donbosco
Distinguished Member
- Messages
- 449
My Deddy knew who the moonshiners were. Moonshiners have need for hardware stores from time to time after all. I think there must have been a ‘Hardware Man’s Pledge’ of confidentiality though - kind of like the ones that bartenders and hair dressers take - because he never named names. That my Grandpa’s nickname was Applejack has always made me wonder about some of his own commercial pursuits early on in his life. You don’t get that handle for nothing I’d wager.
Just how much of Chatham County’s economy was tied up in White Lightnin’ I can’t say but there were telltale signs. I was led to believe that a good deal of The #DeepChatham Devil’s Tramping Ground legend was wrapped up in illegal, rather than ethereal, spirits for example…i.e., moonshiners and their customers making all those spooky things happen in the late night hours down there near Harper’s Crossroads. For local Baptist teetotalers those midnight (they don’t call it moonshine because it’s a broad daylight product) distillers were doing the work of the Bad Man one way or the other anyway so we probably ought to put the quibbling aside. On the technology side, one of the first things I learned growing up working in #BonleeHardware was how to measure, cut, flare, and fit copper tubing.
The irony of course is that it’s likely that for generations illegal distilleries and bootlegger joints rivaled in number the ubiquity of churches in the North Carolina countryside. And no doubt they shared a great many patrons as well. I’ve always heard that “Tar Heels will vote dry as long as they can stagger to the polls.” If you’ve never heard that then now you have. Add in there that we never fully repealed prohibition statewide and were actually the state that kicked it off in 1908, over a decade before it went nationwide.
I also remember very well the lamentations over the severe dryness of the drive into Raleigh and Chapel Hill on those college football Saturdays. Charlotte to the Triangle - the road across the “goodliest land under the cope of Heaven” - was a bone dry one if you didn’t know any clandestine sellers along the way. Many of those Saturday tipplers were Deacons on Sunday. I think Rob Christensen called this ‘The Paradox of Tar Heel Politics,’ See Here: The Paradox of Tar Heel Politics | Rob Christensen | University of North Carolina Press
Turning to the “King of the Moonshiners,” Percy Flowers of #JohnstonCounty - there’s no doubt he was a lawbreaker - he flaunted alcohol laws and taunted tax collectors - trial by jury was his greatest legal defense as Johnstonians refused to convict him. I reckon that says something though I’m not 100% sure what. Multiple families, black and white, were part of his commercial network and the mythical figure Robin Hood was often mentioned in reference to his life. He definitely loved dogs and his pups were considered some of the finest and most beloved around. Of course he was a rabbit hunter but he was first and foremost a fox hunter - if you know anything about the latter country pastime (not the Englishter version with horses and fancy clothes) then the connections with the same sort of traipsing around in the middle of the night associated with moonshining and bootlegging are clear. If you’re not, then suffice it to say that my nigh Prohibitionist Southern Baptist Momma was unequivocal in her barring of my participation in those midnight junkets.
Flowers’ tale is one of financial success and apparently community respect and support. If you wonder about race and Percy Flowers there are no indications that he was Civil Rights activist but I’ve also seen none where he’s identified as Klan. His #1 assistant for decades was an African American man, Howard Creach, and their story bears some of the characteristics of paternalism and there also appears to have been a genuine trusting friendship between the two men and their families. No doubt there is a larger story there. Read here if you want more: Family Means a Lot of Things — Bit & Grain
At any rate Percy Flowers went ‘National’ in 1958 - which was, not coincidentally the year after a major Federal push against illegal, untaxed liquor that discovered that NC was home to at least 20% of U.S. production and that Flowers was the main man behind that. He did serve 6 months in the Federal Penitentiary in the late ‘60s for tax evasion. He was born in 1903 and passed away in 1982. Whether he was a hero or not he does fit the label of ‘Folk Legend.’
#OTD (8/2) in 1958 ‘The Saturday Evening Post’ dubbed Johnston County’s Percy Flowers “King of the Moonshiners.” Always afoul of The Law, Flowers, b. 1903, mostly remained free and farmed well into the 1970s. He died in ‘82, a regional economic force.
