As Daddy gets older, I have a sense of urgency to collect as many of his stories and memories as possible. He recently told me a story about one of his old liquor stills that he had never mentioned before. A few weekends ago we went out looking for the site. I enjoy historical outings, as I can turn them into educational experiences on the sly, so I had Brittney tag along.
The still site is located in the Bridge Creek community at the foot of Glassy Mountain. It is only a mile away from Daddy’s old home place. We found it quickly despite the almost sixty years that have passed since Daddy was there.
The first thing that I noticed was that the still site is pretty much right on the side of Bridge Creek Road. Although the road would have been graveled back in 1960-61, it was nevertheless a well-traveled road.
By 1960, the traditional copper pot still had been largely replaced with more modern and efficient stills. The still Daddy took us to was a type known as a steamer. More efficient than a copper pot still, the alcohol could be distilled at a faster rate, and the boiler for Daddy’s still was fired with coke. Coke is essentially refined coal. To heat a steamer, Daddy and his brother Poke initially built a wood fire which in turn ignited and heated the coke. Once the coke was burning, the furnace gave off zero smoke, which made it more difficult for the revenuers to spot.
Daddy and Poke bought their coke in bulk from Toccoa Coal Company and hauled it into this particular site on their backs in sacks weighing fifty to one hundred-pounds. They carried all the materials on their backs, including parts for the boilers and the sixty-pound sacks, or bales as they were known, of sugar. When initially constructed, the still had five mash boxes, but they planned to add at least another three.
By their standards, it was a small operation. Daddy had been cut down several times just prior to setting up the still at the foot of Glassy Mountain and the brothers were short of cash. The revenuers had been particularly hot on them, and an informer in the area wasn’t making things easier. The brothers hoped to get by for just a couple of months at the site to build up funds for a larger outfit.
Daddy and Poke finished one run of liquor at the still and forty cases of liquor were stacked nearby. They carried in a second load of sugar and jars during the following night. Unfortunately for them, an unrelated forest fire broke out on Glassy during the night. The next morning the still was found by wildland firefighters from the U.S. Forest Service searching for hot spots. They called the revenuers, who quickly came to the still site.
Rather than haul the still and materials out of the woods for destruction, the revenuers simply dynamited the entire site, right down to the cases of new jars and sacks of sugar. As we searched the site we found remnants of the boiler blown almost one hundred feet from the original location.
Undeterred by the loss of the still, Daddy and Poke quickly relocated to a new location on Seed Lake. When the law got hot on them at the new site, Daddy “left the country,” as he called it, and made liquor over in Fannin and Gilmer Counties for a couple of years, but that’s a story for another day.