In a recent conversation Steve Earle's song Copperhead Road came up and as I was trying to think of a topic for a blog post I put that on for a listen. Very quickly I realized that it was the topic that I had been looking for. In case you have never heard it, the music video for it is below.
I grew up in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains in southeastern Kentucky, for all its entertainment value Copperhead Road is also something of a history of the region. As far as I know there is no actual Copperhead Road and the places mentioned in the song place it in eastern Tennessee but the only real difference between there and my neck of the woods was a line on the map. Making and selling your own whiskey, and later on marijuana is something of a tradition in that area.
Corn is a lot easier to transport, store, and sell when it is in liquid form...whiskey is welcome in places where lots of currencies aren't. Plenty of people in those parts didn't really think it was any of Uncle Sam's business what they did with the crops they grew (the first rebellion in this country was over attempts to tax whiskey, back in Washington's presidency) and that attitude is still present to this day.
Although we never made shine, we had a still my grandfather had acquired somewhere along the way, I even took it to school for some form of show & tell. Shine still ain't too hard to find if you know who to talk to but things have changed quite a bit from the early days alluded to in the song.
NASCAR got it's start from moonshining, all them boys that made their living outrunning the law on those rough, twisting Appalachian roads got to racing each other too and made a sport of it in the process. Many of the early legends of NASCAR had also done a little time in the joint over running shine :D
That all got going good during Prohibition here in the US but it didn't die out with the repeal of Prohibition in 1933. In my area and many others like it, the combined opposition of the preachers and the bootleggers was a potent enough political force to keep large swathes of the country 'dry' (sell of alcohol prohibited). This ensured that demand for moonshine stayed strong for many years to come.
With time came changes in habits and laws and along with that marijuana supplanted moonshine as the 'cash crop' of choice. (People still make shine but more for family and friends, the money isn't in it anymore) While what they're selling/running has changed, little else has. It's now DEA agents, helicopters, and national guardsmen instead of federal "revenuers" but it's still the same hollers you don't go up into without a good reason, where strangers are unwelcome and you'd best heed property lines and watch for tripwires.
We had two county sheriffs in a row go to the penitentiary for protecting the ones growing and moving the weed in the county, so often it came down to the state troopers going in to bust people. This was never a particularly pleasant or easy job, many of the boys growing were vets who'd handled guns all their lives and boobytraps weren't exactly uncommon around people's 'patch'. When I was a teenager I made the mistake of driving down a disused dirt trail during harvest season, instead of finding a place to pull over and fool around with the girl in the passenger seat I found a couple guys with shotguns and pistols who suggested I look elsewhere.
My home county just went 'wet' with the 2019 election but the same coalition of uneasy bedfellows that kept it dry for so long is trying to keep weed illegal as well. While I suspect that in the end they will be ultimately unsuccessful, I'm pretty sure we're going to have to deal with the 'pot chopper' flying over for a few years more at the very least. That's enough of my rambling for now, enjoy the song!
(I intend to write a post in the future on the related topic of the Cornbread Mafia here in Kentucky but if you've found this interesting you should check them out and not wait on me)