An item that should be of interest.

Shawn Organ
----- Forwarded by Shawn L Organ/MN/USB on 09/27/2001 05:54 PM -----

http://www.csmonitor.com/2001/0927/p3s1-usju.html
Moonshine flows - and feds crack down
By Patrik Jonsson Special to The Christian Science
Monitor

CLIMAX, VA. - Tim Smith is a mechanic, not a
moonshiner. That's not to say he didn't have a chance:
Using recipes dating back centuries, both his father
and brother tended "black pot" stills here in the
bottom of Appalachia's eastern foothills.

Today, Mr. Smith is more interested in the heritage of
the moonshiners than in their hard-knuckled brew. In
an outdoor museum of sorts, the former Army
intelligence officer has recreated several rusty
stills complete with "mash boxes," "doublers,"
distilling "worms," and "axe gashes." A few weeks ago,
the Third Annual Moonshiners Jamboree drew 700 people
to this cornfield near Danville, Va.

Making and selling alcohol without a license is
illegal. But even under centuries of federal
surveillance, the moonshine industry has evolved from
an illegal folk art to a big business involving dozens
of suppliers, distillers, and distributors from
Roanoke, Va., to Johnston County, N.C. Instead of
small nailed-together tubs, today's mega-moonshiners
use huge stainless stills that take up entire barns
and produce hundreds of gallons of whiskey a day.

"I've maintained there's 50,000 gallons of untaxed
liquor leaving southwest Virginia every year, and
nobody's ever disputed that," says Jack Allen Powell,
a retired revenuer who wrote a book about the business
called "A Dying Art."

Law enforcement efforts have intensified to keep up
with the burgeoning production.  These verdant hills
are now the scene of a significant strike against
these Southern bootleggers.

This week, as part of the biggest moonshine bust in US
history, alcohol-control agents are wrapping up
Operation Lightning Strike, an eight-year sweep that
netted 27 bootleggers running a corn liquor conspiracy
from Philadelphia to Raleigh. The don of the operation
is Ralph Hale Sr., the elder of a vast family network
based out of Franklin County, Va., just a crow's
flight from Smith's cornfield.

Steeped in history

A gallon milk jug full of home brew costs about $35 -
half the price of legal whiskey. Besides the low cost,
many people just like saying they drink "shine," says
Mr. Powell.

Since before the US began taxing liquor in 1791,
descendants of independent-minded Scots and Irishmen
have holed up in the crags of Appalachia, brewing
surplus corn, sugar, and "crick" water into a potent
spirit, usually under cover of the moon.

They've survived through the Civil War, the
teetotalling Rutherford B. Hayes years, the
"revenuers" of the Prohibition, and even the advent of
"wet" Southern cities in the 1960s and 1970s, which
allowed the legal sale of alcohol and put many small
stills out of business.

"One of the ways you could market agricultural surplus
in an area with difficult communication and bad roads
is to convert it to brandy or whiskey," says John
Williams, a history professor at Appalachian State
University in Boone, N.C. "This has been customary
among several of the groups that settled the
Appalachians, especially from the northern part of the
British Isles, where they had a tradition of defying
government regulation," he says.

For Troy, an aging moonshiner who doesn't want his
last name used, distilling spirits was a way to make
ends meet: "We did it so we could send our kids to
school and put a piece of bacon on the table."  He
claims that the high tariffs on spirits make it
impossible for most farmers to ply the trade
legitimately.

Today, a new style of family-based operations has
supplanted the small stills and developed into real
money-making propositions.

As far as the Hale gang, alcohol-control agents
estimate that they produced 1.5 million gallons of
liquor from 1992 to 1999, ducking some $19.6 million
in taxes. When the law caught up with Climax local
Paul Henson a few years ago, officers found this new
kind of operation. - a 36-pot behemoth set up just a
few miles from here at Smith Mountain Lake. It was the
biggest still ever wrecked by federal agents.

Still, even such high-rolling rumrunners don't exactly
live the Riviera lifestyle. A small-time operator may
bring in $30,000 a year, while paying still hands $150
a day under the table. One pick-up truck full of
spirits may bring in about $5,000 for a distiller.

A 'sinister' business

To be sure, many see the distilling and running of
"white lightning" through these mountains as a
sinister business. Teetotalling wives were often the
first to call the law on their husbands. Even today,
Smith has received bad publicity over the
appropriateness of his Jamboree. Similarly, Asheville,
N.C., recently changed the name of its baseball team
from the Moonshiners to the Tourists.

The first reaction of a moonshiner to scrutiny is to
run. In Pittsylvania County, Va., the late Aubrey
Adkins was as much known for his sprints as his
spirits. Usually, the agents would wait at the still
as Mr. Adkins crashed through the woods - to soon
return.

At the same time, Agent Bart McEntire knows it's tough
to ferret out these close-knit mountain communities.
Over the years, agents have employed citizens to get
the scoop on moonshiners' whereabouts.

But it can be a tough sell. Indeed, the reason
Franklin County became known as the "Moonshine
Capital" in the 1930s is that federal agents arrested
nearly every judge and lawyer in the district for
sheltering bootleggers. Even today, fines and
penalties at local courts tend to be lenient.

For now, law officials say the flow of "white
lightning" from this region has largely been stemmed,
as Mr. Hale faces a possible life sentence and many of
his 26 lieutenants settle in for what will likely be a
few years in the federal pen.

"This was one of those situations grown to the
magnitude where it was time for somebody to basically
shut it down," Mr. McEntire says. "It's not fair to a
common citizen who goes to work eight hours a day
while another guy is bringing in $4,000 a week with
illegal activity," he adds.

Still, a growing number now celebrate the heritage of
the moonshiners, if not the moonshine: New Prospect,
S.C., hosts a Moonshiners Reunion every October, and,
around the same time, Dawsonville, Ga., celebrates the
Moonshine Festival.

Indeed, the moonshiners' gruff legacy has caused even
ex-revenuers to grow nostalgic.

When Mr. Powell, for instance, came to Climax to help
shoot a documentary on moonshiners, he ran into Mr.
Henson, the famed distiller. Powell was so excited, he
got Henson a part in the documentary - as a still hand
who takes off into the woods when the agents show up.

=====
kuchta
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