Looking down on a clear day from a bald on Dug Down Mountain you can see
the valley far below. The bald is sometimes called the sods--where the
trees can't grow because of high winds. This particular spot is called
Foley Sods after the Foleys who have lived here in the Dug Down
Mountains for generations. Looking closer from the high, green bald you
can see far below in the edge of a dilapidated orchard a lorn grave.
Overrun with ivy and thorns it is enclosed with a wire fence, sagging
and rusty and held together here and there with crooked sticks and
broken staves.
Ben Foley's grave it is, anyone whom you happen to meet along the way
will tell you, but your informant will say no more. If you have the time
and inclination to follow the footpath on around toward a cliff to the
right you may come upon old Jorde Foley sitting near on a log as if
keeping watch over the place. The old fellow will appraise you from head
to foot and either he will be glum, like the person you have passed on
the way, or he will invite you to rest a while. Then presently he falls
into easy conversation and before you are aware you have learned much
about Ben and Jorde Foley too.
It wasn't that Jorde had any objection to what Ben, his son, was doing,
but it was the things that happened when Ben brought home his bride from
Cartersville that caused Jorde to speak his mind. This day he went back
to the beginning of things.
"I've been makin' all my life right here in these Dug Down Mountains
alongside this clift," he said. "It's my land, my crop. And I've a right
to do with my corn whatever I'm a mind to. And Cynthie, my wife, many's
the time she taken turns with me breakin' up the mash, packin' the wood
to keep the fire under the still. We've set by waitin' for the run off.
And Ben, our boy, he learnt from watchin' us how to make good whiskey,
from the time he was a little codger. Sometimes Cynthie would keep an
eye out for the law. But we hated that part of it worser'n pizen. We
were in our rights and had no call to be treated like thieves in the
night. Pa made whiskey right here in these Dug Down Mountains same as
his'n before him, out of corn he raised on his own place and in them
days there wasn't ever the spyin' eyes of the law snoopin' around."
Jorde rolled his walking staff between his rough hands and looked away.
"Sometimes I'd change places with Cynthie whilst she tended the fire. We
made good whiskey," he said neither boastfully nor modestly. "We sold it
for an honest price. That's the way we learnt Ben to do. But, hi
crackies, what takes my hide and taller is when a son o' mine turns out
yaller. I never raised my boy for no chicanery." Old Jorde's voice
raised in indignation. However, when he spoke again there was a note of
tolerance even pity in his tone.
"Ben would never 'a' done it only for that Jezebel he married down to
Cartersville and brought home here to the mountains. Effie, like Delilah
that made mock of her man Samson, was the cause of it all. Ben just
nat'erly couldn't make whiskey fast enough to give that woman all her
cravin's and now you see where it got my poor boy. A man's a right,"
said the old fellow in deadly earnest, "to marry a girl he's growed up
with--stead of tryin' to get above his raisin'. See where it got my poor
boy," he repeated. The troubled eyes sought the neglected grave in the
scrubby orchard far below.
There was no marker, not even a rough stone from the mountain side at
head or foot like on the other Foley graves in the Foley burying ground
on the brow of the hill. Only the sagging fence enclosed Ben's resting
place. "It was hard to do," old Jorde said grimly, "but it had to be
so's no other Foley will follow Ben's course."
With that he slowly arose and led the way to a pile of soot-covered
stones.
"Now close here was where the thumpin' keg stood," he began to indicate
positions, "and yonder the still."
There was nothing but charred remnants of staves and rusty hoops left of
the barrel through which the copper worm had run, while the copper still
itself was reduced to a battered heap. The worm and the thumping keg and
all the essentials for making whiskey leaped into a living scene,
however, when Jorde Foley got to telling of the days when he and Cynthie
and young Ben, peaceable and contented, earned a meager living at the
craft.
"Set your still right about here," Jorde hovered over the remnants of
the stone furnace, "and you break your mash once in so often. A man's
got to know when it is working right. The weather has a heap to do with
it fermenting. Sometimes it takes longer than other times. No, you don't
stir it with a stick but a long wooden fork. I've whittled many a one."
He retrieved from the pile of stone what was left of the stirring fork.
"Have it long so you can retch far all around the barrel," he said,
measuring the fork against his own height. With unconcealed pride he
explained the various steps of making corn whiskey in his own primitive
way. He told how the thumping keg in which it was aged was first
carefully charred inside to add a tempting flavor, and how the barrel in
which the cornmeal and malt were placed was made of clean staves of oak
or chestnut, or whatever wood was at hand. The wood was cut green and
when the mash began to work the liquid caused the staves to swell and
thus make the barrel leak-proof.
Never once in his explanation did Jorde Foley say moonshine, or shine,
or mountain dew.
"Whiskey, pure corn whiskey," he repeated, "when it is treated right
won't harm no one. And when a body sees the first singlin' come
treaklin' out the worm, cooled by the cold water that this worm is
quiled in," he indicated the location of the barrel, "somehow there's a
heap of satisfaction in it. Seeing that clear whiskey, clear as a
mountain stream come treaklin' into the tin bucket or jug that is
settin' there to ketch it, it makes a man plum proud over his labors."
Jorde looked inward upon his thoughts. "Many a time me and Cynthie would
take a full bucket to a neighbor's when there was a frolic, set it in
the middle of the table with a gourd dipper in it, and let everyone help
hisself to a drink. Why, there was no harm in whiskey in my young day.
