MOONSHINE AND GUNPOWDER

MOONSHINE AND GUNPOWDER

 

              "The two don´t mix and I´ll swear on a stack of Bibls, that they don´t ! Jeb Baker exclaimed, in the one room sore, along a lonely West Virginian road.

    All the folk hat was gathered around the cracker barrel were born and bred there, just as their parents and grandparents had been. Therefore, there were no secrets here and one could tell a lie as well as the next on, but sometimes they told the truth and this was beginning to sound like an interesting story.

              "Now you probably all remember John Miller´s boy over there in Buckley and what kind of an erasable creature he was, as though he was born mean!"  Jeb pronounced, with a voice he used for killing snakes.

    Everyone knew that the old man retired from the mines and later made his fortune in moonshine. Everyone present had dabbled in that lucrative art at one time or another and ole John Miller was a well known distributor around the state. It was even rumored that the movie Thunder Road, staring Robert Minchin was based. on his exploits, although that could not be proven.

            "so it was that the son followed his pappi in the trade and right away became addicted to the profit. That is to say, he became a raging drunk!" Jeb spit out, as his hand went to the pickle jar of white lightning, which he and everyone else had beside them. "Now I´m not saying to drink is to bring down the devil on you although I´m sure the devil drinks a lot, but hell even Jesus was said to change water to wine and he was the son of God!" None crossed themselves for they wre all Protestants, but the message wa loud and clear. "Now this irascible varmint continued in his ways. There was not a pretty girl from Huntington to Buckley that he had not ravished, left a kid and went on his way. It was, as the scriptures state: an abomination!"

    When Jeb paused, to take a drink out of the pickle jar, everyone followed. For them making and selling of moonshine was not a sin. Jesus Christ himself might have been more ensured to their hard liquor than the wine he used to drink. That was the way they thought.

            "And then one night he strayed into Mary´s Place on the main street of Buckley. It was a festive occasion because it was Saturday night and all the miners had their pay checks. May knew this and dealt out their drinks with proportions that would leave enough money left over for their wives and children. Of course there was a quick business of under the counter moonshine, but you have to remember that these were worn down miners who deserved a night on the town at Mary' Place, to drown out their woes. All was going all right until the devil himself walked in. Yep, he was the son of ole John Miller and determined to turn night into day! He was fit to be tied and long gone on moonshine.

    Now one cannot be sure, in a cracker barrel store, on top of a mountain, relating to something that happened before, would be the truth, but a hushed silence followed which bore instance, for the moment of truth and justice which they all waited for.

                    "So John Miller´s boy come in and the first thing he does is knock all the bottles off the bar. He demanded moonshine and pretty much terrified everyone there. Everyone cept Mary. She didn´t flinch and as cool as you will pulled out a pistol from under the bar and pointed it right at his forehead. It took one bullet and he was dead on the spot."

                  "I suppose the sheriff came and took Mary away," an old man volunteered.

                   "He came all right but he didn´t do nothing to Mary, cause in the first place nobody liked John Miller´s son and in the second place everybody knows that moonshine and gun powder don´t mix."