Raising a growing family that would include 12 children in the early Ozarks was a challenge for Harvey and Isabell McCoy during the early decades of the 20th century. But it was not one with which they were unfamiliar. Drought and Depression were additional burdens, but hardship seemed a birthright, not something to bemoan its companionship. There were more ways than one way to skin a cat, and making moonshine seemed a necessary and logical way to stretch a bag of cornmeal greater than a few pans of cornbread.
“Farming was all I ever knew until I moved to this place,” Harvey said. “People back then was poor people. We didn’t have no big shots, no rich people….Oh, we used to work awful hard around here. …This country wasn’t cleared up like it is now…All I ever did was work on the farm. I worked for $7-$7.50 a month. I made 15-20 acres for George Ramsey… Jim Ryden… Jess Owens.”
“I used to freight from Mountain Grove, haul with a team,” Harvey said. “Everything was dry here. (You) couldn’t get no likker…They would get me to go to Springfield and get a suitcase full of likker.”
It began to dawn on Harvey he could make some of that liquor, but he was “liable to get in trouble.”
After breakfast, chores were to be done; the chickens fed, the mules tended. If it was Saturday, a fire was started to heat water in the big black kettle under the walnut tree for boiling clothes. It would take extra scrubbing on the board to get out the yellow stains of polecat grease and Vicks Vapor Rub smeared on the chests of the latest little ones that had the croup.
“A THING OF BEAUTY”
Wash water wasn’t the only liquid bubbling at the McCoy house. Remember the barrel of sweet water, corn mash and yeast under the staircase? The previous night, Harvey pushed aside the floating half bushel mass of corn, ground cob and kernel. Bits had begun to sink – “dead” George called it. Harvey dipped a cup into the brown sugar water. It had a sweet, sour taste. He judged it to need a few more days ripening, and maybe then, all of the mash would have settled to the bottom. Once the “fermented water called beer” was ready, there was no waiting. It would start to turn to vinegar and that destroyed the alcohol produced from fermenting starch in the corn and sugar. Distilling was a two-man process and would take all day to turn this brown sweet liquid into the clear, fire water that would fill six gallon-jugs diluted and shaken with just enough spring water to produce the bead needed for 100-proof moonshine.
Harvey was no longer freighting from Springfield; he was now a local vendor.
“I had a fellar make an outfit,” he said. “We just rigged it up.” The still was made from an old gas drum. The first worm was made from a discarded buggy top tubing frame. The moonshine looked like “pond water, rusty and nasty,” said George.
Then a fellow brought a 3/4,” 45’ length of copper tubing from St. Louis. Harvey wound it carefully around a tree so there would be no kinks and then cut the tree down slipping it over the stump.
Harvey was proud of the first-class worm. It was a thing of beauty.
COMMUNITY EFFORT
With all of Isabell’s cornbread cooking, Harvey was a frequent customer at the Vada Town mill. Every week, he took three bushels of corn to be ground between the mill’s stone burrs – two for meal, one for moonshine.
C.T. Smith ran the store at Success and he knew to keep a 100-lb. sack of sugar for the McCoy family every week, along with 18-20 bricks of yeast. He had never seen a loaf of light bread on Isabell’s table or for that matter, a slice of cake, but he knew what recipe Harvey was cooking and he liked it!
If it was mild weather, the two 50-gallon barrels were kept off the property. The McCoy farm was joined by government land. Harvey found a good spot on Uncle Sam’s property with shrubs, bushes and a nearby spring. It was at the mouth of Steam Mill Hollow, an easy walk from the house
The top of the barrel was covered with a gunny sack and sealed as well as possible. It was not good to get rain in it. If the weather was cool, the barrels were set on rocks, and two lanterns kept burning under them for heat. After about a week, the mash was checked and turned. It was ready when all of the floating corn barge had sunk to the bottom and turned black.
GENEROUS, NOT EXCESSIVE
Harvey was a man of generosity, but not of excess. He shared, always having a bottle in his pocket when he got his mail for the postmaster to draw out and have a little nip. But if a customer came to his house, already having sampling the joys of liquid lightning, Harvey told them to go sober up. He might even help them out of their inebriated condition by pulling out boiled guineas eggs from the pie safe, or tucking them into one of the beds.
There was lot of traffic down at the still site. Even a preacher came to visit.
“He was a good fellar,” Harvey said. “Never took a drink. Me and his brother was making the likker, and he just wanted to know how it was done.”
The kids weren’t supposed to be down there, but they would show up, and Harvey put them to work. The brew was poured into the gas drum still, and a rock furnace built to help keep a fire even and low around the still. The goal was to keep the contents just below boiling.
Ethanol vaporized at 176 degrees and water vaporized at 212. As the vaporized alcohol moved into the copper coil, surrounded by the cool water of another barrel, it condensed back into a liquid.
It was the kids’ job to keep the water cold in the barrel that contained the worm. It had to be siphoned off and refilled. Seven-year-old Lena liked to get the siphon started and then play in the mud made by the water. In the winter, she and George filled the barrel with snow, packing it around the copper coils.
Next week:
A mannerly moonshiner
•1/2 bushel corn: $0.30
•50-lbs of sugar: $3
•Malt, rye, yeast, extras: $0.12 (Harvey used nine blocks of yeast)
•Milling costs: $0.10
•Labor: $0.37 ($0.27 per hour)
•Still, equipment, transport: $0.12
•Firewood: $0.08
•Oak kegs, jars, jugs: $0.22
TOTAL: $4.31
––––––
Barrel production is six gallons of moonshine at $2 each; resulting in $12 gross and $7.69 profit.
––––––
Prices are from “Images, Realities and Cultural Transformation in the Missouri Ozarks, 1920-1960” (by Edgar D. McKinney)