Before my time but i've been told, you never come back from Copperhead Rd.

[TheHobbyist]

[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvaEJzoaYZk"]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvaEJzoaYZk[/ame]


...I still remember that rumbling sound...

 

[Hapworth]

I learned a thing or two from ol' Charlie don't you know...

 

[1morethan8]

The old car being driven in the video isn't a "big black Dodge"...
it's a 1950 Chrysler Windsor.

Oh... the one next to the barn is a 1950 Dodge!

 

[RobertJ.]

I was listening to that exact video not more than an hour ago!

I have a playlist I call "Jammin' Country and Blues Rock" and that's on it, along with stuff like "Memphis in the Meantime" and "Dixie Chicken". My wife is upstairs watching a movie, and I was trying to drown her out!

 

[Watchdog]

I always liked that song. It's kinda funny, but people these days sort of romanticize those mountain bootleggers and illegal whiskey makers. But that was some serious business years and years ago, and probably still is.

In 1970, two of my buddies and I were coon hunting in Ashe County, North Carolina. We were running two Black and Tans and two Redbones. Great dogs that could run all night long. Well, they treed and were baying and howling to beat the band and here me and my buddies came huffin' and puffin' up the hill and into a little clearing and we run up on this still. It was cooking, and everything was laid out just so...cartons of jars and lids, bags of sugar, just all the fixins. Even some little hand built wheeled carts to haul the stuff out on. I'd never seen a still before. I thought it looked like some kind of Rube Goldberg jury rigged water heater or something....just tacked together out of whatever had been available.

So we stopped to look for a minute or two, then Tommy says, "Uh-oh." And I'm goin', "What you mean, 'uh-oh?'"

He points over beside the still and there's a cigarette laying on the ground. Still burning.

It sorta turned into one of those Three Stooges Moments where everybody looks at the other fella, then starts runnin' and trippin' over each other trying to get away from something, you know? We got out of there about as fast as it takes you to read this paragraph.

Rounded up the dogs, didn't even mess with the coon needless to say. Just got our dogs and left.

I look back on that now and laugh...Tommy's passed on and Chip moved to somewhere in Mississippi...but that was forty-six years ago and things were somewhat different up in the mountains then than they are now.

But truth be known, I believe if you get far enough up in the North Carolina mountains now...say on up past Marshall and Weaverville and that area, out deep into some of the hollers (yeah, they're still called hollers), things haven't changed all that much from forty or fifty years ago, or even earlier.

Copperhead Road, indeed.

 

[1morethan8]

The only county in North Carolina where alcohol sales were not permitted at all (even in a town) was Graham County but this is no longer the case, as the new Town of Fontana, incorporated in 2011, allows beer and wine sales, on and off-premises, in its municipal boundaries, at the town store and at a restaurant, though the remainder of Graham County is still dry.

But, Graham County has never been truly "dry"! One of the most famous moonshiners lived in the county as well as nearby Cocke County, Tennessee.

Guess who...

 

[model70hunter]

I always liked that song. It's kinda funny, but people these days sort of romanticize those mountain bootleggers and illegal whiskey makers. But that was some serious business years and years ago, and probably still is.

In 1970, two of my buddies and I were coon hunting in Ashe County, North Carolina. We were running two Black and Tans and two Redbones. Great dogs that could run all night long. Well, they treed and were baying and howling to beat the band and here me and my buddies came huffin' and puffin' up the hill and into a little clearing and we run up on this still. It was cooking, and everything was laid out just so...cartons of jars and lids, bags of sugar, just all the fixins. Even some little hand built wheeled carts to haul the stuff out on. I'd never seen a still before. I thought it looked like some kind of Rube Goldberg jury rigged water heater or something....just tacked together out of whatever had been available.

So we stopped to look for a minute or two, then Tommy says, "Uh-oh." And I'm goin', "What you mean, 'uh-oh?'"

He points over beside the still and there's a cigarette laying on the ground. Still burning.

It sorta turned into one of those Three Stooges Moments where everybody looks at the other fella, then starts runnin' and trippin' over each other trying to get away from something, you know? We got out of there about as fast as it takes you to read this paragraph.

Rounded up the dogs, didn't even mess with the coon needless to say. Just got our dogs and left.

I look back on that now and laugh...Tommy's passed on and Chip moved to somewhere in Mississippi...but that was forty-six years ago and things were somewhat different up in the mountains then than they are now.

But truth be known, I believe if you get far enough up in the North Carolina mountains now...say on up past Marshall and Weaverville and that area, out deep into some of the hollers (yeah, they're still called hollers), things haven't changed all that much from forty or fifty years ago, or even earlier.

Copperhead Road, indeed.

