Moonshine has played a part in my life for nearly as long as I can remember. My family’s roots are from the Appalachian Mountains, and moonshine stills and the mountain men who brewed their illegal brew are synonymous with my mountains. Descendants from several branches in my family line were moonshiners. When I was eighteen I was offered my first job driving a tanker (a specially adapted car to haul huge quantities of shine from the mountains to the cities). This helped finance my college education. I can’t remember my first quart jar or my first swallow of shine, and I still haven’t taken my last. Making it is an art, and many of the men who have made their living at it take pride in their art. A bad run in a bad still by an unscrupulous person can produce a deadly mixture, and for most people that’s probably the extent of their knowledge of moonshine. How many times have I heard someone say, “You ought not drink that stuff. You never know when it’ll kill you.” And those people are right, it can be deadly. Only a couple times in my life have I drank any shine unless I knew who made it. Bad shine, brewed too fast and too hot, can make you wish you were dead if it doesn’t kill you. Good shine can send you flying like a bird in a way no other alcohol can match.

Many years ago on an Appalachian mountaintop I was with about two dozen friends camping out, partying and just plain raising hell. Everyone was drinking shine and having a good time. We’d ridden there on horseback on a winding mountain trail till we reached our party spot. Some of the people were drinking shine as we rode, and one of the girls had too much and fell off her horse. The next morning she didn’t remember falling off her horse and she had no idea how the blue, horseshoe-shaped bruise got on her thigh.

That trip ended in tragedy, and the only moonshine-related death I’ve ever personally known about. After a couple days of drinking we ran out of shine, so we sent a relative newcomer to our group into town to get a few more gallons. He never returned. We later learned he’d bought some bad shine and was drinking it on the trip back. He died before he ever reached the bottom of the mountain. That gallon of shine had been made in a car radiator and was a lethal drink the moment it was made.

The old days of moonshine are over now. Sure, a lot of the illegal stuff is still being made and sold because the old-time shiners still make better stuff than what can be bought legally. But that’s changing now, and I’m proud to say that my family, specifically my nephew, is at the forefront of the legal moonshine business. My nephew was recently granted a federal license to open a distillery to make shine and sell it through the state-run Alcohol Beverage Control stores. His still, located in western North Carolina is named Howling Moon Distillery http://www.howlingmoonshine.com

He’s using the old family recipes passed down through the ages, and he’s working with Morgan Fairchild, who has two gold records and is a member of the Bluegrass Hall of Fame. Mr. Fairchild has been known for his fine shine for many years.

One disclaimer I believe I should make. In this blog post, and in others to come, there may be statements that might cause someone to think either me or some members of my family may at times break the law. But that not true at all. The law is gray, not black and white. So while no one has broken the law, they may not entirely abide by it. Sometimes in the living of life people are forced to do just a little bit more than the law will allow.

But remember – the law is gray