When a bunch of yarn spinners gather out on the porch in that wistful time between daylight and darkness, when the peepers begin to pipe and the shadows begin to glower, the talk sooner or later gets around to corn-likker.
And, when it does – well, brother, just be sure you hold on to your credulity.
Of course, if you’re disposed to doubt, then it’s high time to either head for the loft or keep your settin’-chair as soon as one of the old timers rears back and announces: “Whatever I talk of as facts, you can count on as true as Scripture”. Then maybe he’ll launch into the story of fabulous “Aunt Tiny”, a blockadin’-woman who made likker openly in her own cabin as long as she lived and gave the revenooers fits because she weighed more than four hundred pounds and they could not squeeze her through the door.
Or about the folks way back in the Smokies who blamed bad roads for turning to blockading, arguing that corn being the only farm produce they could trade for store credit or tax money, the only way they had of getting it to market was in jugs.
Maybe one of the old timers will get around to remembering the time a preacher tried to persuade an unreconstructed 92-year-old hillsman to give up corn-likker, which caused the oldster to allow: “I ain’t goin’ on skim milk on this side waitin’ for cream on the other side, ‘cause the cows might be dry.”
Or one of the yarn-spinners might get around to telling about Quill Rose, master distiller of the Smokies, who operated whiskey stills for more than fifty years and never was indicted until he was caught making a run he had promised himself would be his last.
The talk, naturally gets around eventually to the merits of corn-likker, which, incidentally, is the most maligned stimulant in America, albeit the purest whiskey in the world. Real corn-likker, that is. The kind the old timers made.
Why, time was a mountain man turned up his nose at whiskey shipped in from outside, allowing a fellow was a plump fool to pay government rates on it when he could make his own. Besides, he considered the stuff shipped in from outside was nothing but old pop-skull. He referred to it as “pizened likker” since it was all colored up and doctored.
When a fellow made his own, double-footin’ it in a copper still from sour mash, he made it fit to drink and knew it to be as pure as spring water. Of course, old timer will tell you that real corn-liker – the pure, unadulterated mountain corn – is mostly a memory and about as scarce as hen’s-teeth.
It was corn whiskey that not only gave a man a whoop-and-a-holler but could run a gasoline engine too. As a matter of fact, many a T-model Ford in the hills ran just as good on corn-likker as on gasoline.
As late as the early 1930s, when real corn-likker was not too uncommon, the chairman of the state planning board let it be known that serious consideration was being given to burning corn-likker as a fuel in state operated vehicles.
Maybe he was being a bit facetious or green before his time but, be that as it may, he stirred up a lot of talk. And there were mountain folks ready to vouch for corn-likker as high-powered motor fuel.
The merits of corn-likker as a motor fuel came up for consideration when Capus M. Waynick was chairman of the state planning board. He got the idea after hearing a couple fellows tell about running out of gasoline up in the hills when they were miles from the nearest filling station.
Stranded on a back road, they didn’t know how they were going to get out. It was night, black night, and stormy too. Well along came a mountain man. Apprized of their situation, he said he reckoned he might be able to help them. And he took off down the road, leaving them wondering what he had in mind.
It wasn’t long until they found out. The mountain man came back lugging a gallon jug.
“Where in the world did you find that gasoline?” one of the travelers asked. “Ain’t gasoline,” the mountain man explained. “It’s corn whiskey. The pure stuff. Best you ever put a tongue to. Made it myself, and I can vouch for it. Better’n gasoline for runnin’ an engine.”
The driver, a bit skeptical, climbed into the car and stepped on the starter. There was a series of explosions, sort of like a mule trying to bust out of a barn, and then the motor began to hum. They drove that car about twenty five miles on that gallon of corn.
When Waynick heard about it, an idea began to simmer. And one day he called in a bunch of newspapermen and dropped his idea. He said the state was using more than ten million gallons of gasoline a year in its highway trucks and buses and he figured corn-likker would be cheaper and much more powerful.
Waynick pointed out that the state had no petroleum deposits then explained he had been informed that there was a surplus of corn-liker that might be used for fuel.
Chemists who were called into his office on the matter said there was no doubt about gasoline engines running on alcohol. They said that right as that very moment it was being done in Central and South America.
“Burning alcohol,” one of them said, “isn’t a pleasant smell.” Somebody else said it was a shame to waste good likker like that. But Waynick had the last word.
“I’ve been thinking for a long time,” he said, “that liquor should be in the gas tanks and not in the drivers. You know, they’ll run a lot better. The cars, I mean.”
However the state never did make the switch over from gasoline to corn-liker as a motor fuel. And as previously stated, when a bunch of yarn-spinners gather out on the cabin porch in that wistful time between daylight and darkness…