Moonshine Nightmare

In the early to mid seventies, my mother, who was fourteen at the time, visited Alabama with her sister Imagene and her brother-in-law Marsley.  He made his living running moonshine and bootlegging.  My mother decided while on her visit to Alabama that she wanted to get drunk.  Marsley saw that there was a lesson to be learned, so he helped her out with an experience of a lifetime.  After the terrible moonshine experience that followed her trip to Alabama, my mother decided that she might want to “lay off the bottle” for a while.

            Imagene and Marsley lived on a farm in Winston County where there were hills everywhere, which provided excellent places for moonshine stills.  That is where my mother's experience all began.  There is a tale of a baby Indian being buried under a large cedar tree.  On stormy nights people swore they saw my uncle's deceased aunt rocking the baby Indian on the front porch swing.  People say my uncle's aunt was decapitated in a violent car accident on the property.

            My mother would not stop begging Marsley for moonshine; finally, he went into the house and got two jelly jars, one with water and the other with moonshine.  He told her that he'd let her drink the moonshine but that she couldn't get any more water than what he'd given her.  Slowly, she tilted her head back and took a sip and immediately started chugging all the water she could gulp down.  With only one sip of the stout liquor, she had used up all the water she'd been given.  My uncle had decided that she needed to be taught a lesson.  He made her drink all the rest of the moonshine without a drop of water to cool the fires in her mouth.  She became really sick.

            After everyone had turned in for the night, while my mother was lying in bed in a drunken stupor, a storm blew up without her realizing.  As a flash of lightning split the sky with a peal of thunder, my mom sat straight up in the bed.  In her intoxicated state she saw a figure moving toward her.  The hazy image of a headless woman holding a knife coming toward her startled her.  She jumped out of bed and shrieked, "Help!"  Then she ran out the door.  By the time Marsley and Imagene got to her room, she was already curled up under the covers in their bed.

            My mother obviously can't hold her liquor.  She'd come to Alabama to drink, but she got more than she bargained for when my long-dead great aunt tried to separate her drunken head from its resting place.  I don't think she tried that moonshine ever again.