A Day on the Road...

Yesterday, we took a “skip day” and went on our weekly bike ride in the mountains of North Carolina. Every time we go up, we try to explore different winding back roads. The kind of back roads you wouldn’t want to break down on. I’m not saying this because of the old scary notion the movie Deliverance put in your mind about southern back roads, “Paddle faster, I hear banjo music,” but because they are desolate, miles from the nearest home and unlikely to get a cell phone signal.

It’s hard to think of banjo music and breaking down when it’s the perfect temperature, the wind is at your back, the sun is in your face and warming your bare shoulders. What I did think about was, moonshine. I envisioned the hills filled with copper stills and bootleggers, and the pesky revenuers sneaking through the underbrush ready to demolish the still with a pickax.

The term moonshine goes back to a time when folks avoiding liquor authorities made their own booze by the light of the moon. This illicit spirit has also been called mountain dew (yes, you now know the soda reference), and white lightning. The term “moonshine” has a romantic, naughty ring to it that reminds you of two strappin’ good lookin’ boys in a souped up orange car called the General Lee helping out their poor old moonshinin’ Uncle Jesse.

Moonshine’s mystique is drawn in part from the danger people associate with it, but it’s reputation as an illegal and potentially hazardous elixar has little to do with why it is on the verge of earning mainstream respectability. It has less to do with mythology than drinkability.

Most do-it-yourselfers, stick to traditional recipes. The basics: boil the corn and let it ferment a few days. Then cook the "mash" in the still. As the vapors cool inside the contraption, alcohol runs out. A few make it from granulated sugar instead of grain.

The advise anyone will give you who brews it or has drank any amount of it will tell you, "If you take a big sip you'd have about three steps where you'd have to sit down or fall down.” At 190 or 200 proof, the brew has a bad kick. A little more than a big swig, you could instantly become knee walkin’ drunk, and we know depending who you are, that may not be a pretty picture!

It doesn’t matter to some that much of it doesn’t taste good or doesn’t have much taste. It’s like drinking EverClear, with an aftertaste somewhere between hominy, and stale wet cardboard. It’s one of those experiences one can't turn down, once.

We pulled into a one-pump station to gas up. A friendly old timer with a spirited sense of humor was drinking a tall glass of sweet tea in front of the old station and country store. We struck up a conversation as we drank our icy Mountain Dew’s about moonshine and some of the notorious bootleggers of the 20th century. He remembered a story of a young local moonshiner and a revenuer, “The young moonshiner told of how a tax man came up to him asked him where his family was. "At the still," he said. "Then he told he'd give me a dollar if I took him to the still," said the moonshiner, from Roanoke. The revenuer said he'd give him the dollar when he got back. "I had to tell him, 'Mister, you ain't comin' back.”

We laughed. He also informed us, moonshing was a serious business and Franklin County, NC has never been much ashamed of its long association with untaxed liquor. He went on to tell us about NASCAR Hall of Fame driver Junior Johnson was from this area and before becoming a racer he hauled moonshine on these very same mountain roads. I verified that when we got got home on the Internet and sure enough, he did, in an article written by Al Pearce:
“NASCAR Hall of Fame driver and team owner Junior Johnson won 47 poles and 50 races in his 11-year career, but he staunchly refused to go road racing until 1965, the year he quit driving. Johnson said this about his one start at Riverside, Calif.: "That place was right up my alley. I was driving for Ford, and they kept trying to get me out there because I was familiar with roads. (Before becoming a racer, Johnson hauled moonshine on mountain roads in western North Carolina). But I wouldn't go because" its right-hand turns "exposed the driver to the wall.”

I’m sure there are more NASCAR drivers with the same history as Junior, and there’s still a whole lot of moonshin’ goin’ on in these parts of the South. With the biggest issue being, the state/federal misses out on taxes that it would collect through a legal purchase.

It was great conversation with the old gentleman and it was the icing on the cake of a perfect mountain ride. Until next time…Peace.