I have always been a big fan of the Robert Mitchum flick Thunder Road, and I was wondering if county cops are still busting guys for running “'shine”?
In his younger days, my Daddy used to transport it in his Pontiac, and spent more than a few weeks behind bars. He and his buddies used to talk about it in his older days, how they “boosted” the rear end, so it would look “normal”.
So is Moonshine still big business for bootleggers, or have they all die d off?
Thanks
Quasi
Hot damn. Google, “illegal liquor production”, Hit #1.
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/us/DailyNews/moonshine020409.html
I love the Internet. 
I don’t know who does the busts, but I know someone who does the runs Police do enforce the laws if they are flaunted.
heh, damn Whiskey rebellion. If Washington had his way he woulda’ shot the lot of them.
Seriously though, if you are not familliar with the term Whiskey Rebellion it’s interesting history on how and why we tax liquor.
As zen101 alludes, this republic’s first (but not last) betrayal of its founding principles did occur over the individual’s right to distill his corn and transport it much more easily over the Appalchians as a few jugs than as bulky grain bags.
And, as we all know, the NASCAR phenomenom began with moonshiners tricking up their cars to beat the revenuers pursuit cars.
I’ve had some decent dandelion wine, but most of the moonshine I’ve tasted was like fermented Bondo. IMHO, the only law that should rightfully be imposed on home distillers is that they have to drink anything they also sell. Up here in the Pacific NW, you can’t walk in the woods without wandering onto a meth lab with its obligatory rottweiler. I’d be God’s blessing if they were all replaced with honest stills.
My Daddy didn’t run moonshine, but he was part of a network that, during Prohibition, ran whiskey smuggled in from Canada (they used local boys for each ‘leg’ of the route, as those boys knew the backroads and drove like maniacs 
). He drove a Model A, had a fake license plate that he could drop down out of the wheel cover with a pull of a wire under the dashboard, and had a cut-out switch for his brake lights–the last meant that he could suddenly pull off the road and ‘disappear’ to the pursuers.
He was, of course, a Pennsylvanian. 
A few years ago, the Washington City Paper (which also runs The Straight Dope in DC) did a nice piece on moonshiners in southern VA. AFAIK, they also do it in southern and western MD as well.
I would think it’s a dying practice as the profit margin can’t be all that high. Too bad, as I have to agree with Slithy Tove in preferring moonshiners to the dangerously paranoid and highly toxic meth labs that infest the whole western US.
Someone want to shed a light on just why meth is so popular? In an increasingly frenetic and stressful society, why on earth would anyone want an amphetamine?!
The same brand of folks who used to run stills in the South now grow pot or run meth labs. Not much reason to make 'shine these days, since legal liquor is readily available, but there are a few stills out there (which mostly trade on the nostalgia value of home-made hooch).
One wonders if we will one day write songs and make movies romanticizing crystal meth production.
Yes. I was in far western Arkansas / Eastern Oklahoma a few weeks ago and a gentleman got busted for illegal liquor. I wasn’t there but a few of my friends witnessed the event and came back and told me about it. He was selling it in the parking lot of the bar they were in and they watched it all go down as they were leaving the bar. This guy was well know in those parts for selling shine and the law finally caught him red-handed. I searched for a cite but can’t find one, sorry. (The stuff he sells is goooood stuff BTW) Spoke- is right though, most people in those areas make meth while a few still grow weed.
OK - I remembered this thread when I saw an article about it in the paper. The article is not on-line and I won’t post the whole thing but here are some details.
Deputies in Union County find operative whiskey still
BY JIM PATTERSON EL DORADO NEWS-TIMES
MOUNT HOLLY — Sheriff’s deputies executing a search warrant off Union County Road 147 got a surprise Friday morning when they discovered a working liquor still. Deputies confiscated the still, as well as 17 gallons of the finished product, which officials said will be destroyed following prosecution. The still was found in a ramshackle shed several hundred feet from the house and within a stand of trees. The area was littered with garbage and a number of 55-gallon drums which Jones said contained mash — a mixture of corn, sugar and water. “It’s kind of a novelty that there’s a whiskey still here,” Jones said. “In 20 years of law enforcement, it’s the first one I’ve ever seen. We just don’t have whiskey stills here in South Arkansas. We have methamphetamine labs.”