Moonshine, Hardware, Foxes, & Percy Flowers

[donbosco]

Welp…I am a historian of Latin America. I’m actually in Guatemala right now but heading back to Buncombe in the morning. I grew up in Chatham County and attended UNC - ASU - UNC (BA - MA - MA/PHD). My second field of study is The American South. I’ve mainly worked at small schools and have had the good fortune to also teach a bit of US and a lot of North Carolina History along with the Latin America and Atlantic World stuff.

I’ve also been at teaching schools but have managed to research and publish in my main field (Colonial and 19th century Central America) with a sidebar here and there. I’ve been lucky that way and it has been fun. These days I’m working on my own history most exclusively - why not? - and Story Telling has gotten in my blood (it’s always been there actually, it’s just beginning to pour forth). Twenty-five years in my other profession, tending bar, allowed me to work on the tales on the side. I “reckon” I have several voices. In academia I’ve long fought a battle over my rural Piedmont patois. I figure I’ve probably lost as often as I’ve won among colleagues but in the main the way I talk has worked well with students. And bar customers of course. Of course, there have been and still are people that think you cannot be a scholar unless you alter your language into a neutral or even elite sounding vernacular. I’d be lying if I said that never bothered me but it doesn’t anymore.

I love language. One of my favorite things about being in Guatemala, where I learned to speak Spanish, is playing around with words and phrases and watching cultures meld and mesh.

Too long I know but that’s my story.

 

[05C40]

. . .. In academia I’ve long fought a battle over my rural Piedmont patois. . . ..

Years ago, I was arguing a case before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court where I was representing Hamot Medical Center, which is located in Erie, PA. Shortly after I started my argument, a Justice interrupted me by saying, "You're not from Erie." I then explained that because this was a Catastrophic Loss Fund Case, it had been assigned to my firm in Pittsburgh. The Justice continued, "You aren't from Pittsburgh either." I replied in my best Eastern NC drawl, "Oh, I'm from the Southside." The Southside being a neighborhood in Pittsburgh south of the Monongahela River. The Justice just cracked up, said, "Yeah, way Southside," and I continued on without any further extraneous comments.

 

[TarSpiel]

Welp…I am a historian of Latin America. I’m actually in Guatemala right now but heading back to Buncombe in the morning. I grew up in Chatham County and attended UNC - ASU - UNC (BA - MA - MA/PHD). My second field of study is The American South. I’ve mainly worked at small schools and have had the good fortune to also teach a bit of US and a lot of North Carolina History along with the Latin America and Atlantic World stuff.

I’ve also been at teaching schools but have managed to research and publish in my main field (Colonial and 19th century Central America) with a sidebar here and there. I’ve been lucky that way and it has been fun. These days I’m working on my own history most exclusively - why not? - and Story Telling has gotten in my blood (it’s always been there actually, it’s just beginning to pour forth). Twenty-five years in my other profession, tending bar, allowed me to work on the tales on the side. I “reckon” I have several voices. In academia I’ve long fought a battle over my rural Piedmont patois. I figure I’ve probably lost as often as I’ve won among colleagues but in the main the way I talk has worked well with students. And bar customers of course. Of course, there have been and still are people that think you cannot be a scholar unless you alter your language into a neutral or even elite sounding vernacular. I’d be lying if I said that never bothered me but it doesn’t anymore.

I love language. One of my favorite things about being in Guatemala, where I learned to speak Spanish, is playing around with words and phrases and watching cultures meld and mesh.

Too long I know but that’s my story.

I went to Guatemala once & absolutely loved it...Lake Atitlan is amazing.

 

[superrific]

Welp…I am a historian of Latin America. I’m actually in Guatemala right now but heading back to Buncombe in the morning. I grew up in Chatham County and attended UNC - ASU - UNC (BA - MA - MA/PHD). My second field of study is The American South. I’ve mainly worked at small schools and have had the good fortune to also teach a bit of US and a lot of North Carolina History along with the Latin America and Atlantic World stuff.

I’ve also been at teaching schools but have managed to research and publish in my main field (Colonial and 19th century Central America) with a sidebar here and there. I’ve been lucky that way and it has been fun. These days I’m working on my own history most exclusively - why not? - and Story Telling has gotten in my blood (it’s always been there actually, it’s just beginning to pour forth). Twenty-five years in my other profession, tending bar, allowed me to work on the tales on the side. I “reckon” I have several voices. In academia I’ve long fought a battle over my rural Piedmont patois. I figure I’ve probably lost as often as I’ve won among colleagues but in the main the way I talk has worked well with students. And bar customers of course. Of course, there have been and still are people that think you cannot be a scholar unless you alter your language into a neutral or even elite sounding vernacular. I’d be lying if I said that never bothered me but it doesn’t anymore.

