quarts of shine inside.
    The guy who used the hearse was my age. He was crazy. The old cadillac was hopped up and even had a homemade turbo on it. It was also designed to carry weights and could carry a lot of whiskey. The owner ran from the law too many times, and the hearse did not blend in with other cars. He eventually moved to another county and died in a wreck as he was running from the law.
     
  9. Bigcheese327
    Joined: Sep 16, 2001
    Posts: 6,694

    Bigcheese327
    Member

    So what you're saying is that the devil got the moonshine and the mountain boy that day.

    Not to make light of death, but I couldn't resist.

    -Dave
     
  10. I'll never forget a few years ago, my dad took me over on the river to a cabin that took 4 wheel drive to get to. It had a genrator for power,a dn still had an outhouse. We got out and talked to an old man, who had to be at least 90. Only thing I know him by is "Doc" We picked up jugs of moonshine that day, in old glass bleach jugs. Stuff was the strongest stuff Ive ever drank in my life. I'm gonna go back there when I get outta the USMC and see if that old man is still alive and cooking.
     
  11. GlenC
    Joined: Mar 21, 2007
    Posts: 757

    GlenC
    Member

  12. customcory
    Joined: Apr 25, 2007
    Posts: 1,831

    customcory
    Member

    We all switched to growing marijuana years ago.:D
     
  13. Hudsonator
    Joined: Jun 19, 2005
    Posts: 335

    Hudsonator
    Member
    from Tennessee

    Down Copperhead Road?
     
  14. frank spittle
    Joined: Jan 29, 2009
    Posts: 1,672

    frank spittle
    Member

    In the late Fifties when I was 14 or 15 years old my neighborhood had several dirt track racers that raced 30s-40s Fords with modified flatheads. I would hang around their shop hoping to hear one cranked. They made the most noise I had ever heard. One day I saw a stock looking '40 Ford Coupe in the driveway. It looked too nice to make a race car out of but I had to ask. "No" he said and raised the hood. I really didn't know what I was looking at but he told me it was a Cadillac engine. It had two large carbs on it. I was impressed! He told me he was tuning it up for a customer and that it had been a moonshine car. He said Junior Johnson had built it and sold it. Even back then Junior Johnson was a legend in our part of the country.
     
  15. Mudslinger
    Joined: Aug 3, 2005
    Posts: 1,964

    Mudslinger
    Member

    My grandpaw made moonshine back in the 30's and 40's down around Middlesboro Ky.
    My dad told me late at night he would have a Caddy Ambulance show up and load it full and nobody knew.
     
  16. Daisy Duke
    Joined: Jul 18, 2009
    Posts: 1

    Daisy Duke
    Member

    my great-uncle had a still set up behind our pond, was making shine, idk if he was selling it, but knowing him, he probly was running it..lol... anyways, him and his wife got into a argument, and she turned him into the cops, we still have the newspaper article where he was caught, lol... i guess its a family thing.. but ill never tell any secrets ;)
     
  17. aceuh
    Joined: Apr 17, 2008
    Posts: 1,361

    aceuh
    Member

    My father used to tell stories of when he "helped" an old man make shine in a North Georgia cave when he was a kid. His job was to collect the water from a stream in the cave. My dad was born in 45 so I'm assuming that this would have been anywhere from the mid to late 50s.

    He never told any stories of "running" shine. He did say that while he was attending school at the University of Georgia that whenever he came home he would line the bottom of the seat of his pickup with mason jars filled with shine to sell when he got back to school. He said that the jars fit perfect between the floor and the bottom of the seat. I can't remember the price he sold the jars for but it was more then double what he had paid for them.
     
  18. sliderule67
    Joined: Nov 4, 2005
    Posts: 367

    sliderule67
    Member
    from Houston

    I went to a funeral in South Arkansas back in the '70's; I would have been in my mid twenties. I was standing around with a bunch of the old men from this little town my dad was from, and they wanted to know who I was and who I was kin to. After they traced down my lineage, one of the old guys started telling me that my grand dad made the best whiskey he ever tasted; shine or factory liquor. My dad also had a story about a load of whiskey in a Model T that wouldn't start on Sunday but fired right up on Monday morning. People did what they had to get by in the depression.
     
  19. KreaturesCCaustin
    Joined: Sep 3, 2008
    Posts: 1,258

    KreaturesCCaustin
    Member
    from Austin, TX

    My grandpa used to tell me stories of running shine in South Missouri. He used to "Drive by the trees". At night, when he was running from the law, he'd turn off the lights and go down old dirt roads that he knew like the back of his hand. If he heard trees smacking the left side of the car, he'd move right. If they hit the right side, he'd move left. He said he left a lot of old police cars sitting in ditches behind him. His trip car was bought from out of state somewhere, modified and kept in a buddy's barn about 10 miles away. No one ever knew who drove that thing or where it would come from. It would just 'appear' every so often and blow the doors off the cops.
     
  20. 52style
    Joined: Mar 22, 2009
    Posts: 326

    52style
    Member


    is that a meth recipe LOL
     
  21. Woogeroo
    Joined: Dec 29, 2005
    Posts: 1,226

    Woogeroo
    Member
    from USA

    Thanks a bunch for the stories folks, I really enjoyed reading all of them.

