{"id":1051,"date":"2020-09-18T02:11:30","date_gmt":"2020-09-18T07:11:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tngenweb.org\/weakley\/?p=1051"},"modified":"2020-10-29T08:54:12","modified_gmt":"2020-10-29T13:54:12","slug":"white-lightnin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tngenweb.org\/weakley\/white-lightnin\/","title":{"rendered":"White Lightnin"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n

A Tale of “White Lightnin” in Weakley County<\/em><\/h2>\n\n\n\n


<\/big><\/big><\/big>A tale of “White Lightnin'” in Weakley County<\/big><\/big>
Happenings in and around Austin Springs – Submitted by Mary Bursell Maupin
(As told to her by Ola Maupin, Lillie Westmoreland, Maud Vincent and verified by Jack Maupin)<\/small><\/big><\/big><\/p>\n

<\/big><\/big>**Reprinted with permission from the Journal of the Jackson Purchase Historical Society, Vol. XXX, July 2003, pp. 115-119.<\/big><\/p>\n


<\/big><\/big>Weakley County, Tennessee \u2019s Austin Springs was a bustling little community in the early 1900s.\u00a0 Fount Gibson and C.C. McClain owned one of the two general mercantile stores.\u00a0 The brothers Chap and Clyde Johnson owned the other.\u00a0 Austin Springs also had a blacksmith shop, a gristmill and a sawmill that employed many of the residents of the community.

Austin Springs also had a three-story hotel that hosted guests from Chicago, St. Louis, Cincinnati and people from as far away as Philadelphia who came to take advantage of the mineral baths and drink the sparkling water promoted by the hotel.\u00a0 Miss Lottie Summers was the first switchboard operator at the hotel to take reservations over new long distance lines connecting the health resort to Kentucky \u2019s main switching system.\u00a0 Wes Maupin and Leslie Westmoreland often hitched the hotel\u2019s team and drove a surrey into Fulton to pick up guests from the Illinois Central Railroad depot.

Miss Hattie, Fount\u2019s Gibson\u2019s wife, made several trips to St. Louis during the year to purchase dress materials and millinery for the ladies of the community.\u00a0 Miss Hattie would often ask the ladies whether there was any particular item they desired from St. Louis .\u00a0 Sometimes she would take with her a sketch of a hat or a pattern for a dress one of the women would ask her to look for.\u00a0 Often the McClain girls would ask for a certain piece of dress material or a sophisticated hat their mother could bring back from her buying trip.\u00a0 They were never disappointed in her selections.

Gibson and McClain or the Johnsons sold almost everything that any farmer or his family would need all year.\u00a0 A big pot-bellied stove sat in the middle of the store to warm the customers while they waited to have their shipping lists filled.

But I have not named all of the businesses in and around the little community of Austin Springs.

Many evening, just at dusk, little streams of smoke could be seen filtering through sycamore and cypress treetops.\u00a0 It was smoke form the cash crop those who made it call \u201cwhite lightnin\u2019.\u201d\u00a0 These \u201dcorn squeezin\u2019s\u201d sold by the keg or the mason jar.\u00a0 Most area grocers knew who operated stills by the volume of sugar the bootlegger bought.\u00a0 Home brew could hardly be distilled without the sugar it took to ferment the corn.\u00a0 To rid themselves of incriminating residues, moonshiners fed hogs the leftover mash.\u00a0 After indulging themselves, the hogs would squeal and carry on and sidle back to the trough for seconds and thirds.

