Back when I was a lad, I had a job at the Ford Assembly Plant on Chicago's South Side (130th & Torrence). It was the midnight shift and this particular job involved sorting and stacking empty 55 gal. paint drums out in the yards so they could be recycled and reused. During the winter months the wind blew up the Calumet Harbor and across those yards with a cold ferocity the memory of which still makes me shiver as I think about it.

Another fellow worked out there along side me. He was from a small town near Lynchburg, Tennessee, home of Jack Daniels Distillery. He told me that nearly everyone in that county made whisky and they either worked for Jack Daniels or they didn't. He had worked as a deputy sheriff down there but said there was never much trouble about 'shine unless someone decided to lower the price. As soon as the others learned of the lower price, he'd get a call at the sheriff's office complaining that the offender—let's call him George—was making whiskey up in a holler somewhere and “Just what was the Sheriff going to do about it anyway?”

Of course in that setting, everyone knew everyone else and My friend, because of his official duties, probably knew more people than most. Still, he was obliged to take action on specific citizen complaints but he understood the motivation and didn't want to cause any undue hardship on the family or attract any unnecessary attention to the county's primary industry so he'd call George and tell him: “George this is Deputy Smith. We've had a complaint that you're engaged in making illegal whiskey over in the holler and we're going to have come up there about three o'clock tomorrow afternoon and investigate.

George would then know that he had a day to tear down his still and replace it with some old junk that the Sheriff could come along and smash. George would be out of business for the time it took to relocate the still and get a new mash going and this economic setback also served as sound business advice about the going price for whiskey.

My friend went to great lengths to explain the setup favored by the local business men. They never put the mash directly over the fire but instead put a copper boiler over the fire that contained pure water. The mash was kept in wooden barrels. The steam was piped from the boiler into the base of the barrel containing the mash and another pipe came out the top of the sealed mash barrel and into the bottom of an empty and sealed wooden barrel he called a thumper keg. Another thumper keg was attached in the same way and finally, the condensing coil. The mash they made was a “sweet” corn mash capped with rye and the whiskey they produced was most excellent. My friend, like many of the unskilled workers in the industrial area from Chicago to South Bend, drove home to Tennessee nearly every weekend and back north to be on the job again on Monday. Needless to say, he often returned with fruit jars full of this wonderful nectar which we used to make the winter nights in the barrel yards far more tollerable than they might otherwise have been.

      - Mark