It all started with a suggestion that we try making our own moonshine and subsequent moments of pure genius.
***
My pal Zeke and I were enthusiastically sampling the corn squeezin’s of Kentucky on a Saturday afternoon and were about 3 jars in when he piped up and said “yew no… wee kin mayk thisstuff” and the unbelieving philistine in me said with all my heart “Pffffft” and promptly said it again with my relaxed fundament.
“No serrissly, mi unnnnnkle’s bin maykin it fer yeeeers back in his grarrr… his grarrr… his… shed.”
With my eyes still shut and a flaccid tongue I replied “Arright, less doit”, promptly fell asleep and fell out of my lawn chair.
In my defense, the chair was pretty old and missing all but seven straps.
I’d been perched precariously with two straps supporting a cheek on each side and leaning a bit to the left because the other three were all on the right side in the back.
When I completely relaxed in sleep, my balance gave way (as did my fundament once again) and I rolled over, face planting in the grass, dangerously close to some soft serve Zekes dog had left for us to find in the yard.
Waking up mid morning on Sunday and opening my eyes to the dew glistening on the folds and creases of the now even more rancidly emanating mini mountain of canine delight, I retched a little after breathing in then sat up, the grass sticking to my cheek and lower lip where the drool had dried during the night.
My head felt swollen.
My tongue felt swollen.
My fundament…
Never mind.
Zeke was still in the chair with his head hanging over the back at a weird angle, snoring louder than my unmuffled and majestic ‘77 Maverick and when I cleared my sticker coated throat he sat up, winced and said
“Muh heads on fahr” while I nodded my assent.
Moving slowly we made our way into the cool confines of the house and got ourselves some water to wash away some of the fog we’d pulled over our vision the day before. After some breakfast and a long nap on the couch I felt like a real human again and was remembering Zeke’s comment about “maykinthisstuff”.
Having been unemployed for a fair bit but still wanting the finer things in life (like corn squeezin’s you know) I thought this might be a good idea.
I knew that good shine took a few things like:
- Corn
- Sugar
- Water
- Fahr
- Yeast
- A still
- Gumption
Sugar I had plenty of and I’d been down to the dollar store the week before and the scratch & dent cans of corn (sweet, creamed and whole kernel varieties) were on sale so I’d bought em all.
Now I may, or may not have been sampling some corn in one form or another at the time but when I drove away from that store, the trunk, backseat and passenger seat of my aforementioned majestic Maverick were PACKED with canned corn.
I even had some tied onto the trunk with some bailin wahr I’d found in the ditch next to the highway. I may have lost a few in traffic but I made it home with most of em.
My wife was:
- Im
- Pressed
- (and mad)
“What the $&@#’r we gonna do with all that corn, Silas?!?!
I replied “io-kno” and giggled a little at my own idiocy but at that point it was too late.
The Dollar Store don’t give back dollars.
I jus throwed em all into the shed and forgot about em until my shining epiphany on Sunday afternoon.
Having nothing to do on Monday but find somethin to do, I told Zeke, “Lessgo, we gon make that moonshine yoo’wer talkin bout yesterday” to which Zeke replied wisely, “huh?” and we hightailed it for my mobile abode.
I knew where the sugar was because I’d stashed it myself. The wife’s got a fierce sweet tooth (in fact it’s the only one left in her fool head) and I had to hide it lest she grab her spoon and commence to shovelin’.
I had 25 pounds of pure off-white sugar (well what can I say? It was on sale too!), 3 packets of yeast left to me by my great uncle Chet in his will four years ago, around a pallet of canned corn and the tub up on cinder blocks that we built our fahrs under and filled with water so’s we could bathe afore church whenever we went.
This was gonna be our cookin vessel.
Zeke set to opening every can I’d bought and dumping em into the tub until he realized he hadn’t put the plug in and after that it filled up a lot quicker.
After about 300 cans Zeke’s hand was plumb give out but the tub was lookin pretty full so I added my bag of sugar, a bucket of water and lit that fahr.
Zeke was a-stirrin with a big stick we’d found while the tub started to bubble and I thought the whole thing was lookin a mite thick but what did I know? I’s just follerin my instincts as a man of the mountains and figgerin I was doin it all right. We come from moonshinin people so I ciphered we’d just come out lookin good at the end.
After a while though we started to smell somethin kinda off.
We’d built the fire too hot and the corn was too thick (they’d had quite a lot of the creamed variety) and it turned out the”stick” we’d found was a dried up deer leg that had been ejected from a bit of misfortune on the highway. When the leg started to soften, the rotten road jerky stench mixed with the scorch of burnt cream corn and over caramelized sugar at the bottom of the tub and the acrid smoke coming from our “mash” made our eyes water.
“Uh think thets done Silas” said Zeke and I blinked as his face cleared through the smoke.