    -W
     
  22. jimi'shemi291
    Joined: Jan 21, 2009
    Posts: 9,499

    jimi'shemi291
    Member

    This thread has to be a CLASSIC --just won't die, eh? I never get tired of hearing the stories about (and even TOLD by) early NASCAR drivers like a couple of the Flock brothers and Junior Johnson (who did time in prison).

    The best I can manage is that back in the 1950s, our next-door neighbor was an old gent from Tennessee. He'd done several years in the Tennssee state pen for moonshining. He had a '31 Model-A Ford, which my dad borrowed a few times when our car was down, to take mom & us "young'uns" to the drive-in movies. What a hoot THAT was for us kids to ride in such an OLD car!
     
  23. Woogeroo
    Joined: Dec 29, 2005
    Posts: 1,226

    Woogeroo
    Member
    from USA

    Driving with the Devil : Southern Moonshine, Detroit Wheels and the Birth of NASCAR

    by Neal Thompson


    ISBN-10: 1-4000-8225-0

    ISBN-13: 978-1-4000-8225-4

    ----

    I really enjoyed this book. It is the story of 1930's - 1940's era of stock car racing and moonshining that led up to the creation of NASCAR.

    Lots of shine running stories from Dawsonville to Atlanta and interesting comments on modifications made to the early to late 1930's Fords with the V8s.

    Anyway, I checked this one out from my library, but it is also on the book selling sites.

    It was a good read if you like reading about the old race cars and racing action. It gets into the back story of where NASCAR came from and how it really got started. That story is way more interesting that the current corporate version.


    The book finished up in the early to mid 1950's after the first few seasons of NASCAR.

    Anyhoo, check it out if you are interested in the old racing/old fords/old North Georgia bootlegging stories.

    The fella that wrote it is a pretty good writer and really makes it a joy to read.

    -W
     
  24. My buddy Don Stuernagel, the subject of the original post, has passed on since I started this thread...

    The story about the service, is that he met and became friends with artist extrordinaire, Steve Stanford... They both were waiting to be chewed out for getting in trouble, Steve, for painting the insignia on helicopters upside down, Don, probably for beating the shit out of somebody.
     
    Last edited: Sep 15, 2009
  25. jimi'shemi291
    Joined: Jan 21, 2009
    Posts: 9,499

    jimi'shemi291
    Member

    WoogerOO, that's good shit, man. GOOD recommendation for people whou REALLY wanna know about the roots of rodding &, resultantly, NASCAR.

    As you say, way more interesting than modern NASCAR. Unfortunately, we can't turn back the CLOCK to the same style racing. It's changed, I fear, for good.

    BUT, the loyalists shouldn;'t let the MEMORIES of WHAT WAS ever die!!! THANKS for the recommendation of the book (sounds like it'd make a hell of a lot better movie than "Days of Thunder" !).
     
  26. jimi'shemi291
    Joined: Jan 21, 2009
    Posts: 9,499

    jimi'shemi291
    Member

    Gotta ADD: This old thread ties right in to one I just started about just WHERE the hell the roots of RODDING began. THAT one has been fun, with a LOT of enthusiastic guys feeding in info!!!
     
  27. Woogeroo
    Joined: Dec 29, 2005
    Posts: 1,226

    Woogeroo
    Member
    from USA

    Whiskey Runner's

    This is a Social Group which was founded by TAYLOR for the discussion of bootlegging cars and bootlegging in general, as related to the cars here on the HAMB. It is now being managed by me, Woogeroo.​

    So, ya'll stop by and join in with history book recommendations, running stories, comments, posts of moonshine related festivals or museums, etc.. ]​

    -W

    p.s. other Social Groups are found under 'manage your account' and to the left side... 'social groups'. There are all kinds of niche groups for things in there. ​
     
    Last edited: Mar 8, 2010
  28. strawberry
    Joined: Sep 13, 2008
    Posts: 291

    strawberry
    Member

    well its a moonshine story, you might say it was a family tradition, the still was hidden in the hollow had the hog pens running interference for the smell, it was around 1959~60 the car that was used to run it was a 55 merc, my dear 'ol dad god rest his soul, was striping a packard for scrapone day and boooom ..he jumped in the creek to put out the fire , the meat skin was hanging off his arms and back etc,
    so it was off to the hospital in a 55 merc, open gal. of shine and dad in the passenger seat me in the back ( thats when I had my first taste) terrible stuff , well mom couldn't drive so good and was speeding all over the road "yep " you guessed it we got stopped almost to chesapeak the policeman saw my dad the shine mom with no D.L. the whole kaboodle ..he said follow me well we made it, crossed the river into w.v. and to the hospital, that was one helluva day in the life, and dear 'ol dad was laid up for quite awhile. boy I sure would like a tast of that shine now,
     
  29. nutajunka
    Joined: Jan 24, 2007
    Posts: 1,464

    nutajunka

    Growing up in the hills of tenn. I thought it was normal to go out on the porch at night and smell it cooking.
     
  30. BAILEIGH INC
    Joined: Aug 8, 2008
    Posts: 3,629

    BAILEIGH INC
    Alliance Vendor

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