Moonshining is the stuff of legends – from NASCAR greats to the Dukes of Hazzard, from Elliot Ness and Al Capone to bathtub gin and homebrew, stories of Grandpa’s backyard still are still told today. While the truth is often unknown, the stories of moonshine have some kernels of truth at their heart. Though we think of it often in connection with Depression Era Cheep Liqour” the truth is that modern moonshine is experiencing a renaissance – more and more people are interested and experimenting today, and retailers know it.
Let’s take a quick over view of moon shining. Prohibition, took place in the US in the year 1920 to 1933. A underground industry originated in the south. Moon shining brought out lots of crime and bootlegging and overall hatred towards the tax collectors. The public shook there heads at moonshiners. Not only because of all the crime but the fact that some shiners would make moonshine with sawdust and other dangerous toxins then sell them to the general public.
Brewing your own beer and wine were considered legal after prohibition ended. Wine was legal immediately and beer became legal to brew in 1978. However distilling sprits (moonshine) is still considered illegal. The does not stop the small percent of people who still moonshine. Most moonshiners do not go legal because of the expenses and long process of getting a license.
Lots of attempts have been mane to legalize spirit production for personal use but the law against distilling spirits remains the same. US representative Bart Stupak says that the reason for this is because of money. Alcohol is one of the heaviest taxed goods with 32% of the purchase price going straight to state and federal taxes. That is more than three times the tax on wine, and twi...
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...their day jobs and racing cars on the weekends. Dirt racing became more and more popular and so did NASCAR. We can thank moonshiners for the fascinating sport of racing.
One of the most famous drivers was a man by the name of Junior Johnson. He was a shiner who had been caught and had spent a year in prison. He got out of prison and went back into the fast money life style of running shine. In his prime he was considered the fastest man on the ridge. He later made his way to NASCAR in 1955 and went on to win over 50 races. He then retired in 1966. Mike Devlin September 30, 2013
When alcohol became legal again in 1933, the moonshine trade plummeted. Today, “hooch” has once again become popular, inspiring TV shows and liquor stores peddling mason jars filled with shine. New York post-
http://listverse.com/2013/09/30/10-awesome-things-you-should-know-about-moonshine
Most people would think moonshine started after prohibition when there was a federal law against liquor …. the Americans still wanted a way to get there fix. Shiners were born…
The gangsters caused massacres and the St Valentines Massacre was a turning point for prohibition. People started to realise the dramatic failure of the law, and so when the Wall Street crash and the depression hit the USA in the early 1930s' it was obvious that legalising alcohol would create jobs helping people out of the depression. With all these problems, people were still getting drunk, so even with the law drunkenness hardly decreased. This made people begin to realise that by repealing the law alcohol would help get the taxes from it so the USA could stop wastin... ... middle of paper ...
People who have participated in racing for the past century, have never been universally accepted as athletes. The drivers, especially those in the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing (NASCAR) prove this misconception as incorrect with their intense training and stellar performances. Drivers on social media, assert that they are athletes, contradicting other sports stars who insist that they are not. The drivers in NASCAR and all forms of racing deserve to be given the respect of their fellow athletes in other sports. NASCAR drivers are seasoned athletes because of their training and tough race conditions that they encounter every week on the track.
transportation or sale of alcoholic beverages was given by the 18th. Amendment, c. 1917. This was gradually adopted by state governments. across America and was followed up in 1919 by the Volstead Act. defined intoxicating liquor as a drink containing 0.5% alcohol and prescribed penalties for breaking the law.
