From Harmonic Highways, in Chapter 1, Franklin County

I STEPPED OUTSIDE into the stifling heat and drove towards the home of Jimmy Boyd, a musician and former moonshiner who lives on a rural road north of town towards the base of the Blue Ridge Mountains in the Dry Hill community. The road was quiet, with modest homes dotting it. Jimmy met me on the porch of a mobile home, beside an old house.
A large man, he told me all his ancestors were from the same area. “There was an old schoolhouse in this area. There was no spring nearby nor any running water. I could never figure out why they built the schoolhouse where they did. I guess that is how the area got its name, Dry Hill.
“I grew up about five miles from here towards the upper reaches of Philpott Lake. My daddy was born about a half-mile from where I was born. My great-great-grandmother had five boys who fought for the Confederacy in the Civil War. I still remember my grandmother who died in 1960.
“I am 63 years old. When the government started sending me checks for not working, I stopped working. I used to do automobile body repair and detail work. Our work came from all over. I met a lot of people when I played music. People would find out that I did this kind of work and they would bring their cars to me.
“I play clawhammer banjo and bass, mostly with my band, the Dry Hill Draggers. I have a second cousin who bought a banjo in 1939. I believe he told me he paid $35 for it. He never learned how to play it. By the late 1970s, it still looked brand-new because nobody ever played it. He ended up selling it to my brother for $350. My brother said to me, ‘If you will learn how to play it, I will buy it.’ I said, ‘If you will buy it, I will learn how to play it.’ I kept that banjo around for over a year. Finally I called my brother and said, ‘You’d best come get it because I’m not going to learn how to play it.’ Before I knew it, my son talked me into buying another banjo in town for around $400.
“Ted Boyd, my grandfather’s uncle, was really a unique and gifted musician. He learned how to play in the 1930s. He influenced me a lot. I also have two brothers who play music. Over the years, we have put together eight different records. We have never really made much money from playing. We only make expense money, enough to pay for travel expenses and wear and tear on the PA system and strings. Often when we play we forget to take our CDs for sale. Music for me has been primarily just something to do to have a good time.
“This is a pretty remote area and it has always been a long way away from city jobs. The nearest community with any factories is Bassett, and that is a 35-minute drive. When times were tough, sometimes people would drive to Bassett a couple of times a week for a month or two before finding a job. Sometimes, when factories were fully staffed, one man would have to quit before another man could take his job. Jobs have always been hard to find.
 “I have been making moonshine most of my life. The other day I was thinking about it and I counted something like 50 separate still sites where I had worked over the years. I started as early as I was old enough to tote sacks of sugar.
“Decades ago, there were several factories around where people could find work. But people always made moonshine on the side to raise extra money. There are just a lot of carefree, happy-go-lucky country folks. A man would work hard and make a few rounds of whiskey. He would buy a big car and he would run it up and down the roads and have a big time until he ran out of money. Then he would sell that car and go make another round of whiskey. It was not an easy way to make money because it required a lot of work. But it was quick. A man could make as much money in three or four weeks making moonshine as he would make in his job working all year.
 “Sometimes we’d put stills on other people’s property, with their permission. We needed a good place, somewhere where nobody travels. There were stills all over. Me and a friend put one way up on a mountain. We’d go at two or three in the morning. We’d cover the path with cut pine trees to camouflage it. When they got brown we’d cut new ones. We’d do all kinds of things to hide them.
“I’d been making ‘shine for 10 or 12 years before I got caught. I thought the first time I got caught I would get probation. It was 1972. One Monday, we were at the still and we saw somebody jerk his head behind a log. I told the boy with me that we’d been seen. We ran away from the guy but there were others waiting the other way. So we got caught and were handcuffed. I didn’t have a billfold on me. I gave them a false name and address. They took the handcuffs off us. I ran and got away. But, when they tried the other boy, he told them who I was. That was first of November. He told me the judge was going to give him five years in prison if he didn’t snitch on me. We had 160 cases or so of whiskey in the springhouse behind my house. It was plum full. One day my yard was full of ABC officers and troopers. The man who arrested me was named Bob Johnson. He was a real nice fellow. He plays music, too. The walkway to the springhouse had a layer of snow on it. There wasn’t a track on it. They never found it. I saw Bob last year and told him about that stash. He just laughed.
“They tried me for that case. The judge sentenced me to 90 days in jail. But he told me that if I got married to the woman I was living with, he’d knock 30 days off. So I served 60 days in the Martinsville jail. I got out and within six months I was arrested again. I had lots of kids and I needed money. My buddy came up one evening and told me he’d found a good place. That was in March of 1973. I was still on probation from the first time. The substitute judge was giving out really harsh sentences. We were going to plead guilty and take our time. But we changed to pleading not guilty and asked for a jury trial. We were sentenced to a year in jail and fined $1000. The sheriff told us if we painted his jail, he’d let us out. Meanwhile, I had to do federal time, too, because I was on probation. So I got sentenced to 4 months in a federal jail in Allentown, Pennsylvania. I quit making moonshine in 1980.
“These days, most folks only make (moonshine) to drink for personal consumption. Operation Lighting Strike gave officials the ability to confiscate a man’s house and cars, and sell them at auction. It ain’t worth it to make a few hundred dollars.
“People like talking to old moonshiners. Most folks have respect for moonshiners. They don’t think of moonshining like other crimes. When I was in jail, one of my best friends was a black guy from Detroit. He had set up a still in the basement of his apartment building. Black people seem to like their moonshine with a raw, rough taste. ABC whiskey is blended and aged. Good moonshine is raw and fresh. Good ‘shine has a head on top. We call it a bead or honeycomb. There is a real art to getting a good flavor and the right proof to moonshine. A good round looks like chicken gravy.
“I don’t drink moonshine straight. My favorite mix is with Mountain Dew. I put three to four ounces in a drink. My daddy drank a half gallon of moonshine every day. A man’s liver and kidneys can’t handle that much alcohol. I have seen men whose skin was peeling off their fingers. The skin dries up like sunburn. People can drink themselves to death.
“I have got to tell you, I still love the smell of a still. When you walk to a still the first thing in the morning, the smell of it, combined with the smell of honeysuckle, smells so good.”
After looking at many photos of stills and seeing some in museums, it never occurred to me that they had a distinctive, and naturally pleasant, smell.
Jimmy concluded, “I really enjoyed making moonshine. It takes years to learn to make moonshine and do it well. There is a craft to it.”