Legendary Percy Flowers, “King of the Moonshiners”
Also see “Percy’s Run” a documentary made in 2011 by D.L. Anderson about the confluence of fox hunting and Flowers in Johnston County. It’s a well-spent 13 and a half minutes.
Just how much of Chatham County’s economy was tied up in White Lightnin’ I can’t say but there were telltale signs. I was led to believe that a good deal of The #DeepChatham Devil’s Tramping Ground legend was wrapped up in illegal, rather than ethereal, spirits for example…i.e., moonshiners and their customers making all those spooky things happen in the late night hours down there near Harper’s Crossroads. For local Baptist teetotalers those midnight (they don’t call it moonshine because it’s a broad daylight product) distillers were doing the work of the Bad Man one way or the other anyway so we probably ought to put the quibbling aside. On the technology side, one of the first things I learned growing up working in #BonleeHardware was how to measure, cut, flare, and fit copper tubing.
The irony of course is that it’s likely that for generations illegal distilleries and bootlegger joints rivaled in number the ubiquity of churches in the North Carolina countryside. And no doubt they shared a great many patrons as well. I’ve always heard that “Tar Heels will vote dry as long as they can stagger to the polls.” If you’ve never heard that then now you have. Add in there that we never fully repealed prohibition statewide and were actually the state that kicked it off in 1908, over a decade before it went nationwide.
I also remember very well the lamentations over the severe dryness of the drive into Raleigh and Chapel Hill on those college football Saturdays. Charlotte to the Triangle - the road across the “goodliest land under the cope of Heaven” - was a bone dry one if you didn’t know any clandestine sellers along the way. Many of those Saturday tipplers were Deacons on Sunday. I think Rob Christensen called this ‘The Paradox of Tar Heel Politics,’ See Here: The Paradox of Tar Heel Politics | Rob Christensen | University of North Carolina Press
Turning to the “King of the Moonshiners,” Percy Flowers of #JohnstonCounty - there’s no doubt he was a lawbreaker - he flaunted alcohol laws and taunted tax collectors - trial by jury was his greatest legal defense as Johnstonians refused to convict him. I reckon that says something though I’m not 100% sure what. Multiple families, black and white, were part of his commercial network and the mythical figure Robin Hood was often mentioned in reference to his life. He definitely loved dogs and his pups were considered some of the finest and most beloved around. Of course he was a rabbit hunter but he was first and foremost a fox hunter - if you know anything about the latter country pastime (not the Englishter version with horses and fancy clothes) then the connections with the same sort of traipsing around in the middle of the night associated with moonshining and bootlegging are clear. If you’re not, then suffice it to say that my nigh Prohibitionist Southern Baptist Momma was unequivocal in her barring of my participation in those midnight junkets.
Flowers’ tale is one of financial success and apparently community respect and support. If you wonder about race and Percy Flowers there are no indications that he was Civil Rights activist but I’ve also seen none where he’s identified as Klan. His #1 assistant for decades was an African American man, Howard Creach, and their story bears some of the characteristics of paternalism and there also appears to have been a genuine trusting friendship between the two men and their families. No doubt there is a larger story there. Read here if you want more: Family Means a Lot of Things — Bit & Grain
At any rate Percy Flowers went ‘National’ in 1958 - which was, not coincidentally the year after a major Federal push against illegal, untaxed liquor that discovered that NC was home to at least 20% of U.S. production and that Flowers was the main man behind that. He did serve 6 months in the Federal Penitentiary in the late ‘60s for tax evasion. He was born in 1903 and passed away in 1982. Whether he was a hero or not he does fit the label of ‘Folk Legend.’
#OTD (8/2) in 1958 ‘The Saturday Evening Post’ dubbed Johnston County’s Percy Flowers “King of the Moonshiners.” Always afoul of The Law, Flowers, b. 1903, mostly remained free and farmed well into the 1970s. He died in ‘82, a regional economic force.
Legendary Percy Flowers, “King of the Moonshiners”
Also see “Percy’s Run” a documentary made in 2011 by D.L. Anderson about the confluence of fox hunting and Flowers in Johnston County. It’s a well-spent 13 and a half minutes.
