The Red Flannel Rag

Dad thought for a minute as he chewed on his toothpick, then he said, “Well Pop

[Grandpa Austin] taught me. That’s how we made our livin’ after the tannery closed in

Harrisonburg. Before that Pop trimmed bark and hauled it to tannery.”

“What was the tannery?” I asked him. He explained, “It was a big factory there

on Water St. in Harrisonburg. It’s now a parking lot, but we still call it the Tannery Lot.

The factory needed tree bark to tan leather. Then the leather was used in shoe factories.

Before I went to the army, I worked in the shoe factory, and we used some of the leather

tanned in that factory to make shoes. So, when the tannery closed, Pop was out of work.

He had no choice but to grow some corn and make moonshine.”

“It was a thing that kinda grew on ya,” Uncle Shirley added. “You grew up with it.

I learned by goin’ to the still and watchin.’ Before my parents died I ha d to sneak to the

still, but after both passed away it was a means of livelihood for me. When I first

started, I worked with a first cousin. I got seven and one-half cents an hour and my

board and a place to sleep. My cousin, he boarded himself, and he got fifteen cents an

hour. We had it set up so that we worked six days a week. We would have one still set

up at a location and maybe a mile away we’d have another location. We kept three stills

goin’ this way.”

Although I had heard the story many time s, I would ask them again, “Will you all

tell me how to make moonshine? Their description was long and detailed with Dad and

Uncle Shirley contributing parts of the story and filling in what the other one left out.

By the time I asked them several times and asked Uncle Jim, Aunt Goldie, and Mom the

same question, I got a pretty clear picture of the process of moon shining in Hopkins

Gap.

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