Bootleggers of West Lauderdale County

In the time of my growing up, bootleggers were what seem to be the drug dealers of today. Many of the off spring of the bootleggers I knew of growing up are selling drugs today. There is no need any more to sell whiskey, because most of the towns are wet. The Tennessee Line was the only place to go for beer in the seventies. My family’s favorite drink was not beer. It was probably whiskey; also moonshine. It was made or sold up in our neck of the woods by the Patrick’s, Easteps,Whites and Jacksons. The Whites and Patricks were all related, somehow.The Jackson's also bought scrap metal. They worked on cars and tractors. The color they were was proof that they did dirty work. They were so dirty that the whites of their eyes shined as they approached you. They were crooks to my brother and I. We collected scrap metal for weeks; hoping to get this large sum of money for all our work. They came to the house finally to pick it up and only gave us twelve dollars for a trailer load. The old man looked like the preacher on the Poltergeist movies. The son was a small and even dirtier than his dad. He must have been the one that crawled under the cars; the worker I guess. My daddy would almost have drunk rubbing alcohol if he didn’t have the real thing. The Jackson’s were always stopping by to deliver their latest batch of wild cat. Daddy always had to hide the bottles from my grandmother and I was always searching for the bottle; just to tell on my daddy. I got some pleasure out of Grandmother finding it and pouring it out. There was one time he hid it at the edge of the yard in some rocks. This place was on the other side of the car; I guess he didn’t want to take the trouble to go very far to get a drink that day. I found it by accident, really. The strange thing to me was there was no label on the bottle; I had found my first bottle of homemade whiskey. The Whites, Easteps and Patrick’s bottles were transported and were five bucks a bottle. This was home brew and only three bucks a bottle. My daddy walked up just about the time I got the bottle out of the grass. When he saw me with it he grinned and told me, “That is the only bottle of whiskey that I will pour out.” I held the bottle up and looked; it was grey in color and had slime floating in it. The whiskey the Jackson’s made was as dirty as they were.