Uncle Bud and Uncle
Jessie were two of the best moonshiners in Johnston County. Unfortunately, they
did their own 'taste testing' and most of the time the revenuers were a tad
smarter than they were. So we only saw them occasionally. They drove the same
old rusty Studebaker truck all the time and most of the fenders were just a
memory. Each wheel wanted to go in a different direction and I believe they
were the inventors of 'straight pipes'. You could hear them coming from away
off And they thought that if they put a layer of straw over the 'shine' in the
back of that truck it would be pretty well hidden.
One afternoon in August they
were out to the house paying their respects to Grandma Estelle, and Bo Beasley
came running into the house yelling that the revenuers were sneaking up through
the cornfield. Course it won't true. (That boy always did have a mean streak).
Anyway, Uncles Bud and Jessie took off through the cotton patch and dumped the
corn likker into the spring on the way. In just a few seconds they were
bouncing down the Old Stage road heading for Beaufort County.
The livestock
would drink out of that spring and in just a short while every chicken on the
place was laying as stiff as a poker and dead to the world. Grandma Estelle
cried awhile and then put us to work plucking chickens. We plucked chickens up
till time to go to the 'camp meeting' and gospel sing at the Shilo Hard Rock
Baptist Church. We left the chickens laying in a pile and figured to finish
them up by lantern light later that night. We all had a rousing time and
sometime later I will tell you a little about some of the religions we have
down here.
When we got back to the house later that evening all of the chickens
were gone. We figured that the 'no account' Hutch family who lived just up the
holler had taken them. Kilgore Hutch was about the worst of the lot. The next
morning, at sunrise, we were awakened by a rooster crowing. They jest won't no
way. That rooster had been laying dead with the other chickens last night. When
we got to the back porch and looked, the back yard was full of bald chickens
that we had plucked. Grandma finally figured out what Uncles Bud and Jessie
had done and that the chickens hadn’t been dead at all, but just passed out
drunk.
Bob Gurkin (posted by Brother Rick)
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