Smoky Mountain Haze

 They say God cast a veil of mist over these beautiful mountains so mountain folks in Heaven wouldn't look down and be homesick...

If you missed my post on Creeping Woo-woo (the vortex kept eating the link...), it's still there at Jungle Red . . .

It Was Hubris, All Right

hu·bris/ˈ(h)yo͞obris/Noun

1. Excessive pride or self-confidence.

2. (in Greek tragedy) Excessive pride toward or defiance of the gods, leading to nemesis.

Too much self confidence led me to set out the maters  on Tuesday -- before the 'safe ' date of May 15.  Then frost  and perhaps freezing temperatures were predicted for Wednesday night so John and I covered the plants with hay. Will they survive?

This sudden dip in temperatures is called Blackberry Winter -- a cold snap that happens when the blackberries are in bloom. It's obviously common enough to have a name . . . what was I thinking -- defying the gods that way?

Moonshine Revisited

A re-post from '08. It may be the continuing snow that has me thinking of strong drink...

I wouldn't know, myself, where to find moonshine for sale but thanks to the proverbial 'friend of a friend,' we were given a jar a few months ago. It came from Tennessee and, who knows, maybe even from Pop Corn (see Thursday's post) himself. Those are sliced peaches in the jar and I'm told this is a fairly common practice -- using fresh fruit of various kinds to flavor and color the white liquor.

We've been given jars of 'white' before this -- always from friends who swear they know the origin of the stuff and can vouch for its safety. We keep it around to offer a 'sup' to visiting flatlanders who are curious about this infamous local product. (It tastes a lot like tequila to me -- not bad but not something I'm crazy about.)

In the old days, the local folks didn't go to making whiskey out of a desire to break the law or to get drunk. It was a simple matter of economics. If you live in a remote mountain cove and your main crop is field corn, how will you make more money -- hauling bushel after bushel of dried corn down the mountain and to market to sell for animal feed or cornmeal -- or do you turn that same corn into distilled whiskey, using the knowledge and skills your ancestors brought over from Scotland and Ireland?

Whiskey was easier to haul, more valuable, and it kept well. One of the earliest 'value added' products.

Of course, with taxation, Prohibition, and dry counties, things changed and moonshining turned dangerous. And then, as the bootleggers used fast cars to transport their illegal cargo over twisting mountain roads (see Thunder Road with Robert Mitchum), it all led to NASCAR.

Aye, law.

I have no idea what folks pay for white lightning but I suspect it's not cheap. I've heard tell of the tour buses of country music stars lined up at one particular bootlegger's home and and the quart jars being loaded on by the case.

It's a nostalgia thing, I suspect.

A Wilkes County copper moonshine still
Courtesy of Applachian Cultural Museum
Applachian State University
Boone, North Carolina

For more information on moonshine, go here