The Red Flannel Rag

He described the still so well, that I could picture it setting there near the creek.

“Out of the top of the still we put a connecting pipe than run over into a bar rel called the

coolin’ tub. That barrel was kept full of cold water at all times while we was makin’.

Inside the coolin’ tub the connectin’ pipe was hooked to a tube called the ‘worm’. This

tube was solid copper, about an inch across, and was coiled lik e a spring. The ‘worm’

coiled down through the coolin’ tub and came out a hole in the bottom. We set a keg or

a jug under the end of the coil where it came out. We put a funnel in the keg.”

Uncle Shirley carefully explained, “We lined the funnel with a red flannel rag with

charcoal in the bottom. The charcoal had been burned and washed clean. The charcoal

and the red flannel rag removed the impurities from the liquid. It was clean enough to

drink when it came through the funnel into the jug.”

My daddy added, “When we was ready to start, we strained our mash through a

clean rag into the boiler, then the ‘cap’, as we called it, was put on, and all leaks were

sealed with dough made fresh that morning. Then we lit the fire under the boiler.”

Moonshiners always chose wood that would not make much smoke while

burning, because revenuers sometimes found their location by watching for smoke. Dad

told me, “The best wood was dry white chestnut.”

There was a large supply of dry chestnut wood in the mountains surrounding

Hopkins Gap because of the chestnut blight. All the chestnut trees had been

accidentally infected by a blight fungus introduced into the United States on Japanese

chestnut trees imported at the end of the 1800s. It spread all over the range of native

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