Moonshining in Kentucky's Clay County "The Sheriff On The Spot"
By: Col. T. C. Sizemore

Contributing writer, Thomas C. Sizemore, age 89, is a veteran journalist and a writer of vast experience and creativity. Col. Sizemore owned and operated weekly newspapers in Kentucky and Tennessee, over a span of 40 years. Sizemore also served as Area correspondent for "Time" and "Life" magazines. A Native of Clay County, Kentucky, Col. Sizemore saw action in the Western Pacific, under Gen. Douglas McArthur, during World War II.
Subsequent to the war, Col. Sizemore ran for the office of sheriff and became famous for his campaign against moonshine traffickers in Clay County.

Moonshining in Kentucky's Clay County
"The Sheriff On The Spot"
By: Col. T. C. Sizemore

To be high sheriff of one of the mountain counties in Kentucky, during the heyday of the moonshine traffic, was to live at the vortex of wildly agitated passions and events. But to better comprehend that volatile carburetion of time, fervor and circumstance, as well as the dangers it posed for law-enforcement officers, it is necessary to reflect upon the social, cultural and historical ferment that produced the mountain people themselves.

Sheriff Sizemore samples confiscated "shine" as trusted deputies, (L to R: Ford Collett, Charlie Byrd and Cecil Martin) look on....
Photo courtesy of Lexington Herald-Leader - Dec. 20, 1958  

TODAY - Clay County Sheriffs face a similar type problem only with different products such as marijuana and "deadly" methamphetamine.  Former Sheriff Edd Jordan is shown here with a confiscated "pot" plant complete with buds.
Photo courtesy of These Truckin' Times Febuary issue 1996

Daniel Boone passed through the Cumberland Gap and penetrated into the Bluegrass country in 1769. Boone, the members of his party and the straggling handfuls of settlers who immediately followed, were a hardy, adventurous breed, to be sure. But they were also many other things; they were ruffians, cutthroats, trappers, traders and ordinary men and women who, seeing the clouds of war with England massing on the eastern horizon, had decided that it was a propitious time to push westward.....

DARK AND BLOODY GROUND

But for whatever their reasons in coming west, their coming was viewed as a trespass by the Shawnee, Iroquois, Cherokee and other American Indian tribes who had long coveted and contested possession of this "dark and bloody ground." Many battles would be fought and much blood would stain the earth in purchase of the first meager settlements in Kentucky.

INTERMARRIAGES WERE NOT UNCOMMON

Not withstanding the strife between Kentucky settlers and American Indians they sought to displace, intermarriages were not uncommon. And the fusions of these bloods, over many generations, would lend their strenth and character to many Kentucky families.

By the end of the Revolutionary War in 1783, settlers were floating down the rivers and swarming through the Cumberland Gap to expand the first tenuous settlements. Originally, all settlements in Kentucky had political ties to Virginia. These ties were severed in 1792 when Kentucky became the 15th state of the Union.

HARDSHIPS, HEARTACHES AND DANGERS

Most of the hardships, heartaches and dangers attending the lives of the early settlers served to strengthen their bonds and to fortify their resolve as wilderness people. It was not until the advent of the Civil War in 1861, that Kentuckians would be confronted by socio-political events, the puissance of which would shatter this wilderness solidarity. For, although Kentucky never seceded from the Union,and although most Kentuckians fought on the side of the Union, thousands of Kentuckians marched off to fight for the Confederacy. And the peculiar bitterness engendered by that fratricidal war created familial wounds and social schisms, many of which would remain unhealed and disjoined across the span of generations.

TIME CREEPS, SORE FOOTED AND WEARY

Those eastern Kentucky natives who survived the carnage of the Civil War limped homeward with broken bodies, minds and spirits, to the verdant haunts and hollows of the Appalachian Highlands. There in their mountain fastnesses where time creeps sore footed and weary, and change comes grudgingly like a stubborn child, those war-ravaged veterans turned to the task of eking out their meager existence in an unyielding, unsparing land....

COAL, TOBACCO AND WHISKEY

The state-wide economy, founded principally upon the pillars of coal, horses, tobacco and whiskey, remained cruelly depressed in the Appalachian region. There was timber in the mountains and abundant coal beneath it, but all to often these mountain treasures were syphoned off by carpetbagging interests from outside the region or state, leaving the mountain people with nightmarish moonscapes of denuded hills and orphan banks, and bitter resentment towards outsiders.

INFAMOUS FOR POVERTY

Generation after generation of mountain people saw their lives misshaped by the mean subsistence of abject poverty for which the region had long since become infamous. Sons followed their fathers down into the bowels of the earth, scratching out their meager livings and--all to often--digging their own tombs, while mountain wives and mothers listened guardedly for the first crushing rumors of disaster. An endless succession of foreign wars hurled mountain sons into the breeches of enemy canons, leaving foreign beaches wet with blood, and the mountains wet with tears.. And in a land where hopes was fleeting as a fox before hard-pressing hounds, bitterness and despair became bred into a people.

TRAPPERS BARTER WHISKEY

Then there was whiskey in the mountains--red and white. Always in the mountains there had been whiskey. The earliest trappers and traders had bartered whiskey to the American Indians for furs and other native goods, while the domestic manufacture of liquor--like the making of homemade bread--had persisted in rural America since Colonial times. And, to the extent that this practice predated the goverment and govermental decree, it was held by many rural Americans to be a right transcendent to the regulatory powers of the goverment.

"ILLEGAL" WHISKEY

The prodigious growth in the manufacture of "illegal" whiskey that erupted in the border states, the south and southwest, is believed to have been a reaction to heavy federal liquor taxes levied in 1862. In some places, and at least to some degree, the manuefacture of non-revenue whiskey was an atempt to thwart Union war efforts. Dubbed "moonshine" because it had to be manufactured secretly--often at night and by the light of the moon--this illlicit liquor would flourish far beyond the war that accelerated its production. And nowhere would it flourish more notable than in the Appalachian region of Kentucky.

JENNY BARNS AND HONKY-TONKS

Yes, there was whiskey in the mountains--red and white. And there were road houses, jenny barns and honky-tonks of every description--places where men and women so inclined could temporarily anesthetize themselves from lives attended by hardships and sorrows. And the whiskey would mingle with the hardships, sorrow, bitterness and resentment; the fists would fly; the guns would blaze; women would scream; and red blood would flow with the whiskey--red and white.

COMMODITY ROLLS SWELL TO 5,000

Compounding the daily hardships of mountainlife, a massive rail strike in the 1950s profoundly affected the coal industry and smaller businesses, throwing hundreds of people out of work. The commodity rolls swelled from 4,000 to 5,000 persons, desperately in need of goverment surplus foods such as flour, meal, cheese, peanut butter, pork and other meat products. Hunger and uncertainty created enormous social pressures--pressures which often as not, manifested themselves in increased drinking and the concomitant increase in domestic and other forms of violence. Family feuds would erupt without warning--often with a tragic loss of life. Every week saw someone assaulted, shot or killed. And in all to many instances the pale specter of white whiskey loomed over the violence.....

Caught in the middle of this mindless bloodletting and bottomless despair were thousands of decent, God-fearing mountian people who only wanted to provide secure and safe environments for their families, to rear and educate their children, and to live quiet, honorable lives. It was the frustrated yearnings of these fine people that brought my blood to a boil and set me on the campaign trail.