They sent him to Camp Butner…Again

[donbosco]

“They sent Jacob Marshall back to Butner last Monday.” I heard that phrasing pretty often as I eavesdropped on the grown-ups at church or in #BonleeHardware. The names would change (There’s a story tho about Jacob Marshall I’ll tell one day) but the message was generally a vague one about the perils of alcohol. Butner was where one ‘got sent’ when they couldn’t hold their liquor. I suppose there may have been other ‘medications’ involved—it’s kind of a mystery to me as to how drinking went on down in #DeepChatham in those days.

I know there were bootlegger joints—there was one within 3 miles of where I grew up and I knew of another near my Momma’s homeplace. There was the ‘VFW Hut’ too. Veterans were cut a lot of slack about drinking. There were World War II and Korean War and a growing number of Vietnam vets all over in the 1960s and ‘70s & given their service and the likely ‘rough’ things they had seen or even done, communities gave them a pass for ‘some’ amount of alcoholic melancholy, card-playing, and carousing. Still, there were lines that ought not to be crossed and families and friends rose up on occasion. I doubt those boundaries were always placed in the most just place and abuses were surely known.

So Butner was probably a place of last resort but one that once entered often resulted in a stigma and a downhill skid. A Butner man was ultimately to be pitied but in some cases also feared. The likelihood that he’d run foul of the law and do some time was real. Camp Butner actually (intentionally?) brought a lot of those things together. It was a military training facility and POW Camp during WWII and after the war became a medical complex—part of which evolved as the state took over some of the grounds, into the ‘Camp Butner’ where excessive tipplers were sent.

The place is also today a Federal Penitentiary-John Hinckley (attempted assassination of Reagan), Bernie Madoff, and even Charles Manson were jailed there for example-and long, long ago I visited. I once considered a career in corrections (volunteered at the Hillsborough unit briefly) and took a post-grad Public Administration course at Carolina that was taught by the warden at Butner. So we took a field trip to the prison and probably the most impressive thing about that ‘visit’ was how my teacher described the living situation for the prisoners.

This was 1981 and the Atlantic Coast Conference was at, in my mind, it’s perfect size of 7 schools. Butner Penitentiary also had 7 ‘dorms’ into which inmates were assigned according to their crimes. As the warden told it, those units were given the name of an ACC school in what was imagined to be a creative labeling: the dangerously deranged were in NC State, the especially violent in Clemson, sex offenders found their home in Duke, and embezzlers lived in Carolina (You can take this where you want with Wake, Maryland, and UVA).

It’s interesting to imagine what a single word - BUTNER ( or Dix, or Broughton) might have meant over the past 80 years or so when heard or read by a North Carolinian.

#OTD in 1942 a massive Army Installation opened in Granville, Person and Durham counties. Today, the grounds house state & federal mental health facilities, correctional institutions, state-owned farms & National Guard training. Camp Butner and Axis Prisoners of War

 

[farce©]

It’s interesting to imagine what a single word - BUTNER ( or Dix, or Broughton) might have meant over the past 80 years or so when heard or read by a North Carolinian.

In our part of the state people were sent to Broughton, but the name of the hospital was rarely mentioned. It was just said that someone was being sent “to Morganton.” Everybody knew what that meant.

 

[05C40]

“They sent Jacob Marshall back to Butner last Monday.” I heard that phrasing pretty often as I eavesdropped on the grown-ups at church or in #BonleeHardware. The names would change (There’s a story tho about Jacob Marshall I’ll tell one day) but the message was generally a vague one about the perils of alcohol. Butner was where one ‘got sent’ when they couldn’t hold their liquor. I suppose there may have been other ‘medications’ involved—it’s kind of a mystery to me as to how drinking went on down in #DeepChatham in those days.

I know there were bootlegger joints—there was one within 3 miles of where I grew up and I knew of another near my Momma’s homeplace. There was the ‘VFW Hut’ too. Veterans were cut a lot of slack about drinking. There were World War II and Korean War and a growing number of Vietnam vets all over in the 1960s and ‘70s & given their service and the likely ‘rough’ things they had seen or even done, communities gave them a pass for ‘some’ amount of alcoholic melancholy, card-playing, and carousing. Still, there were lines that ought not to be crossed and families and friends rose up on occasion. I doubt those boundaries were always placed in the most just place and abuses were surely known.

So Butner was probably a place of last resort but one that once entered often resulted in a stigma and a downhill skid. A Butner man was ultimately to be pitied but in some cases also feared. The likelihood that he’d run foul of the law and do some time was real. Camp Butner actually (intentionally?) brought a lot of those things together. It was a military training facility and POW Camp during WWII and after the war became a medical complex—part of which evolved as the state took over some of the grounds, into the ‘Camp Butner’ where excessive tipplers were sent.

The place is also today a Federal Penitentiary-John Hinckley (attempted assassination of Reagan), Bernie Madoff, and even Charles Manson were jailed there for example-and long, long ago I visited. I once considered a career in corrections (volunteered at the Hillsborough unit briefly) and took a post-grad Public Administration course at Carolina that was taught by the warden at Butner. So we took a field trip to the prison and probably the most impressive thing about that ‘visit’ was how my teacher described the living situation for the prisoners.

This was 1981 and the Atlantic Coast Conference was at, in my mind, it’s perfect size of 7 schools. Butner Penitentiary also had 7 ‘dorms’ into which inmates were assigned according to their crimes. As the warden told it, those units were given the name of an ACC school in what was imagined to be a creative labeling: the dangerously deranged were in NC State, the especially violent in Clemson, sex offenders found their home in Duke, and embezzlers lived in Carolina (You can take this where you want with Wake, Maryland, and UVA).

