Harvey McCoy was a popular man in the 1920s and w’30s in Texas County, where he and his wife Isabell were raising their 10 children on a drought-parched, 40-acre farm near “Old Success.” Harvey had begun to make moonshine, a venture he saw as one to provide for his family but also one in which he was “liable to get in trouble.”
Harvey never carried a gun. He was a mild-mannered man who protected himself through generosity and relationships; but, he knew the risks. He was well acquainted with many of the lawmen, local and federal, for whom he kept a vigilant lookout.
A mule was tied to a tree as a sentry. Animals were keen on approaching company. He could tell by watching the mule if someone was coming in their direction. If his production partner saw something suspicious while out gathering wood for the furnace under the still, the call of a hoot owl was the alarm.
The mule and the owl didn’t always work. There was the day, one of Harvey’s regular helpers, Charlie Sillyman, was gathering wood. He bent down to pick up a stick and raised his head, looking straight into the eyes of Sheriff Harry Kelly. Charlie was so startled, he said, “Hell, Harry, what are you doing here?”
Harvey’s attitude was there was no need for animosity if a fellar was just trying to do his job – even if your jobs conflicted. But he agreed, “I imagine I have run into the law.”
“WHEN YOU RUN FOR OFFICE, YOU GOTTA FURNISH A LITTLE DRINK”
There were four lawmen who left a mark in Harvey McCoy’s memory: sheriffs Harry Kelly, Andy P. Johnson, Red Hubbard and a “federal man named Schumake.”
Harvey voted for them all. He said, “When you run for office, you gotta furnish a little drink. You get the whiskey man’s vote, you can damn near win. I vote for the person…I think we oughta be for one another…been that way all my life.”
HARRY KELLY
They said the rim of Sheriff Kelly’s tires were never without grass from chasing bootleggers.
Harvey recalled, “I voted for Harry Kelly twice and worked for him. The second (term) time around he was mean as a devil. That’s when he sent me to Springfield (jail).”
George recalled Sher-iff Kelly standing on a pile of chips after an unsuccessful search of the McCoy woodpile. Underneath the sole of the sheriff’s boots, cushioned and buried by loose chips, was the hidden hooch he was seeking.
SHERIFF RED HUBBARD
Then there was the Red Hubbard hoopla. It was a disaster.
Harvey said, “A fellar turned me in – John Jones. I don’t like him, yet. Red Hubbard was in (the deal). I ain’t forgot either one of them. I never speak to him. I ain’t got no use for anybody that will stool pigeon on you.”
It happened like this.
John Jones was helping with this batch of moonshine. They had decided it would be ready to run off the next day, but before he left, Jones had complained about being sick.
The next morning, when Jones didn’t show up, a couple of other fellows helped Harvey pour the barrels of mash stored in the smokehouse into cream cans. They tied them off the ground to keep them safe from meandering mash-seeking hogs. One of the fellows went home, but the other was standing with Harvey when Sheriff Red Hubbard and “the federal Schumake,” who had been tiptoeing through the dew-covered grass of Steam Mill Hollow, broke into the clearing. Schumake carried a sawed-off shotgun.
The kids scattered. Isabell was sewing and ran a needle through her finger. Harvey’s partner was “pretty damn wicked, damn stout, younger than I (was) by a whole lot. He talked rough as hell,”said Harvey.
Schumake had enough of the harassment and said, “You just consider yourself under arrest.”
“I don’t give a g…d… where you take me,” Harvey’s partner said. “You can take me.”
Harvey tried to keep the situation from elevating. “P’shaw, fellows. Settle down. We’ll have none of that.”
Hubbard and Schumake had been after Harvey. They arrested him, but let his partner with the 100-proof vocabulary go free.
Inside the house, Isabell began to cry and little Lena knew this was not a good thing. They were not used to hearing loud confrontations. Their mild-mannered “Poppy” did not speak so, and Lena had not often seen her mother cry. Isabell knew that the small tobacco sack with Harvey’s past earnings pinned to her undershift held the whole McCoy bank account. She was the cashier, and the depositor was leaving in the sheriff’s black car.
It was a big arrest, and ended with Harvey going to the Neosho Federal Prison. John Jones had turned them all in – and the only thing worse than a revenuer was a snitch.
Harvey said except for not being home, Neosho was a nice place – “plenty to eat, clean.”
“(They) played a lot of games, plenty of cards, but I would never do that,” he said. “(There was) hollering and hootin’, fights…Of course, I never did that.”
After three months, they turned Harvey loose, gave him a $200 fine and two-year parole. Harvey said, “I got to Springfield. I had some bills in my shoes. They never knew I had that ($10 or $15), and I got me a pint of whiskey.”
ANDY P. JOHNSON
Harvey was a Republican, but if he respected a man well enough he would vote for him in spite of his political shortcomings.
Andy P. Johnson was a Democrat. Harvey liked Andy, and even made a few discreet distilled deliveries to the courthouse back door. So the day he ran into Sheriff Johnson on the government property near his still, he was surprised. “Don’t worry, Harvey,” Johnson told him, “I am not here to get you.”
Doug Romines was helping that day. He threw down the stick he was using to stir the mash and started to run.
Harvey was frightened. “Doug, don’t run, he’ll shoot you!” The sheriff, he knew, could be a little slap happy with his gun and there was no need for bloodshed.
Johnson confiscated Harvey’s beautiful, first-class copper worm, and he took Doug to jail.
Harvey said, “Andy Johnson told me he’d give it up. But he never would. (I) went over there twice. All them fellars up and down the river, they said he cain’t be sheriff anymore when he done me like he done me…that’s what they said about Red Hubbard…I made likker with all these fellars down here.”
‘IT’S PLUMB DISHEARTENING’
It was the ’50s by now. The McCoy kids had grown. Lena, the youngest, was married and moved away. Only George remained. When Harvey would mention that George should get out and find a wife, Isabell would say, “Oh, no, you don’t! There is only room in this house for one woman.”
When Sheriff Johnson did not give Harvey’s worm back, it had caused the end of his moonshine career. He advised son George to stay away from the business. But, for Harvey, customers and friends had always been one in the same, and he continued to make home brew just for visitors.
George continued to live with Harvey and Isabell on the old home place until Harvey’s death in 1974 at the age of 86. Isabell had died eight years earlier. That was the first year George got to mow the grass. Harvey had never let him. It just hadn’t made sense; he could never forget the year 33 acres of corn got only three-feet tall. Cows were starving and stripping the trees as far as they could reach. WHY would anyone waste grass by mowing their lawn?
George continued to brew a little beer in the tradition of his father, but he is 84 now, doesn’t drink and is in a nursing home. His last batch was for a guy with one leg. He was sick, and George felt sorry for him.
There have been plenty of people wanting the recipe, George said, but he knew they wouldn’t be making any. They were the type that had never seen a hard day’s work, and on top of that, “the one’s that do make it, don’t do it right,” he said.
“It’s plumb disheartening.”
The three-part story about Harvey McCoy was derived from Mike Duff’s Aug. 14, 1970, recording of McCoy and an interview with George McCoy and Lena McCoy Ward conducted Aug. 20, 2011, by the Herald’s Sharon Hayes and Kathy Richardson.
READ IT ALL
Click here to read part one:
http://www.houstonherald.com/news/the-story-of-an-ozarks-mountaineer-farmer-moonshiner-and-family/article_d18b78e0-64fe-11e4-8846-1bde0696dbaf.html
Click here to read part two:
http://www.houstonherald.com/news/texas-county-moonshiner-william-harvey-mccoy/article_3d00ab6a-6a84-11e4-b6fe-7f2ffdcea3f1.html