Shine On Harvest Moonshine
by Smilin' Jack Costello 

Monday, Oct. 29, 2001
Shake up that Mason jar, there, Shorty. You see how them bubbles form? How they split right down the middle, just like a ol’ zipper? That’s how you know you got you a good jar o’ ‘shine. This here’s some o’ ol’ Clem’s best. Taste that, Shorty... whoa, not too much, now! That stuff’ll put hair in your ears and make your pecker stand up and pay attention! Don’t it? Huh?

Hee hee... ol’ Clem’s about the best ‘shine-stiller goin’ anymore, Shorty. Learnt it from his daddy, who learnt it from his daddy afore him. I guess that tradition goes way back. Anywho, ain’t nobody does ‘shine like Clem. Pass me that Mason jar afore it’s all gone, wouldja, Shorty? I need me another snort.

You remember how Clem was havin’ all that trouble with them hippies up there near his place not too long ago? They was a wild, raggedy bunch, yessir. All shaggy and like that. They was about eight or fifteen of ‘em, runnin’ around half-nekkid there in the hollow, and they was so hairy couldn’t no one tell the boys from the girls. All they did was talk about free love and smoke that there herojuana all day, I tell you, it was damn disgustin’ is all it was. You could ask anybody.

Clem, now, he didn’t cotton much to people too close to his works, seein’ as how it might draw attention to what he was doin’ up there. So every oncet in a while, he’d take a few shots at that ol’ hippie house, just kinda friendly-like, you know, plinkin’ away, not really aimin’ at no one. That wasn’t no big deal until one time, I guest he jus’ got a little too close, and he winged a couple o’ them hippies, and Lordy, you shoulda heard the screamin’ and the carryin’ on like Satan hisself was flyin’ around inside that ol’ shack. Them hippies was runnin’ around like wrung-necked chickens, ever’ which way but up. Ol’ Clem near laughed hisself to death that night, watchin’ that bunch.

What finally got rid of ‘em, though, was when ol’ Clem brought a few copperheads back from the Pentecostal service and tossed ‘em in the window late one Sunday night. Come Monday afternoon, they wasn’t no more hippies to be found nowhere in the hollow, and Clem was just as happy as a ol’ blue-tick hound under a shady porch. He went on down to that ol’ hippie shack, and poked around inside, just to make sure they wasn’t none o’ them still hidin’ in there. He said the smell o’ that herojuana they smoked and them patchy-oily sticks they burned like to make him heave his guts up, but he stayed in there long enough to find a few things.

They was all kind o’ them Orientalist rugs and such, and he brought a few of ‘em home to patch up his ol’ place, even though he said the colors and the patterns on ‘em was enough to make you dizzy if you looked at ‘em too long. The other thing he found was some kind o’ hippie still. They was all these big ol’ glass tubes and beakers and that, and they had them a Mason jar full o’ clear liquid, just like ‘shine. Only when Clem tasted it, it didn’t taste nothin’ like ‘shine. Fact is, it didn’t taste nothin’ like nothin’, is what he said. But after he carted all that stuff back to his place, he said he spent the rest o’ the day talkin’ to his dead gran’pappy and watchin’ the trees breathe.

He figgered it musta been the hippie ‘shine that did him like that, so the next day, he went back to the ol’ hippie shack and brought up the whole hippie still and all them jars of chemicals and everythin’ they had there. He says maybe he learnt a few things about makin’ ‘shine from them hippies, but I don’t know. I never had no problem with the stuff he been makin’ all these years, you know what I mean, Shorty? Ol’ Clem’s stuff is the best around, and that’s one hunnert percent true. You could ask anyone.

Hey Shorty, lookit what I can do with my hand. I can catch my own hand! Lookit that, wouldja! Wouldja just- hey, Shorty, how come your face is meltin’?