Bootleg whiskey-making wasn\u2019t a profession talked about in the open.\u00a0 Strangers dared not ask too many questions and certainly not the directions to one of these \u201csmokestacks.\u201d\u00a0 Most whiskey-making folks by custom shied away from strangers, fearing revenuers.\u00a0 It was said that if a revenuer ever found one of the stills, he would never make it back alive.\u00a0 A few of the older children sometimes made their spending money by keeping a \u201clook-out\u201d for revenuers.\u00a0 Some were paid as much as ten cents a day for sitting atop a house or barn looking for any alien vehicle or stranger riding horseback down the dusty road.\u00a0\u00a0

But three of the McClain sisters wouldn\u2019t protect their husband\u2019s family business.\u00a0 Maud, the oldest, married Rube Vincent and live upon the hill east of the family homestead, where she and her sisters had grown up.\u00a0 Lillie, the third daughter, married Leslie Westmoreland, whose father owned a sawmill in the area.\u00a0 Leslie learned his trade as a teamster and logger from his father.\u00a0 Ola McClain, youngest of the three sisters and the twin of Ollie, married Wesley Maupin on Sprout\u2019s Levy.\u00a0 At age seventeen, Wes turned teamster and logger, too.\u00a0 Often he and Leslie worked together for their father-in-law, snaking logs out of the swamp with an ox team.\u00a0 Wesley and Leslie each lived with his family in a two-room house near the edge of the swamp running parallel to Powell Creek.

Early one June morning Maud came to visit these two younger sisters.\u00a0 The three always had a good time together, laughing at stories each told about different characters in the family.\u00a0 Lilly and Ola were standing on either side of the iron wash pot out in the yard that morning.\u00a0 Each was doing family laundry.\u00a0 They had boiled the first batch of clothes and were hanging their wash on the line.\u00a0 When Maud walked up, the sisters gave her a hug, and then all three started talking at the same time.\u00a0 Somehow in their conversation, the unpleasant subject of whisky came up.\u00a0 All three women were violently opposed to any kind of liquor and especially overindulgence by some members of their large extended family.

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cWe oughta break up ever\u2019 still in this county!\u201d\u00a0 Lillie bent over to chunk another stick under the wash pot.
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Ola didn\u2019t want this sensitive subject dropped:\u00a0 \u201cWell,\u201d she said, \u201cif ya\u2019ll will help me, we\u2019ll get the ax and put a end to all this foolishness.\u201d
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cHow could just the three of us do such a thing, Oler?\u201d Maud asked.
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cI\u2019ll show you.\u00a0 Come on, Lil.\u00a0 We\u2019ll get the axes from the shed.\u201d
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 When Ola and Lillie got to the lean-to, Lillie grabbed the ax nearest the door and Ola called to Maud:
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cThere\u2019s only two axes here, Maud.\u00a0 What tool you gonna take?\u201d
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cI reckon that there hoe leanin\u2019 ag\u2019in the tree,\u201d Maud decided.
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Lillie banked the fire under the wash pot, and the three sisters tramped off towards the woods and an opening between oak trees.\u00a0 They soon stepped along heavy planks of timber laid down for a walkway through the swamp.\u00a0 The woods were dark, the odors musty.\u00a0 No one said a word until they reached the high ground where the still was hid.

Finding the site, the women were astonished at the length of the worm\u2019s copper tubing and all of the other whiskey makin\u2019s.\u00a0 Mash barrels were covered by a cap that had formed over the corn, sugar and yeast while it was fermenting.\u00a0 But the copper kettle sat cold.\u00a0 It had been a whiles since a fire had been lit under it.\u00a0 Copper tubing wormed its way from the cooker to the condenser sitting in the creek.\u00a0 Many moonshiners called this a \u201cthump keg\u201d because it had to be smacked regularly to make the very hot steam flowing through copper condense into \u201cfirewater.\u201d\u00a0 A short copper pipe curved from the condenser into a huge crockery jug stationed to catch the whiskey dripping from the pipe.\u00a0 When this container was full, the alcohol was poured into a five or ten-gallon charcoal-lined keg, sealed and then set aside, ready for sale.

