Moonshiners

I like the show Moonshiners. No, I don't believe they are really making moonshine. When they are filmed exchanging jars for money, I think it is all staged for the camera. When they drink that clear liquid and act like it almost knocks them down, I am sure they are drinking water.

But I like the show. I find it entertaining. I find it mildly educational. I like the personalities. Tickle is out of jail, and Bill still can't get along with anybody. The show is fun, relaxing, and good escapism television. And now that Finding Bigfoot is no longer on the air, Moonshiners is running neck and neck with Gold Rush for the best show on TV.

Last night while watching the latest show, a sentiment that I have heard over and over by the cast members sort of jumped out at me. They have all said these exact words or something very similar: 

"We must not lose this art." 

"We need to preserve the old ways." 

"We must not let this die."

How true. I am, however, a little confused. When it comes to preserving the old ways, it's always moonshining they are worried about. What about farming with mules? Why is no one interested in keeping that art alive? My dad grew up farming with mules. When I was eight years old, he bought land in Carroll County. The first year he owned it, an old Black man from across the gravel road came over and broke up the garden place with a mule. We did the rest of the work with garden rakes, shovels, and hoes. I am not interested in preserving those old ways. 

He borrowed a mule and wagon, and a buster from a Black man in the Buckeye when we moved to 422 West Harding. He broke up a garden place in the backyard. One huge garden in Carroll County was not enough. I remember riding in the wagon back to the Buckeye. Dad said, "He knows where he is going," referring to the mule who didn't need the reigns to show him the way. I was three years old. Who is preserving these ways?

What about cutting wood with axes and crosscut saws? I actually did this. We had a fireplace at the cabin and at home. We cut all the wood the old way. Dad was a CPA. He could afford a chainsaw, and he purchased one about the time I left home. When I was a teenager, I even went into business briefly selling firewood. I cut it all with a crosscut and busted with an ax. After selling my first load, I came to the conclusion that the trees looked much better standing than loaded in the back of a pickup. I don't want to preserve that old way. 

And what about outdoor toilets? There were three old houses on the 172 acres Dad bought. We tore them down, cleaned the brick, saved the good wood, and Dad hired Joe Campbell to build a three room cabin on the place. The three rooms were a kitchen/living room, and two bedrooms. What was missing? If you guessed bathroom, you win the prize. Joe Campbell not only built the cabin, but a nice little one-seater outdoor toilet. Really. This happened. Every weekend we were at the cabin. We had a big garden to work. We had an outdoor toilet to use. That thing was heinous. If you dropped a ping-pong ball in the hole and it would never make its way to the bottom. Spider webs would capture it long before it could join the festivities in the pit. You were supposed to sit your butt and drop your penis into that den of spiders, wasps, and other creepy things. I could not do it. That was the stuff of nightmares. Why don't they preserve this art form on Moonshiners?

When I was a young man, I went to the cabin one Saturday to study in the quiet that Carroll County provides. By this time, my mom had built a bathroom in the cabin. She framed it, wired it, plumbed it, trimmed it. She could do anything. Outside, however, that old outhouse still stood. To make a long story short, a brush fire hit. I could easily have died, but I survived and saved the cabin which I put out twice. The outhouse, however, was turned into a violent whirlwind of flames the instant the fire touched it. Dad was furious with me. Furious for not saving the outhouse.

What I am about to say is true, every word of it. That outhouse was insured. I promise. Who does that? Who has insurance on an outdoor toilet? And what was Farm Bureau thinking? The day Dad received his insurance check, the day, he went to the building and supply place, purchased plywood, 2 X 4s, nails, and roll roofing and he took Mom, the carpenter of our family, and they went out there and rebuilt the outhouse. I still shake my head at all that. Dad told Mom that they were going to build a two-seater. She protested, "I'm not going to sit on that with anybody!" He replied that not everyone has the same size butt.

That toilet is there to this moment. If you want to see it, send me a message. I'll take you out there and let you look. You can even sit on it. I'll walk away and let you have your privacy. Who wants to? Who wants to preserve this old way?

How about no electricity? Let's save that. What about dental surgery without anesthesia? How about going back to the horse and buggy days? I know, the Amish do that. But I even wonder about them. That horse and buggy was the state-of-the-art mode of personal transportation when they adopted it. It was modern at the time. Why is that modern better than today's modern?

These people suffer from an illness called nostalgia. What the moonshiners really like is the "art" of being illegal. They love the lure of the illicit, the pull of the profit, the folly of the fame of being on TV. 

Nostalgia is a strange thing. I suffer it in some equally inconsistent ways. When I hear a mosquito truck driving the streets of Greenwood at night shooting out that insecticide, I waft back to my childhood. Poor kids today. They never got to experience the joys of running behind a truck putting out a cloud of DDT so thick you could not see through it. Quick, grab your kids. Let's get one of those old spray rigs and douse our children with insecticide. Let's preserve the old ways. Let's keep that art form alive, even it it kills us.