It’s interesting to imagine what a single word - BUTNER ( or Dix, or Broughton) might have meant over the past 80 years or so when heard or read by a North Carolinian.

#OTD in 1942 a massive Army Installation opened in Granville, Person and Durham counties. Today, the grounds house state & federal mental health facilities, correctional institutions, state-owned farms & National Guard training. Camp Butner and Axis Prisoners of War

Did you ever hear the place where Moonshine was sold being called a "Blind Tiger." When my mother was a little girl, her father once sent to a Blind Tiger to get some illegal alcohol. There were consequences when my grandmother found out it.

 

[donbosco]

Did you ever hear the place where Moonshine was sold being called a "Blind Tiger." When my mother was a little girl, her father once sent to a Blind Tiger to get some illegal alcohol. There were consequences when my grandmother found out it.

I've only read about the use of that term..."Bootlegger Joint" was the generic term I grew up hearing but also knew places referred to by the "proprietor's" name zs well.

I'd add that these places were pretty often nominally integrated establishments. There was one in Siler City that I knew to even offer food. It was run by an AFAM family but white people also frequented it. The one near Bonlee that I visited had curb service and I never left my car. They also sold mixed drinks to go.

 

[BubbaOtis]

Dix Hill deserves a mention.

 

[donbosco]

Dix Hill deserves a mention.

Most of the time the inspiration for my essays is connected to the NC Historical Marker Program and their #OTD blog. Dorothea Dix Hospital has a marker. Here is the website: Marker: H-7

 

[mpaer]

Dix Hill deserves a mention.

I worked on Dix campus for several years , mostly at the central "headquarters" bulding. I was told it was formerly a dorm for epileptic patients. That group of patients made up the core of the " patient supervisors " on the farming done on the land

 

[05C40]

I've only read about the use of that term..."Bootlegger Joint" was the generic term I grew up hearing but also knew places referred to by the "proprietor's" name zs well.

I'd add that these places were pretty often nominally integrated establishments. There was one in Siler City that I knew to even offer food. It was run by an AFAM family but white people also frequented it. The one near Bonlee that I visited had curb service and I never left my car. They also sold mixed drinks to go.

Consistent with my recollection and the stories I heard. Not trying to step on any toes or stir up any thing, but it always struck me as interesting/odd/amusing/sad that the level of mixing of races that went on in rural, Southern Blind Tigers was often common, on the white side, among some of the biggest, most vicious racists out there. And these same people would point to their patronage of such establishment as proof they were not racists and they got along just fine with negros who "knew their place."

 

[mpaer]

On a related note "likker Houses " in places like Durham.. Someone sets up a bar in their house for after hours drinking. Every election year the Sherriff will bust one or two . I always wondered how they select "who gets busted" as it seems likely LE knows perfectly well where these places are and largely leave them alone . I knew a guy that was an ALE agent in Durham for a few years-he said he never busted a single White bar or likker house....

 

[donbosco]

Gotta recommend my former colleague Dan Pierce's book, Tar Heel Lightnin': How Secret Stills and Fast Cars Made North Carolina the Moonshine Capital of the World here (Dan just took the FRIP option and has retired...he's gonna be missed).

Tar Heel Lightnin' | Daniel S. Pierce | University of North Carolina Press

From the late nineteenth century well into the 1960s, North Carolina boasted some of the nation's most restrictive laws on alcohol production and sale. For much of this era, it was also the nation’s leading producer of bootleg liquor. Over the years, written accounts, popular songs, and Hollywood movies have turned the state's moonshiners, fast cars, and frustrated Feds into legends. But in Tar Heel Lightnin', Daniel S. Pierce tells the real history of moonshine in North Carolina as never before. This well-illustrated, entertaining book introduces a surprisingly varied cast of characters who operated secret stills and ran liquor from the swamps of the Tidewater to Piedmont forests and mountain coves. From the state's earliest days through Prohibition to the present, Pierce shows that moonshine crossed race and economic lines, linking men and women, the rebellious and the respectable, the oppressed and the merely opportunistic. As Pierce recounts, even churchgoing types might run shipments of "that good ol' mountain dew" when hard times came and there was no social safety net to break the fall.


Folklore, popular culture, and changing laws have helped fuel a renaissance in making and drinking commercial moonshine, and Pierce shows how today's producers understand their ties to the past. Above all, this book reveals that moonshine's long, colorful history features surprises that can change how we understand a state and a region.

 

[05C40]

In re Moonshine: By the time I was a kid, by volume, most of the Moonshine in Eastern NC was being made by reasonably large operations, not random stills tucked away on some dry, high spot in a swamp. But the random, solitary stills were in existence. And my father, in very serious tones, after making sure he had mine and my brothers' attention, warned us if we ever came across a still whilst tramping through the woods or wading through the swamp, then we should IMMEDIATELY turn and start running/slogging as fast as we could until we got home. He assured us anyone who ran a still back in the woods would have absolutely no qualms whatsoever about killing some nosey boy and burying him were he would never be found. I distinctly remember the part about never being found was scarier than the being dead part. My Dad also stressed, that regardless of how old and dilapidated that still looked, we needed to run as soon as we saw saw it, if we had even the slightest inclination that it might have once been a still.

Also, in Eastern NC, most of the small time Moonshiners got run out of business when the price of sugar spiked in 1974 and never really recovered. And this business shift was reflected by almost total cessation of those who showed up at my Dad's store to pick-up their daily order of 240 pounds of sugar, just below the 250 pound reporting threshold.

 

[donbosco]

The old "call 'em up to say we're gonna be bustin' you tomorrow night, prep yourself" strategy was pretty well-known. Making sure that the photographer from the local newspaper was there to get a photo was also important. Right around election time was good for pulling in the t-totaler church voters.