Chasing the White Dog (eBook)

An Amateur Outlaw's Adventures in Moonshine

Max Watman (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2010 | 1. Auflage
304 Seiten
Simon & Schuster (Verlag)
978-1-4391-7024-3 (ISBN)

Infos

In Chasing the White Dog, journalist Max Watman traces the historical roots and contemporary story of hooch. He takes us to the backwoods of Appalachia and the gritty nip joints of Philadelphia, from a federal courthouse to Pocono Speedway, profiling the colorful characters who make up white whiskey's lore. Along the way, Watman chronicles his hilarious attempts to distill his own moonshine -- the essential ingredients and the many ways it can all go wrong -- from his initial ill-fated batch to his first successful jar of 'shine.

It begins in Monongahela, Pennsylvania, where drunk and armed outlaws gathered in the summer of 1794. George Washington mustered 13,000 troops to quell the rebellion, but by the time they arrived, the rebels had vanished, America's first moonshiners had packed up their stills and moved on.

From these moonshiners who protested the Whiskey Tax of 1791, to the bathtub gin runners of the 1920s, to today's booming bootleg businessmen, white lightning has played a surprisingly large role in American history. It touched the election of Thomas Jefferson, the invention of the IRS, and the origins of NASCAR. It is a story of tommy guns, hot rods, and shot houses, and the story is far from over.

Infiltrating every aspect of small-scale distilling in America, from the backyard hobbyists to the growing popularity of microdistilleries, Chasing the White Dog provides a fascinating, centuries-long history of illicit booze from an unrepentant lover of moonshine.

Textauszug

On Top of Old Smoky

The manufacture of illicit whiskey in the mountains is not dead. Far from it. -- THE FOXFIRE BOOK, VOL. 1

THE FIRST TIME I SAW REN WITH A JAR OF MOONSHINE, WE were having a beer in an empty bar and gazing at the sun-dappled trees of Tompkins Square Park. It was a quiet afternoon at Doc Holliday's, a honky-tonk in downtown New York City with David Allen Coe on the jukebox, cowboy boots nailed to the ceiling, and cheap PBR. These bars, of which there were maybe half a dozen throughout the city, were headed toward a weird pinnacle of noxious renown: It was 1999, and there were already stories circulating about beautiful celebrities dancing on the bar while the bartenders (gorgeous, wild) poured flaming booze and screamed for their tips through megaphones.

Ren is the kid brother of a dear old friend, and in my imagination he is permanently fourteen. His beard, in fact his whole outdoorsy, laid-back, good-looking adult person, surprises me every time. He has wrenched motorcycles and hiked the Appalachian Trail, and he had spent his first paycheck from the Smoky Mountain forestry service to come visit.

He reached into his knapsack but stopped with his hand in the bag.

'Can I?' he asked, his eyes alight.

His brother shrugged.

Out came a Mason jar of clear liquid. This was years before I saw white lightning drip from a still in my own kitchen--in 1999, a jar of bootleg was a surprise. We took searing sips and shared it with the bartender.

Years later I took a break from the archives of Appalachian State University to call Ren and arrange our Labor Day visit in Sylva, North Carolina. He had been trying to line up a series of moonshiners for me to meet, and he had been excited at the prospect of cruising the country roads, meeting the locals, and drinking the legendary 'charred liquor' of the hills. He seemed disappointed with what he'd managed. He hadn't found any charred, and all the moonshiners had stopped returning phone calls, as moonshiners are wont to do. We would drive up the mountain to his friend Larry's house--he might have some liquor--and have a barbecue. It was a fine way to spend Labor Day, I assured him. I could tell he felt that he'd failed.

I followed Ren up the mountain past small pastures and little homesteads nestled in leafy trees. At about 3,600 feet, we took a left onto a gravel driveway canopied by old-growth forest. A stream crossed the driveway at a ford, and we splashed through it.

Larry's unassuming rancher is surrounded by bedded plantings. He's built fences of driftwood and strung bottles along them. Arrayed about the property are benches he's cut from entire trees. One of them overlooks his two little ponds--one for swimming, one for fish (his teenage son Wesley announced there were twenty-six of them). Up the hill, rows of Christmas trees awaited harvest. He took us into the woods, to a spot on a creek where magnolias grew like mangroves and a small, beautiful waterfall rushed. We talked about recipes for the perfect margarita.

Larry has tricked out a little wooden barn with a gigantic Peavey PA system, a bar, and a lava lamp. He opened the freezer door and said, 'Sheeat! Look in here, there's a jar of water that doesn't freeze!'

A neighbor showed up with some shucked oysters from her home in South Carolina.

We listened to Steve Earle, Ralph Stanley, and AC/DC and poured moonshine over the oysters and shot them with Tabasco.

Larry mentioned a friend with stovetop still, and praised the famous Smoky Mountain charred.

I sipped Larry's good corn whiskey--and that's what it was, there was no...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 16.2.2010
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Essen / Trinken
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Regional- / Ländergeschichte
• Themenwelt: Wirtschaft
• ISBN-10: 1-4391-7024-X / 143917024X
• ISBN-13: 978-1-4391-7024-3 / 9781439170243