potholes full of shine

I never made no liquor myself. But I seen my share of stills and always knew who run ’em.

When I was a boy I helped hide it all the time for Uncle Poodle. I dug pot holes all over that mountain. Filled ’em with ten gallon jugs of mountain lightening.

He didn’t put his own youguns to it. They liked it too much. Why, I seen ’em boys drink shine from a paint bottle and fall over half dead. Get up the next day and do it again. They’d a drunk themselves to death if they had their way about it.

Like poor ole Johnny Overbaugh. He siphoned off some second run from his cousin’s still. Got in a greed and tried to get it all down him so he wouldn’t have to share. Ten seconds to drink it and ten seconds to die. That stuff bust his heart. It’d do that to you. I seen it happen. More than once.

Lucky Uncle Poodle’s boys didn’t know where their daddy kept his.

He trusted me though. Cause I didn’t like the stuff. Never touched a drop in my life.

Hezekiah Bishop
Puckett Ridge Road, West Virginia