I love language. One of my favorite things about being in Guatemala, where I learned to speak Spanish, is playing around with words and phrases and watching cultures meld and mesh.

Too long I know but that’s my story.

Ain't too long. I asked, you answered. I also love language, and I'm just fine with any patois. Well, Judge Sentelle on the DC Circuit had a really thick WNC accent and he would turn it up when the lawyers were from NYC. Then if they asked him to repeat the question, he would turn it up even more. So I thought that was obnoxious for anyone but especially unbecoming of a federal appeals court judge. But that's a different situation entirely.

Thanks for the explanation and the overview of your life as a scholar-bartender. So were the stories in your OP your own stories? Fiction? Old family or local lore?

 

[donbosco]

Ain't too long. I asked, you answered. I also love language, and I'm just fine with any patois. Well, Judge Sentelle on the DC Circuit had a really thick WNC accent and he would turn it up when the lawyers were from NYC. Then if they asked him to repeat the question, he would turn it up even more. So I thought that was obnoxious for anyone but especially unbecoming of a federal appeals court judge. But that's a different situation entirely.

Thanks for the explanation and the overview of your life as a scholar-bartender. So were the stories in your OP your own stories? Fiction? Old family or local lore?

If it sounds like it is me...it is. My Deddy did indeed own a hardware store -- and to make it even more fun, he was also the postmaster and the PO was in the store.

I have to admit that the way that profs are being treated these days has me pining for the bar. I know a couple of places in NYC where my accent might make me some dough.

 

[donbosco]

I went to Guatemala once & absolutely loved it...Lake Atitlan is amazing.

Didn’t make it to the lake this time. It is a beautiful place but the water quality tends to upset folks’ stomach, especially less seasoned visitors. And I have my daughter with me - she’s been in a Spanish school this past week - kind of tuning up (she’s been a speaker all of her life but she still needs instruction). I stepped away from the colonial/19th century and did some work on the Guatemalan muralist Carlos Merida. He spent the summer of 1940 teaching at Black Mountain College and I’m trying to see how I can pull together the story of that time - it’s where my two fields cone together / Latin America & North Carolina.

Here is one of Merida’s murals (size is about 75 feet by 20 feet). It is in Guatemala City.

https://meridaguatemalaviva.com/Sources/Textures/Mural_1.jpg

 

[Centerpiece]

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.

Cool video. Love the claw hammer banjo at first… and then the bottleneck slide guitar after that.

Most reliable source for moonshine is a sheriff’s deputy… unless of course you distill your own.

There was an old man who lived in Tom Howell Hollow up In Mitchell County… Relief, NC where the Toe River meets the Cane River and becomes the ToeCane River. He would always insist on pouring everybody a small Dixie cup full of his latest mash. It didn’t matter what time of day it was. 6am or 6pm everybody was gonna have a drink.

Claw hammer banjos, bottleneck slide guitars and applejack out of a Dixie cup. A lot of truth right there.

 

[Centerpiece]

If it sounds like it is me...it is. My Deddy did indeed own a hardware store -- and to make it even more fun, he was also the postmaster and the PO was in the store.

I have to admit that the way that profs are being treated these days has me pining for the bar. I know a couple of places in NYC where my accent might make me some dough.

I’m guessing you spell “Deddy” exactly how you pronounce it. My wife is from Jonesborough TN and that’s how she pronounces it: “Deddy”.

Mind you, I’m from WNC and for all intents and purposes there’s not TOO much difference between East TN and WNC. But I don’t reckon I’ve heard “Deddy” in my neck of the woods until I met her. (BTW she’s a retired HS Spanish teacher and helps with our rather large contingent of Guatemalans here in the foothills of NC)

 

[donbosco]

I’m guessing you spell “Deddy” exactly how you pronounce it. My wife is from Jonesborough TN and that’s how she pronounces it: “Deddy”.

Mind you, I’m from WNC and for all intents and purposes there’s not TOO much difference between East TN and WNC. But I don’t reckon I’ve heard “Deddy” in my neck of the woods until I met her. (BTW she’s a retired HS Spanish teacher and helps with our rather large contingent of Guatemalans here in the foothills of NC)

Not sure how it can be explained. Neither of my parents said Deddy - both said ‘Pa.’

 

[waynecountywolf]

Percys daughter has done very well for herself but is a complete Beyotch to work for