I agreed.
It was time to let it rest and so we did, forgetting about it for about four months.
Deciding to head for church one crisp morning Crystal (muh blushin bride) and I got up for a quick bath so I went out to get the tub ready only to find the now almost solid tub of “mash”
I laughed out loud at my “fergitful nayture” and yelled for Crystal to “fergitaboutit” then ran over to the hollow tree we used for callin Zeke and started a-whalin on it to git his attention over at his house across the holler.
About 30 minutes later Zeke came crashin’ out of the bushes out of breath and says “What in blue blazes in goin on?!?!”
“The mash is reddy” I says.
The look Zeke gave me was pure mountain man dee-lite.
“Uh cain’t wait!”
Now, we hadn’t figgered out the still yet but since everythin’ was already in the tub I figgered we’d jus put a top on it with some roof tin that blowed off the shed, add the copper coil on top I’d gotten from an old air conditioner I found at the dump and set to boilin.
And thet there’s what we did.
Fashioning the top was a bit tricky and the cast iron tub was a mite rusty so it got a little loose in places but I’d heard if you plug it up with a flour and water paste, it’d hold so I snuck in and grabbed up Crystals 50lb sack of biscuit fixins then mixed it up in our bucket.
It got a little thick.
Smearin that muck all over the edge of that tub was disgustin and it got everwhar. How in tarnation it got up my nose I cain’t say. (Later, I found a hunk in my skivvies but I’ll never tell Zeke cause he’d never let me fergit it.)
I’d splurged at the hardware earlier in the week and got the REAL duck tape (you know it’s good cause they boil a whole buncha ducks to make it real sticky) and taped my copper to a nail hole in the roof tin then hung a bucket on the end to catch our magic juice.
It was time to light the fahr.
I’d saved the old gasoline we were using to clean the grease off of some go cart parts we were working on for a swamp buggy (Don’t ask me why. There ain’t no swamp within five hundred miles of here but it seemed like a good idea at the time.) and gave the brush pile under the tub a good soaking.
I knew better than to just reach in and light the fire after a mishap with some high octane and another (fresher) deer leg last November so I ran inside and got my last pack of Roman candles from ‘Merica’s birthday and lit one up.
The first ball of fire caught me off guard and I shot myself in the foot then stupidly looked at the end of that flamin’ hell tube and promptly shot myself again.
This one got caught in my hair and later Zeke said I looked really patriotic a-runnin around with my hair alight and screamin.
Crystal peeked out the door with that same look (you know the look. “WTH are you two doin now?!?!”) just in time to see the third shot go off.
This one made it to the target and the flame that shot out from under the tub was spectacular.
I’d had more gas left than I’d previously remembered and I used it all just to be sure.
The tub launched off the cinder blocks with a BOOM and the sound of a smacking wet piece of meat as the “mash” was flattened into the bottom on its way into the heavens.
As I was swatting the flames out of my hair I saw Zeke looking skyward, mesmerized.
I stopped swatting and looked up to see the cast iron tub hurtling toward the ground with the hulk of mash following about eight feet above it.
I could hear it whistling through the now unplugged drain hole.
Crashing into the ground on the other side of the yard, the tub EXPLODED into uncountable pieces and the mash landed immediately on top of the now scrap pile, blowing apart.
Turns out the inside of the formerly yellow now sickly green mash was still gelatinous and it not so gently COVERED Zeke and I on the side facing the grisly scene and leaving a perfect outline of each of us on the shed wall.
We never saw the air conditioner coil again.
Turning to Zeke I could see his eyes were still closed against the horrors we’d just witnessed upon ourselves and he turned to me, eyes still shut and said “Mebbe we shoun’t be mekkin shine after all” in a dull and subdued voice.
As some of the rancid mash dripped out of my now mostly burned off hair I had to agree.
Crystal was still leaning in the doorway of the trailer with her mouth clean open, and I’m just guessing here, staring with pride at our amazing feat of rocketry.
She slowly turned away with her shoulders hunched and shaking while wiping tears from her eyes (tears of pride and joy of course)
and I saw her reach into a cabinet there just inside the kitchen.
She came outside holding what looked like a bottle with an old timey picture on the front.
“Hunny, I been savin’ this fer a special oh-ccasion and I think this jus might be it. I knowed you was a-tryin to make some shine so I got this from cousin Uriah down in Kentucky. He came across a great big stash of it somehow a few years back and brought me some at the First Second Coming Baptist Church of the Resurrection revival last summer.”
That be-yootiful wummin handed me the purtiest bottle of Kentucky corn liquor Zeke and I’d err seen.
As my eyes cleared of burning hair an wet, stankin mash and I’s able to commence to readin’ the sticker on it, it said…
Old Rip Van Winkle
Drinkin’ it’s a lot easier’n makin it.
The Daily Exorcise 