“NASCAR Dads” have been in the news lately
with the President’s well-publicized trek to the
Daytona 500 on February 15. With several official NASCAR
racetracks in the Commonwealth, and one within spitting
distance in Bristol, Tennessee, it’s high time for
a meditation on the mythic origin of stock car racing.
It’s spelled m-o-o-n-s-h-i-n-e.
Legend has it that early NASCAR champions cut their teeth
(or their treads) outrunning state and Federal “revenuers.”
The battle between moonshiners and the government is centuries
old and continues to this day. It dates from the Whiskey
Rebellion of 1794, when farmers in western Pennsylvania
rebelled against a Federal tax on whiskey. The revenue
was sought to pay Revolutionary War debts. George Washington
led 10,000 troops to put down the rebellion, and the farmers
countered by launching the home-based business of making
whiskey by the light of the moon. Thus was born the term
“moonshine.”
This illegal alcoholic beverage goes by many other names,
including white lightning, rotgut, Happy Sally or stump,
according to the March 23, 2000 New York Times
article “U.S. Cracks Down on Rise In Appalachia
Moonshine.” However, if you’re an agent from
the Treasury Department’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco
& Firearms, or the Virginia Department of Alcohol
Beverage Control, you call it “non-tax-paid liquor.”
In 2000, agents from ATF and the ABC agencies in Virginia
and North Carolina shut down a large moonshining operation
centered in Franklin County, Virginia after a two-year
investigation. The sophisticated descendants of Depression-era
moonshiners, who once made whiskey in backyard 50-gallon
stills, were now using 800-gallon stills, sometimes connecting
five to ten together. They hired transporters to carry
the liquor to their markets, and even used night-vision
goggles!
According to New York Times reporter Peter Kilborn,
the 130-proof alcohol (200 proof means 100 percent alcohol)
was produced for about $3 a gallon, and bottled in six-packs
of plastic gallon jugs. They were then sold for $10 -
$12 a gallon in the backrooms of bars – sometimes
known as “nip joints” or “shot houses”
– in major mid-Atlantic cities such as Richmond,
Philadelphia, Washington and Baltimore. Consumers would
pay $1 a shot, much less than for legal whiskey. Since
the federal excise tax on a gallon of whiskey in the late
1990s was $13.50, the ATF estimated a loss of $19.6 million
in tax revenue between 1992 and 1999.
In 2003, Virginia’s 276 state-operated liquor stores
sold three million cases of distilled liquors. Along with
Virginia wines and assorted mixers, this generated gross
sales of $439 million. That doesn’t include restaurant
and offsite licenses. Tax revenue from all sources of
liquor sales returned $203 million to the Commonwealth
last year.
According to Virginia
Places, a Web site maintained by Charlie Grymes, a
Geography of Virginia instructor at George Mason University
in Fairfax, illicit distilleries, a.k.a. “stills,”
evolved in the mountainous regions of Virginia and other
southern states because converting surplus corn into liquor
created a product that was easier and cheaper to transport.
The farmers could make a profit, as long as taxes weren’t
too high.
The moonshine distilling process works this way: “The
first step in making moonshine is fermenting a mixture
of rye, sugar, corn, yeast or other ingredients in ‘mash’
kegs. The mixture is then distilled in cooker kegs by
heating the liquid and collecting the alcohol vapor through
a network of copper tubes into a ‘thumper’
keg.” Today, illicit stills can be found dug into
the sides of hills or in houses, garages or secret basements.
One problem with drinking stuff made in somebody’s
basement is that it can cause lead poisoning. A 2003 study
revealed that more than half of the illicit liquor confiscated
by Virginia law enforcement officers over a five-year
period had lead levels above the Environmental Protection
Agency’s water guidelines. The study was reported
in an October 19, 2003 Washington Post article
on research done by Christopher Holstege, who directs
the Division of Medical Toxicology at the Blue Ridge Poison
Center and is a professor of emergency medicine at the
University of Virginia Health System.
Holstege found that the lead originated from the solder
in old car radiators that are often used as condensers
in stills. Moonshine drinkers know they need to get the
lead out, and think they can tell whether or not they
have a bad batch by shaking a jar of it. If a head of
foam appears, that means the batch has lead. Health officials
don’t exactly endorse moonshiners’ lead-detection
methods.
Making moonshine seems to be a tradition that refuses
to die, however, and illicit liquor manufacturing may
even be spilling north. Last October, Virginia ABC agents
discovered a suburban still made from a lobster pot, plastic
tubing and some C-clamps in Fairfax County. The operating
apparatus was in a shed on wooded property, not far from
a suburban shopping mall. Making moonshine in Virginia,
however, is still a Class 6 felony – punishable
by up to five years in jail.
Illegal or not, Franklin County embraces its hooch heritage
by proclaiming itself the “Moonshine Capital of
the World” and its Chamber of Commerce even considered
a moonshine museum that would produce legal boutique liquor.
In nearby Pittsylvania County, organizers are planning
the 6th
Annual Moonshiners Jamboree for next August .
The area does have a few holdouts, however, who can’t
quite get into the – yes – “spirits”
of things. The New York Times reported that one
resident stated: “It would be nicer if it was in
the past and we could say we used to be the moonshine
capital of the world.”
April 12, 2004
(Got a question? Check out Ask
a Librarian Live.)
Nice & Curious
|
|
**Survey: Provide Feedback About the Web Site, Including This Page**