Good story sir. Nothing like walking in on a murder and you may be the guest of honor.

I spent 20 some weeks in eastern Tn, Johnson City going to telephone engineering schools at Gray Station. I explored the Smokies and fished every weekend. The locals said don't go too far up a 2 tire track road. In some places they shoot first and never ask questions. Mostly weed by then.

There was a landlocked 160 acre farm north of my Dad's farm in the Ozarks. It and most of the large farms did not have the owner living on their farms, they moved to town. We had permission to hunt 1500-2000 acres. We were the only ones.

There was a steep and narrow holler on this farm. In some places it could almost be confused with a bluff.

My Bro and I were squirrel hunting and decided to go into the abyss so to speak. Back where it got so narrow one could almost jump from one side to the other we found a cave entrance, Neat stuff for kids. WE did the look for Copperheads and Rattler thing and eased in, We immediately saw daylight on the far end. The cave was probably 20 yards long, not very wide and was L shaped. It also had a spring running out of the high side.

An old still, Copper tubes, and lots of old still items. It took me a while to recognize it for what it was but then I'd heard how such things were made at family reunions from folks on my mothers mothers side.

The old gent that owned it bought it in the 30's from someone who went under. It had a 2 room house on top of the ridge. It had the inside walls covered with cardboard with newspapers glued down over it and them wall paper, I'm sure it was sealed better and warmer than the average shack but they heated with wood, that place would have gone up like gas if a fire started. He kept old odds and ends in there, tools he still used to split rails and the like. I still have a piece of the paper, it was the STL Post Dispatch or Globe and there was a story about Dizzy Deans game the day before.

This must have been the home spot for the still maker in the cave, No other houses around for miles.

It was the perfect spot for a still, miles out into the hills, a year round dry and warm in the winter or cool in the summer with water, lots of Missouri Hickory and Oak trees for the fire all around you and then everyone heated and cooked with wood, whos gonna notice another bit of smoke. All the river bottom farmers grew corn back then. The still was not destroyed, it fell apart from disuse.

But then as the crow flies and the mule walks it was only about 3 air miles to my deep woods relatives farm.

After you don't go blind on the fist sip it isn't bad stuff. Just don't have those designer labels or that pesky tax stamp thing to block the view of the clear liquid or cover the famous Mason or Ball Jars name.

 

[5-Shot]

The song is about the transition in the hills around here from moonshine to grass. The next production shift has been a lot less colorful. Sadly, this generation makes meth.

Oh yes, the picture is of Popcorn Sutton, a famous moonshiner who reportedly killed himself rather than being taken by the Feds. Locals believe pretty strongly that his grave is empty. I kinda hope so.

Ed

 

[petepeterson]

The song is about the transition in the hills around here from moonshine to grass. The next production shift has been a lot less colorful. Sadly, this generation makes meth.

Oh yes, the picture is of Popcorn Sutton, a famous moonshiner who reportedly killed himself rather than being taken by the Feds. Locals believe pretty strongly that his grave is empty. I kinda hope so.

Ed

For some reason, this song came to mind when I heard about the (almost) entire family murdered in rural Ohio. It's a different set of rules out there.

 

[Bkreutz]

I lived on Copperhead Road (just north of Fayetteville, GA). I found out why they called it that the first time it cooled down dramatically after a hot day. (all the copperheads slithered up onto the nice warm asphalt to stay warm, it was a "crunchy" drive into town that night.

They renamed that road to Neely Rd while I was living there, I think because it was scaring prospective buyers away.

 

[ostlund]

I lived on Copperhead Road (just north of Fayetteville, GA). I found out why they called it that the first time it cooled down dramatically after a hot day. (all the copperheads slithered up onto the nice warm asphalt to stay warm, it was a "crunchy" drive into town that night.

They renamed that road to Neely Rd while I was living there, I think because it was scaring prospective buyers away.

Didn't know about the crunchies. I've also read somewhere the county got sick and tired of replacing all the Copperhead Rd signs. I' like to have one. Be sure to explore Steve's other albums. He's a continuation of outlaw country.

 

[1morethan8]

The title song "Copperhead Road" tells of a Vietnam War veteran, scion of a rural moonshine bootlegging clan, who returns home to Johnson County, Tennessee but decides instead to enter the marijuana business which is shown by the line, "I'll take the seed from Colombia and Mexico". Copperhead Road was an actual road near Mountain City, Tennessee although it has since been renamed as Copperhead Hollow Rd. due to theft of road signs bearing the song's name.

 

[i1afli]

"[big black Dodge]...bought it at an auction at the Mason's Lodge"

I think of this song every time I see a Masonic Lodge anywhere...especially the one in Knoxville, since he mentions Knoxville in the song.