moonshine

I learned a lot about alcohol this week.  Maybe it's the weather.  Or the lack of big news.  Or the need to numb a hospice diagnosis.  But this week my people had booze on the brain, and I heard some fun stories.

Larry told me about growing up with a still in the woods behind his house.  Sure, it was illegal, but it seemed that every one of his father's friends had one too.  Larry knew of men who  brewed huge batches of the "white lightening" and modified their cars to smuggle it on the back country mountain roads between Asheville and Knoxville or Atlanta.  These shine runners would tell stories of alluding and outrunning police.  They would brag about who had the faster car.  Larry told me this is how stock car racing began, and how many nascar legends started out as shine runners.  

But their family still was a small one.  Just big enough for a few batches of moonshine for special occasions.  Larry got that far away look on his face just thinking about it.  "Good, strong stuff my dad made.  Would bring tears to a grown man's eyes trying to swallow it."

William told me about his first assignment in the Navy. He rode the train from Arkansas to New Jersey.  Then got assigned to what would be affectionately called "the booze boat."  His war time task was to sail around Florida, through the Panama Canal, past California, and then to the Hawaiian Islands delivering cases of beer to the soldiers stationed in various ports.  "I really lucked out." William reminisced.  "Other boys were shooting guns and getting parts blown off.  I was passing out boxes of booze and being treated like a hero. The only problem was the last delivery was minus a few cases".  He says with a smirk.

Hambone (no joke, that's what he likes to be called) worked as a logger in Washington state for years.  Then he ended up in North Carolina building houses.  Before he knew it, he was in his sixties, and wasn't bouncing back from hard manual labor like he once had.  For almost a decade he dreamed about retirement, about time off and freedom.  Two months after Hambone turned 71, he quit his job.  Cold turkey.  Just walked up to the foreman on a Friday afternoon and announced that he was done.  He stopped by a liquor store on the way home and bought a fifth of whiskey and a bottle of rum.  That evening he sat in front of his TV doing shots until he passed out.  Sunday afternoon Hambone woke up feeling awful.  He said to himself "I don't like being retired one bit."  Monday morning he headed to an Asheville nephew's business and offered his woodworking skills. Which he did six days a week for ten years, until he joined hospice.

I sat with Josephina and Albert in a small nursing home room.  Josephina spends hours every day here offering Albert sips of water, trying to keep him from getting out of his wheelchair or falling out of bed.  She talks about better days when Albert's mind was sharp and he could still say her name.  Their eight children visit often, but their dad rarely recognizes them anymore.  Bert Jr. comes every Thursday night at 6 pm.  He decided he would make it a habit whether his dad knew he was there or not.  Every Thursday at 6 he shows up with two beers and takes his dad to the porch to sit in adjoining rocking chairs while they drink together.  This morning, Wednesday morning, right before I visited, Albert turned to Josephina and said the first intelligible thing he'd said in three months.  "Is today Thursday?  I need to see Bert."

What a crazy job I have.  To walk into people's homes and rooms and memories.  To hear what is on their hearts. To learn and laugh and groan and encourage them to keep talking.  Keep telling their stories.  Because we couldn't make these stories up if we tried.  But I sure do enjoy hearing them.