Many such kegs were stacked along the tree line.\u00a0 Others sat empty, their insides burned to a dark char.\u00a0 These were ready to receive another cook-off of pure \u201cWhite lightnin\u2019.\u201d\u00a0 Sometimes late at night, wagons or big trucks would pull up to one of the family farmhouses.\u00a0 The farmer would light his lantern and lead the drivers to the edge of the woods.\u00a0 Just about sun-up, the wagon or truckbed with a heavy tarp tied over it headed for other parts of the county or state.

\u201cLordy me, Oler!\u201d Maud cried.\u00a0 \u201cDo you think anybody\u2019ll catch us?\u00a0 This may take a mite longer than we can stay away from the house.\u201d \u201cWe\u2019re gonna do what we can today, Maud.\u00a0 You can take that hoe if you want to and pull the sawdust away from the kegs, and me and Lillie\u2019ll lay our axes to them barrels.\u00a0 Let\u2019s get started, an\u2019 if\u2019n you have to say someth\u2019, whisper.\u00a0 You never know who\u2019s in these woods.\u201d

The sisters began to lay waste to the family still and its whiskey makin\u2019s.\u00a0 Two hours later they raised their hands triumphantly and pronounced the job well done.\u00a0 Copper tubing lay scattered in foot-length pieces.\u00a0 The big copper cooker sat cockeyed looking over charcoal kegs with dents knocked all the way around the size of cooking pots.\u00a0 Fresh spring water flowed over the smashed condense.\u00a0 Hundred-gallon barrels of mash lay with bungholes smashed.\u00a0 Broken staves stuck out of the sawdust like fence posts, their hoops twisted like licorice twist.\u00a0 Spilled alcohol trickled through sawdust, finding its way down the hill finally and into the swamp.\u00a0 Kegs scattered here and there lay crushed and emptied of clear whiskey.\u00a0 It would be a long time before the moon would shine on this whiskey still.

On their way back through the woods, smelling like the sour mash they had destroyed, the sisters Maud, Lillie and Ola agreed they would never tell a living soul who could have wreaked such havoc.\u00a0 The three knew the unspoken law.\u00a0 At least now, their husbands wouldn\u2019t maim or kill revenuers trying to break up the family cash crop.\u00a0 The truth about who broke up this busthead business wasn\u2019t supposed to be revealed until the last still-buster died.

Somebody must have talked.<\/big><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Web Design & Graphics by MaryCarol<\/em><\/strong><\/h6>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Tale of “White Lightnin” in Weakley County A tale of “White Lightnin’” in Weakley CountyHappenings in and around Austin Springs – Submitted by Mary Bursell Maupin(As told to her by Ola Maupin, Lillie Westmoreland, Maud Vincent and verified by Jack Maupin) **Reprinted with permission from the Journal of the Jackson Purchase Historical Society, Vol. Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"template-gutenberg.php","format":"standard","meta":{"advgb_blocks_editor_width":"full","advgb_blocks_columns_visual_guide":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1051","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"author_meta":{"display_name":"MaryCarol","author_link":"https:\/\/tngenweb.org\/weakley\/author\/marycarol\/"},"featured_img":null,"coauthors":[],"tax_additional":{"categories":{"linked":["Uncategorized<\/a>"],"unlinked":["Uncategorized<\/span>"]}},"comment_count":"0","relative_dates":{"created":"Posted 6 years ago","modified":"Updated 5 years ago"},"absolute_dates":{"created":"Posted on September 18, 2020","modified":"Updated on October 29, 2020"},"absolute_dates_time":{"created":"Posted on September 18, 2020 2:11 am","modified":"Updated on October 29, 2020 8:54 am"},"featured_img_caption":"","series_order":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tngenweb.org\/weakley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1051","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tngenweb.org\/weakley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tngenweb.org\/weakley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tngenweb.org\/weakley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tngenweb.org\/weakley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1051"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/tngenweb.org\/weakley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1051\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2734,"href":"https:\/\/tngenweb.org\/weakley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1051\/revisions\/2734"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tngenweb.org\/weakley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1051"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tngenweb.org\/weakley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1051"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tngenweb.org\/weakley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}