The Red Flannel Rag

Dad told me, “The revenuers were so scared they would be killed for shooting

Tom that they put his body in the back seat of their car and set it up just like Tom was

riding with them. They made Harold Lam set against his body to hold it up as they

drove through Hopkins Gap. They hauled his body to Broadway without tellin’

anybody,” Dad said. “They sent the county sheriff out to tell Rob Crawford his brother

was dead. It’s a good thing they did it that way because they wouldn’t ha ve gotten out of

there alive. Rob would have killed them.”

At his hearing, the revenue agent who shot Tom claimed that his foot caught on a

branch and caused his pistol to accidentally go off and shoot Tom. He was never

charged with shooting an unarmed man; but he was transferred to the Blue Ridge

Mountains in East Virginia.

Months afterward news spread that he had killed another moonshiner. A year

later, he was shot and killed by an unknown assailant. Dad told my brother that a

Hopkins Gap man had gone to East Virginia and taken revenge for Tom’s death.

As the pressure of the revenue agents increased, the quality of Hopkins Gap

moonshine deteriorated. New and dangerous tactics were used to speed up the

processing to save the time of running the “singlings” a second time. Some people put

mothballs in their liquor to make it hold a “bead.” Others used lye for the same purpose.

As late as 1970, Uncle Jim told me he saw red seal lye cans lying around a still.

My Uncle Charlie Conley died in 1960 from drinking moonshine mixed with red seal lye.

Moonshiners also used zinc tubs to boil their mash, mix, and store their whiskey, even

after it was determined that moonshine made in this way was poisonous if consumed in

large amounts over a long period of time.

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