The Red Flannel Rag

bought a new truck from all his profits and the first thing he did was to construct a

hidden chamber beneath the bed of the truck. Moonshine was hidden in every

conceivable nook and cranny of his cars, trucks, and property. Ten years after his death,

his sons found a stash under a pile of rocks as they cleaned a fence line on the farm.

John I. Myers, and friend and neighbor of Uncle Rob, told me a funny story about

my uncle. Uncle Rob was on his way to deliver a big lot of moonshine when the revenue

agents stopped him. “Rob told the revenuers, ‘Let me deliver this batch, and then I will

g o peacefully to jail with you.’ The revenuers followed him. He drove up to the rear

door of the local judge’s house. When he stopped there to deliver his product, the

revenue agents drove on by without stopping.”

Revenue agents finally did catch Uncle Rob. The sheriff called John I. Myers’

house, since he had the only telephone in the community, and asked him to deliver the

message to Aunt Goldie that Uncle Rob was in jail. Mr. Myers mounted his horse and

rode several miles the deliver the sad news. The revenuers confiscated Uncle Rob’s

brand new truck and never returned it.

The third type of person involved in moon shining in Hopkins Gap was the

bootlegger. Bootlegging carried a high risk of getting caught and put in jail, but it was

an easy job and potentially very profitable.

The large-scale moonshiner that Uncle Shirley and his cousin worked for sold his

product to bootleggers for $1.75 to $2.00 a gallon. The bootlegger, in turn, converted

the gallons to pints and sold them for $2.00. He was the middleman who made the

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