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Making WhiskeyThis story was originally printed in Old Huntsville in 1992 and is being reprinted due to the large number of requests we have had. The courtroom was silent as the judge shuffled his papers. Finally, after taking a long look at the man standing in front of him, he asked: "Well, what do you have to say for yourself?" The defendant, remembering that his lawyer had told him to be honest and tell the truth, replied: "Your Honor, my name is Jim Brasemore and I make moonshine. Matter of fact, I make the best white whiskey in Madison County!" Jim Brasemore was a moon shiner and he talks freely about it, now that the statute of limitations has run out. He learned the art of whiskey-making from his father, who had learned it from his father. Young Jim started feeding a firebox when he was only seven or eight years old. "We had this ’groundhog still’ out next to the Flint River," he says. A groundhog was a still built into the side of a hill or cliff. Such distilleries were hard to detect. "Every morning Mama would pack us a lunch of biscuits and fatback and we would set out walking. We had to walk about three or four miles to the still, but back then it didn’t seem like a long way," he remembers. The Brasemores had a reputation for making some of the best liquor in the county and, of course, that made a lot of people jealous. "There was this family, Ricketts I believe the name was, that used to live close to us. The old man was what you would call shiftless, never did a hard day’s work in his life. He used to come around and buy liquor from us and then sell it to the field hands," he recalls. "Of course before he sold it, he would cut it down ’til it didn’t even taste like good whiskey. Everybody knew it was Brasemore whiskey, so they didn’t question it too much. When Daddy heard about what Ricketts was doing, he wouldn’t sell him anymore. We had a reputation to maintain, you understand." Not long after that, the Brasemores got to noticing that someone was stealing from them. Some culprit would sneak into their "holding areas" in the woods, where they stashed their whiskey until it could be picked up by the haulers. The whiskey started disappearing, a couple of gallons at a time. They put together a plan to catch the thieves. "One morning just after sunup, Daddy comes and wakes me up. We were ready to put our plan into action. We headed for the stash place and took along this old shotgun, a rabbit-ears Parker. After we got to the stash, we made us a hideout under some brush. "On up in the morning, here comes old man Ricketts, just lumbering along like some ol’ fat hog. We watched and sure enough, he goes straight to the whiskey and helps himself to a couple gallons. "Ricketts was just about the fattest man I ever knew, and when he bent over his ‘hind end looked like the broad side of a barn. I reckon it was more than Daddy could resist, ‘cause he cut loose with that old Parker and when he got done it looked like termites had gotten hold of the rear end of Ricketts’ britches! "Fortunately, the gun was loaded with saltpeter and the shot wasn’t very dangerous, although Ricketts had to eat his meals standing up for a few weeks." When the younger Brasemore was born in 1902, homemade whiskey was a respectable and thriving industry in Madison County. Although many people today would frown on the practice, at that time many families depended on it for a living. The alternative was to work in the mills (if they were lucky enough to find one that was hiring) or try to survive as a dirt farmer. "Daddy got caught the first time in about 1916 or ’17. The law was paying informers to tell on people. They put his bail bond at fifty dollars. That was on a Friday, and we didn’t have any money, so the next morning Mama gets me to hitch up the mule and we loaded up the wagon with what whiskey we had left. Back then, Saturday was the big trade day downtown and the streets would be so busy you could hardly walk. "We tied the wagon in front of the courthouse and just sat there all day, selling whiskey. Everybody knew what Mama was doing, so a lot of people who didn’t even drink would stop and buy some. "For medicine," they would say. "On up in the morning a deputy came by and asked her what she thought she was doing. "I’m gettin’ my man out of jail," she replied. Back then no one messed with Mama. "Anything else you want to know?" she asked the deputy. "No ma’am," the deputy replied sheepishly, "but I reckon I’ll take a gallon if you got any left, my croup has been acting up lately." They got their dad out of jail that day, but he didn’t stay free long. When his trial came up, he was sentenced to 12 months on the county farm. "Pickin’ peas," he called it. "I was a pretty good size boy by then and with Daddy in jail it was up to me to run the business," the younger Brasemore recalls. "Before he got caught, Daddy had hid the worm (copper condensation coil) and I got a neighbor to build me a pot. It wasn’t but just a couple of weeks ‘til I was back in business. When I run off my first batch they said the sheriff thought my father had escaped." "Nobody makes whiskey that good," the sheriff said, "except for old man Brasemore!" "I hadn’t forgotten about the cur dog that had informed on Daddy, though. Giles was his name. Him and the deputy that arrested Daddy were big drinking buddies. This deputy lived out next to Chase Nursery and every Sunday like clockwork, those two would pitch a big drunk. "Some of my cousins helped me and we took this old worn-out still, it only had a ten-gallon pot, and we set it up out back of his house in a brush patch. First thing Sunday morning we loaded it with mash and started cooking. If you have ever been around a still, you know you can’t hide the smell, and sure enough, on up in the morning the deputy gets a strong whiff and decides to investigate. "Well, here we are, me and my cousins are hiding in the brush, and the deputy and Giles are stretched out in front of the still sipping free whiskey and acting like they are in hog heaven. "Next thing you know, there’s this big ruckus and when the deputy opened his eyes, there was the sheriff pointing this big pistol at him," he relates. "You and Giles are under arrest for making whiskey," the sheriff said. Seems as if someone had sent the sheriff a note. "Like I said, while Daddy was in jail I was running the business. One of the first things I did, after I got a little ahead, was to buy me a truck. Daddy wouldn’t have nothing to do with automobiles, he had worked with a mule all of his life. Well I was bound and determined to impress him, so the day he was to get out I took the truck and loaded it down with as much whiskey as I could put on it. It hadn't been picked up in a while and we had a sizable load. "Things didn’t work out the way I figured and the truck broke down a couple of miles from the house. I got the mule, hitched it to the truck and began to pull it on home. "Daddy was sitting on the front porch when I pulled up in front of the house. He took a long look at that truck I had bought and then took an even longer look at his mule that was pulling it. Finally, after spitting out a long stream of tobacco juice, he asked me, ‘Well, what else can it do?’ "He never did like that truck. Every time I got stuck in mud or whatever, he was always there to tell me that with a mule it would not have happened." Young Jim got married in the fall of 1925 to a city girl who wouldn’t have anything to do with making whiskey. One of her uncles got him a job in Merrimac Cotton Mill. Jim wanted to quit the whiskey business, but working in the mill was not for him. He would come home at night spitting up lint and cotton dust and his wife Laurie could tell he wasn’t happy. "Finally, ‘bout a year later I come home from work one day and she’s packing our things in boxes. She told me we were moving back to the country. "Kenneth Abbott and I set up a still down next to Byrd’s Spring where there was this hunting club. We ran it most of one year and then we put another one down next to the bridge at Whitesburg. "That was the biggest one I ever run, a 2,500-gallon groundhog. "By this time we had two stills running and plenty of whiskey to sell, so we figured we would expand our business. Normally we would sell the whiskey to a tripper or hauler who would distribute it to the bootleggers. We figured that instead of paying the middle man we would take the money ourselves. " Many people have sought Jim’s advice about the whiskey business: "I tell all of them the same thing. Have lots of kin-folks. They are about the only ones you can really trust." "Anyway, we got Mickey, my second cousin who owned a Ford coupe, to start hauling for us. That went real good. Then George, another cousin, decided to come in the business. He was driving a milk truck and had a regular route at the time. Once a week we would load him up with whiskey and he would make home deliveries all over town." It appeared that the Brasemore crowd was making all the money in the world and that’s what caused the trouble. At that time there was another family in Huntsville that was big in the whiskey business, too. They were connected to a bunch of moonshiners over in Cloud’s Cove. Unfortunately they began to get angry when they realized the Brasemore outfit was cutting into their profits. "The first we knew about it was when they shot Abbott, my partner, at the Whitesburg still. He had been tending it along with some hired hands when someone shot him from behind with a shotgun. It didn’t kill him, but he was crippled for the rest of his life. "Next, they started going after the boys who hauled the whiskey. They shot at them, ran them off the road, and they even set Mickey's’s house on fire. "The law knew something was going on and they started to really crack down on whiskey making. This hurt us bad, as we couldn’t keep a still running more than a month without it getting raided. "I don’t think it bothered that Cloud’s Cove bunch, though. There was only one way in there and one way out. If you weren’t kin you didn’t get in! "I was sitting in a shot house in West Huntsville when they shot me. It was Oct. 23, 1934. 1 had delivered some whiskey and had stopped to watch a dice game. When I walked out they were waiting for me. "I knew exactly what was fixing to happen when I saw that car window roll down and I started to reach for my pistol. I never had a chance. "Claude Murphy had been shooting dice inside and when he heard the gun shots he ran outside. When he saw me laying there, he said, he thought I was dead. "After I got shot, we pretty well shut the business down. We laid low and just decided to let bygones be bygones." Three months later, two of the assailants were ambushed near Meridianville and severely wounded. When questioned about this, Brasemore’s only comment was, "I reckon that’s what you call bygones." Things weren’t the same after that. There had been too much trouble and the law was now watching every move the moonshiners made. "I remember one time when Cousins, a boy we had driving for us, was stopped downtown. He was hauling a load of whiskey and was right in front of the movie theater when the law spotted him. Traffic was backed up for a red light and Cousins knew he couldn’t get the car away, so he just jumped out and took off running. "The police jumped out of their cars and started chasing him on foot. Mickey was standing on the sidewalk and when he saw what was going on, he jumped in Cousins’ car and when the light changed, took off. "It didn’t take the police long to catch Cousins, but when they got back they discovered the evidence was gone! They roughed him up a bit, but finally had to let him go. "Was the law honest back then? Let me ask you a question. How many policemen do you know that never took a drink? All of them knew what was going on, but you got to remember back then, most everyone was kin to one another. We never worried too much about the city or county police unless there was an election coming up, and even then they tried not to bother us too much. They never came right out and asked you for money, but you knew you had to give. I remember one election back in the late 30's when the judge was making speeches. He’d be up there talking about getting rid of the bootleggers and I would be outside passing out free drinks to everyone who would vote for him. One time the judge’s car broke down up around New Market, so he hitched a ride with us. All day long, we drove him around while he was spitting hell and brimstone about whiskey and the whole time he was sipping the white whiskey that we were giving him. When we got back to town that night, he was so drunk his wife made him sleep on the front porch. By the time the Second War came around, it had become difficult for an independent whiskey operator to make any money. There were too many "big" family names in the business. A hardware store owner manufactured various-size stills in the basement. For an extra twenty-five dollars a nearby furniture store would deliver the distillery to its intended site. When sugar became rationed during the war, a downtown grocery wholesale house sold sugar under the counter. Often, when they would receive a large shipment, the wholesaler would sell it off to moonshiners at a private auction to the highest bidder. One prominent family in Huntsville even financed moonshine operations - at a high interest rate, of course. Many successful businesses in Huntsville today were founded with the profits of the whiskey business. "They didn’t have sense enough to come in out of the rain back when their grand-daddies was making whiskey, now they got fine houses and put on airs like they are blue-bloods or something! "Now look at this," he said, pointing to a recent society page from The Huntsvville Times. "That girl used to sleep on the back seat of a Ford coupe, sucking a sugar tit while her daddy delivered whiskey for me." |
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