Moonshine, a part of life, especially in the South

By Timothy J. Lockhart
Special to The Virginian-Pilot

George Washington was a moonshiner. Perhaps not as we think of moonshiners today, but he made whiskey, and Max Watman tried his recipe. Not only did Watman try the recipe, he includes it in this eclectic, often funny and sometimes sad book about "white dog" - clear, raw whiskey not tempered or colored by time spent in charred oak barrels.

Watman admits he broke the law to write this book, which places him in the tradition of moonshiners - many of them Virginians - going back to the nation's earliest days. Watman doesn't think large-scale moonshining should be legal; he cites grim statistics about the deaths "white lightning" causes, mostly from poisonous levels of lead, but he thinks "hobby distilling" should be permitted. If a hobbyist can legally have up to 300 gallons of homemade beer or wine, why can't he distill the alcohol from that beer or wine to make spirits?

In researching this book, which touches on Washington's Whiskey Rebellion, the Whiskey Ring of Grant's presidency, Prohibition and particularly on modern legal trials of bootleggers, Watman built a distillery - a still. His descriptions of asking hardware store salespeople to help him find the right parts without letting them know about his illegal purpose are hilarious.

"I said I was ha-ha-ha building a... you know, ha-ha... an irrigation thing.... Irrigation."

Having built and operated a still enabled Watman to talk knowledgeably with makers of legal whiskey as well as with large-scale moonshiners and the law-enforcement officers who pursue bootleggers. Watman is sympathetic to the American tradition of farmers making small batches of whiskey for themselves and their neighbors - and considerably less symphathetic to the law-enforcement tactic of pressuring people to testify against their whiskey-making friends and family members.

Still, he discredits the rationale some moonshiners use that their only crime is not paying the taxes owed on their product.

Although not restricted to the South, moonshining is a distinctly Southern tradition and has strongly influenced other aspects of Southern culture. For example, NASCAR developed from Southern bootleggers' transportation of white lightning in fast, souped-up cars, a practice stock-car legend Junior Johnson engaged in and the basis for the 1958 cult film "Thunder Road." Watman speculates one reason Southerners have continued to make moonshine is that the hated "revenuers" represent the same federal government that defeated their Confederate ancestors.

One of the largest markets for moonshine is Philadelphia, where in rough parts of town one can buy cheap shots of white dog in nip joints. Watman sampled some moonshine from a nip joint outside Danville, Va., and describes the whiskey as "rotgut" that tasted like "some sort of experimental kerosene-powered mouthwash."

Raised in the Shenandoah Valley and the former horse-racing correspondent for The New York Sun, Watman is the author of "Race Day: A Spot on the Rail With Max Watman."

"White Dog" will appeal to lovers of whiskey (legal or illegal), Southern culture and good writing about an interesting subject. Teetotalers may not care for the book, but if so, not reading it will be their loss. The book has many virtues; its few faults include the lack of an index and illustrations and the author's occasional minor grammatical errors.

Moonshine is an enduring part of American, particularly Southern, life. So enduring, in fact, that moonshine has acquired a certain cachet. The next time you're in a liquor store, look for legal white dog sold in a fruit jar with a screw top. The brown-paper label pasted to the jar names the brand, and "moon" is part of it.

Timothy J. Lockhart is a Norfolk lawyer. His first drink of whiskey was moonshine out of a plastic jug in Decatur, Ala., when he was 15.