illie Sewell, whose death away back in
1886, when he was shot from ambush at a molasses-making, started all the
trouble. In the same burying ground with Elbert is the vine-covered
grave of Senator Hargis, father of the boys, who preceded his wife
Evaline to the spirit world long years ago.

BLOOMING STILLS

A visit today to a United States District Court in most any section of
the Blue Ridge Country where makers of illicit whiskey are being tried
shows that the name moonshine no longer applies to the beverage. It got
its name from being made at night. Now operations in the making are
conducted by day, while only the transportation of the liquor is carried
on after nightfall. Trucks and even dilapidated Fords with the windows
smeared with soap to conceal the load are pressed into service. The
drivers consider it safer to travel with their illegal cargo under the
shades of darkness.

During the questioning of witnesses and offenders in court you learn
that tips provided by law-abiding citizens are the usual means of
bringing offenders to trial. In rare instances, however, members of a
moonshiner's own family have been known to turn him in.

The process of capturing the moonshiner has changed considerably from
that of other days. Then the revenooer (mountain folk usually call him
the law) slipped up from behind the bushes on the offender and caught
him red-handed at the still. In those days the men who were making had
their lookout men who gave warning by a call or a whistle, even by gun
signals, of the approach of the law while the moonshiner took to his
heels, hiding in deep underbrush or far back under cliffs. Today these
mountain men have learned not to run. For the officers of the law are
equipped with long-range guns and with equipment so powerful the bullets
can penetrate the steel body of an automobile. The method of locating
the still has changed too since the airplane has come into use. Looking
down from the clouds the flyer spies a thin stream of smoke rising from
a wooded ravine. He communicates by radio to his co-workers of the
ground crew, who immediately set out at high speed by automobile to
capture the still.

It is estimated that of the 170,000,000 gallons of liquor consumed in
this country in 1939, at least 35,000,000 were illicit and that for
every legal distillery there are at least one hundred illegal ones. The
southern mountain region has always lent itself admirabl