And us people up here didn't know or need no other medicine."
In the bat of an eye Jorde Foley explained how pure corn whiskey had
cured cases of croup, saved mothers in childbirth, cured children of
spasms and worms, and saved the life of many a man bitten by a
copperhead or suffering from sunstroke. "Once I saw Brock Pennington
stob Bill Tanner in the calf of the leg with a pitchfork. Bill he bled
like a stuck hog and we grabbed up a jug of whiskey and poured it on his
leg. Stopped the blood! No how," Jorde was off on another defense, "land
up here and in lots of places in these mountains is not fitten to farm
so we have allus made whiskey of it after exceptin' out enough for our
bread. Good, pure whiskey that never harmed no man that treated it
right, that's what we made. In Pa's day he sold it for fifty cents a
gallon. Us Foleys in my day sold it for a dollar a gallon and let the
other fellow pack it off and sell it for what he could get. Why, I had
knowin' of a man on Chester Creek in Fentress County over in Tennessee
that sold it for three dollars a gallon. But that is a plum outrage!"
Jorde spat vehemently halfway to the cliff.
"After Pa died, me and Mose Keeton got to makin' together. We halved the
corn and halved the work and halved the cash money and never no words
ever passed betwixt us. By the time Mose died my boy Ben taken his
place."
Only once did a smile light the grim face. "One day Cynthie and me was
busy here and Ben's pet pig followed him up here when he brought us a
snack to eat. The pig snooted around and found the place where we had
dumped the leavin's of the mash after we had took off the brine. Well,
sir, that pig just nat'erly gorged itself and directly it was tipsy as
fiddlesticks. I never saw such antic was out of a critter in my life. It
reeled to and fro and squealed and grunted and went round and round
tryin' to ketch its own tail. Finally it rolled down the hill. Ben
packed it back up again and it reeled around, its feet tangled and it
rolled down again. Kept that up till it got sober. Its eyes rolled back
in its head, it sunk down in a grassy spot over yonder and slept till
dark. It follered at Ben's heels meek as a lamb when we went down the
hill that night. That pig was too sick to eat or even sniff a nubbin of
corn for two whole days, just laid and groaned. 'Now, Ben,' says Cynthie
to our boy, 'you see what comes of gettin' tipsy.' And Ben Foley learnt
a lesson off the pig and never did take a dram too much."
Again Jorde's eyes sought the neglected grave far off. He looped back to
the story of his son. "Everything was peaceable here, though we did miss
Cynthie powerful after she died. But me and Ben made on the best we
could. We had a living from our whiskey. Then come Effie! That woman
nat'erly tore up the whole place. She kept gougin' Ben for more cash
money." Jorde pointed a condemning finger toward a ravine. "There's a
half dozen washtubs rustin' away under there."
A part of a zinc tub protruded from the brush heap. "One day," Jorde
continued, "unbeknown to Ben's wife, Effie, I snuck off up here away
from that Jezebel though she had talked no end about me being too old to
climb the mountain. 'You'll get a stroke, Jorde,' she'd warn me. 'You
best sit here in the cool, or feed the chickens or the hogs.' Effie was
ever finding something for me to do if I offered a word about comin' up
here to see how Ben was getting on. That made me curious. So I snuck off
from the house and come up here one day." Jorde's eyes turned toward the
ground. "When I come up on Ben I couldn't believe my own eyes. My boy
had a fire goin' not under just one but a half dozen tubs! What's left
of them are over yonder." He jerked a thumb toward the brush covered
ravine. "My boy Ben was stirring around not with the wood fork like he
had been learnt, but with a shovel!" Jorde lifted scandalized eyes. "A
rusty shovel, at that! He was talking in a big way to his helper--a
strange man to me. I come to find out he was a friend of Effie's from
Cartersville."
Jorde pondered a while. "Come to find out, to make a long story short,
Ben was cheatin' them that bought his whiskey, tellin' them it was a
year old when he knew in reason he'd just run it off maybe the night
before. Ben Foley was sellin' pizen!" Old Jorde Foley's voice trembled.
"That's all it was that he was makin'. Pizen that he forced to ferment
with stuff that Effie's friend, who used to work in the coal mines,
brought here. And Ben sellin' that pizen that burnt the stummick and the
brains out of men that drunk it. Hi gad!"--old Foley spat vehemently--"I
never raised my son to be no such thief! It was that Jezebel Effie that
led my boy to the sin of thievin'. She wanted more cash money than he
could earn honest with makin' good whiskey."
It was Ben's fear of prison, old Jorde explained bluntly, that caused
him to run from the law, and running he had stumbled and thereby stopped
a bullet.
"What the law didn't bust to pieces of them tubs and shovels and such, I
did," Jorde added with a note of satisfaction. For a moment he lapsed
into silence, then added gravely, "Ben just nat'erly disgraced us
Foleys." The father hung his head in shame. "Why, Cynthie would turn
over in her grave if she knew of him thievin' and runnin'--runnin' from
the law! It's such as that Jezebel with her carryin's on, temptin' men
to thievin' that's put an end to makin'--makin' good whiskey in these
Dug Down Mountains here in Georgia. Put an end to sellin' good pure
whiskey for an honest price like me and mine used to make."