Both Prohibition and NASCAR came about as a means to solve certain issues affecting society. Prohibition was the result of the tireless effort of the temperance movement continuously advocating against the use of alcohol and other intoxicating substances in American society. The stock car came along as a reactionary measure to counteract the ban on alcohol and liquor. At its inception, stock car racing’s intended audience included individuals who were connected to the underworld, as these are the groups that would be present when competitions took place. With its advent rise in popularity and the legalization of the sport, NASCAR presently holds the enviable title of being the most watched spectator sport in the United States.5 ______________________________________________________________________________
Once people wanted a drink, nothing stopped them. Subsequently, prohibition sparked American ingenuity to step to the forefront. A black market emerged, as brewing beer making wine, and distilling whiskey, became a national past time. Enterprising home brewers could make enough Home brew, Dago Red, Bathtub Gin or Moonshine to quench their thirst and to sell as well. Therefore, stills begin popping up in basements, barns, backrooms, and the deep woods. Both Canada and Mexico were wet, and their border towns offered many opportunities for thirsty Americans to quench their thirst. Ships anchored outside the three-mile limit on both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, loaded with alcohol becoming floating bars and nightclubs. Additional ships offered cases of alcohol spirits only to the professional rumrunners. Illegal liquor grew to such an extent that enforcement became virtually impossible.
The National Prohibition Act was added to the United States Constitution on January 16th, 1920 (The Eighteenth Amendment). The Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution prohibits the illegal manufacturing or selling of alcohol. There were only two ways to legally obtain alcohol under the prohibition laws. Religious groups were granted the right to obtain alcohol for sacramental purposes, and doctors were permitted to write prescriptions (Medicinal Alcohol).
Prohibition was not all about the use of alcohol it was an effort to purify the society and the banning of alcohol was thought to be good for the society as a whole but, did not benefit the society any at all cause they spent just as much money trying to enforce the laws of prohibition then the people were spending on alcohol. Prohibition was a very good time some citizens though because it was a good way to make money and fast, this was by bootlegging and smuggling but, it was also a risky way to make money as it was illegal to do so. Bootlegging was a very common thing to do so back then because of the rewards in doing it. There was so much bootlegging going on during prohibition that the United States depended very much on eastern Canada when United States went dry too. A group of bootleggers from the U.S. actually came up to Luienburge and bought a boat called the Schooner and used it to ship booze out of Nova Scotia to American ships, the Schooner did this from1924 to 1928 when Nova Scotia was still dry. Smuggling was a very big business in ...
Moonshiners were around before the 1920s, mostly in Tennessee and more southern states, however they were not as popular until Prohibition became in effect (Saloon). The people making the alcohol used to worry about the quality of the alcohol, however onc...
NASCAR wasn’t always one of America’s favorite things to watch or a multimillion-dollar sport. It was actually inspired by criminal activity during the twentieth century. How racecars became part of American life goes back to the early days of prohibition and how gangsters avoided the law. During this time temperance organizations wanted to restrict or abolish the consumption of alcoholic beverages. By the early 20th century, women’s groups throughout the country viewed the sale and consumption of liquor was disrupting family life, and destroying marriages. The “Anti-Saloon League”, established in 1893, led a wave of protests in 1906 against “saloon” culture. The league had support from factory owners and managers who thought that the consumption of liquor lead to problems of work performance and job safety. This encouraged president Woodrow Wilson to issue a temporary prohibition order in 1917, after World War I. Later that year, Congress submitted a bill banning the manufacture, transportation and sale of alcohol. This bill became the 18th Amendment and was ratified on January 29, 1919. It went into effect in during the start of the year 1920. Congress also passed the National Prohibition Act in 1919. This was known as the Volstead Act, named after the famous Mississippi representative Andrew Volstead. This bill provided federal enforcement guidelines of Prohibition. Because of the eighteenth amendment there was a increase of the illegal transportation of alcohol. Many early race drivers were involved in bootlegging and other illegal activities. The runners of the alcohol would modify their cars in order to create a faster, more maneuverable vehicle to evade capture from the ...
Prohibition was a period in which the sale, manufacture, or transport of alcoholic beverages became illegal. It started January 16, 1919 and continued to December 5, 193. Although it was formed to stop drinking completely, it did not even come close. It created a large number of bootleggers who were able to supply the public with illegal alcohol. Many of these bootleggers became very rich and influential through selling alcohol and using other methods. They started the practices of organized crime that are still used today. Thus, Prohibition led to the rapid growth of organized crime.
