My Grand Father had made shine most of his life. His father had been a horse trader, and constantly moved around middle Tennessee, southern Kentucky, and northern Alabama, trading horses. As he moved he often bought shins from locals, transported it along with his gear, and sold it dry towns. As my Grand Father grew older he thought why buy it from a distiller then sell it, when we can make and sell it, cutting out the middle man. So he built his own still. He put it in a cave near the house. The entrance was concealed behind a stone wall. There had been a natural vent way back up the hill, therefore he did not have to run a smoke stack out the entrance. The smell and smoke came out of a sink hole up the hill and across the road from the house. My Grandpa kept the area cleared around the sinkhole of brush and trees. He piled the brush into the sink hole and that would disperse the smoke. That way if any one came around following the smell, he could see them long before they got close enough to tell where the smell was coming from. He'd simply go kill the fire and stop the smoke and smell. Plus there was a lot of Copperhead snakes near that sink hole. No one wanted to get too close anyway. The lot across the road was renown in the area for it's high numbers of Copperheads.
He claimed to have quite after being caught hauling and having his mules confiscated during the War (1943). My Grand Mother was a temperance woman and thought she had him on the straight and narrow. Then one summer when I was about 14 an Air Force jet plane came up the hollow and created a sonic boom. The house shook, and I heard crashing from the dinning room. Then for the only time in my life I heard my Grandma cussing and swearing. I ran into the dinning room and saw a clear liquid running out from under the wall, and my Grandma heading for the barn. She grabbed a tobacco stick and beat the old man about the head and shoulders all the way to the house and then demanded to see his stash. I think back and it was a funny sight seeing this little old woman (4'10") running behind a big man (6' 300 lbs) beating him over the head with a tobacco stick. The old man throwing his arms up to ward off the blows, half laughing and half serious because some of those blows were making it through and hurting when they hit his head. She kept threating to go get her gun and shoot him, (she had an old double action Colt .45 and she could shoot it well) calling him a Moonshining old SOB. My Grandpa had built a hidden compartment behind the dinning room wall. That is where he had kept his stash for years. The house being shaken from the sonic boom a couple of jugs had fell off the shelves and broken when they hit the floor.
From that point on anytime my Grandma got mad at my Grandpa she would bring that up, and want to know if he was back to moonshining. When I was 18 the old man took me to the cave and showed me his set-up. He said he had been running that still there since the 1930s. He said one of the main reasons he never got caught was that he kept his operation small. He only wanted to make enough to keep the family well fed and clothed. If he made too much he would never be able to get the extra money by the old temperance woman anyway. I do remember my Grandma questioning him about how many bushels of corn he was getting from his corn fields, and the old man blowing up because she questioned him. That started an argument that I'll never forget, my mother joined in siding with my Grandma on that one. Both women threatened the old man if they found out he was Bootlegging or making Moonshine again.
