By Michael D. Martin, E.C.P.D. Retired
About the author...Michael Martin (pictured front row, far right in the 1981 photo) is a retired veteran of 25 years on the Eden City Police Department, and has penned a number of anecdotal writings recalling his experiences.
XIX. Jim's Liquor
In every town in America there are always two economies flourishing. The
legal and above board economy such as your shoe store or service station,
then there is the underground economy such as the gambling spot or the
bootlegging joint. This is not to say that the people who operated in the
underground economy were bad people. They had mortgages to pay, children
to raise and groceries to buy like everyone else. Police often relied on
the purveyors of the illegal for information when something bad
happened.
When I went to work for Spray PD in 1966 as a
young rookie patrolman, I soon learned that if a fella did not work in the
mills, he was doing something illegal, slowly....very slowly, I learned
who was doing what. About a half dozen places in Spray alone, you could
place a bet on a sports game and there was any number of places where a
fella could find a drink of "govment whiskey" or if you had a
taste for something more "country" you could easily find some
good Franklin County moonshine and it could be purchased in any quantity a
fella wanted.
There was one man named Jim (last name omitted)
who lived on Peter Hill Street in the Blue Creek section of Spray, Jim was
a tall, strong man but I soon learned he was a nice man too. Jim would
stop and talk pleasantly to you any time you saw him. Over the years, Jim
had worked out an almost foolproof system for selling "shine."
Jim would get up in the early, early hours of the mornings and go to his
stash with a feedsack full of pint bottles and he would piece up a gallon
or so of shine into the pint bottles and since his back yard abutted land
owned by Spray Water, Power and land Company, he would go onto that land
and hide each pint. Then he would sit on his back porch after the sun came
up and customers would come by and pay jim to direct them to a hiding spot
for their pint. The customers knew not to go looking for any more because
Jim was watching them. If the police raided, there was not a drop on Jim's
property and we might find a couple of pints hidden in the weeds and we
could not prove whose it was (remember, this was 1966).
I guess Jim had a dozen places where he hid his
main stash and it was never in the same place twice. About this time, my
partner, Fat Vestal bought himself a tractor and a bushhog attachment and
began to make a few dollars on the side clearing property for people. Mr.
Ruffin Smith owned some land over behind his house that was overgrown with
weeds and bramble and he hired Fat to clear it for him. Fat told me later
that he was doing a fine job when he saw a large briar patch and he knew
he needed extra power so he gave it the gas and sped up, he looked up to
see Jim standing at the edge of the woods about fifty yards away, watching
him. Fat said he thought that was odd until about half-way thru the briar
thicket and steam came up everywhere and for a second, he thought he had
blown a water hose. He changed his mind when he smelled the steam and it
was a cloud of moonshine. Fat said he stopped and looked around. Jim just
shook his head and walked off, Fat had just bushhogged six gallons of
Jim's liquor hidden in the briar thicket.
Fat and I were on patrol in the Blue Creek
section a few days later when we saw Jim and Fat pulled over and said
"Jim, was that your liquor? Jim said no sir, hit sho won't
mine! and he kinda smiled and said "Mr. Fat, I sho does hate you
bushhogged dat field."
Michael D. Martin