Beer and alcohol has been around for thousands of years. It was only in the 1900’s that the idea that alcohol was a bad substance came about. Before prohibition went into effect there were 900 barrels of beer brewed each year. On December 10th of 1913 prohibitionist, people who supported prohibition also know as dries, marched to the capitol for the prohibition amendment. On the opposing, the anti-prohibitionist known as wets, elected the famous brewer Anheuser Bush as their leader. During the time of debate, on April 2nd, 1917 President Wilson declared war against Germany. This war gave the prohibitionist another reason for prohibition. Most of the liquor breweries were from German descent. This gave the wets a chance to combine the idea that war and alcohol were evil because they were both German. After lots of debates prohibition finally passed and went into effect on January 16th of 1920. Once in effect, the federal government wanted the state government to enforce the prohibition laws, meanwhile the state governments thought that the federal government would enforce the new law. This caused lots of confusion and for the law to be broken in many ways. It was acceptable to make wine for home conception, though you could not sell it or sell the ingredients for...
In today’s music, moonshine appears in a number of artists’ songs, like Bruno Mars, Bob Dylan, James Taylor, Van Morrison, John Denver, Ol' Dirty Bastard, Steve Earle, Jimmy Buffett, Akon, Jamie T, and Hank Williams, Jr. as well as Hank Williams III (Wikipedia). Famous country singer Dolly Parton sang a song called “Daddy's Moonshine Still.” American “country-roots” singer and songwriter Gillian Welch released a moonshiner's dying lament called “Tear My Stillhouse Down” (Wikipedia). Hank Williams III sang “A Moonshiner's Life,” paying respect to one man by name. Singer George Jones’ song “White Lightning” (which is also another name for moonshine) tells a story of a North Carolina moonshiner; “well in North Carolina, way back in the hills, lived my ol’ pappy and he had him a still. He brewed white lightning ‘til the sun went down. Then, he’s fill him a jog and he’d pass it around. Mighty mighty pleasin’, pappy’s corn squeezin’” (Wikipedia). Also, rapper Yelawolf is known to mention moonshine in some of his raps. Moonshine is like honor to his Alabama heritage, “he considers himself a connoisseur of Southern alcohol, including moonshine” (Wikipedia). Brad Paisley is a country singer and his tenth album is called Moonshine in the Trunk which was released in 2014. In the IIrish folk songs “The Moonshiner and The Hills of Connemara both concern moonshine. It is referred to as "mountain tay" in 'Hills'” (Wikipedia). In the bluegrass song “Rocky Top” it speaks of strangers who went out looking for a moonshine still and then never returned, “as well as locals who ‘get their corn from a jar’ because the ground is too rocky to actually grow corn” (Wikipedia). There are so much more artists who reference and sing about moonshine in their songs, making moonshine an essential part of the making of their music. More and more artists in Appalachian society, and today’s
People turned more and more towards criminal activity, organized criminals such as the American mobsters and European crime syndicates thrived, most common people looked upon these organizations as heros. Criminals like Al Capone, Bonnie and Clyde and John Dillinger were headliners of the era. Jobs were scarce and people needed to provide for their families, gangsterism was dangerous but provided an easy way to make money. When the American government passed the eighteenth Amendments outlawing alcohol, people who enjoyed a drink became criminal for doing so. It was organized criminals who supplied the booze. In January of 1920 the American government banned the sale and supply of alcohol, the government thought that this would curb crime and violence, prohibition did not achieve its goals, leading more toward higher crime rates and excessive violence. Alcohol was seen as the devil's advocate and banning the substance would help improve the quality of American lives. It caused an explosive growth in crime with more than double the amount of illegal bars and saloons operating than before prohibition. The government set up the “Federal Prohibition Bureau” to police prohibition, this did not deter people and organized crime continued to be the main supplier of booze. With a large coastline it was almost impossible to police with only five percent of alcohol ever being confiscated. Bribing government officials was common, and people were increasingly crafty in the way they
With the passage of Prohibition in 1919, the Morello family built a lucrative bootlegging enter...