Smokey Mountain Breakdown

Well, the sentence came down today for Popcorn Sutton's trial in the Federal Court. The news said everyone gasped in the courtroom. They are sending him for 18 months in federal prison for the weapons moonshine charge with 2 years supervised probation after that. I'm sure the Newport Pie Hole Plain Talk, will have some of the details in tomorrow's paper. I'm not actually too worried about him. I think he'll be a rock star in jail. Still, I understand he's taken this all pretty hard. Bottom line though--he's not going to stop doing what he does and the courts know that now.



If you want to know more about what Popcorn Sutton does, there's a documentary running of the Documentary Channel called The Last One. The director, Neal Hutchinson, sent me a copy and it's a really wonderful documentary on the traditional way moonshine used to be made up here in the hills.

Filmed in the mountains of North Carolina, The Last One is a journey deep into Southern Appalachia, and Appalachian culture, as seen through the lens of a mason jar. Lifelong moonshiner Popcorn Sutton returns to the southern highlands in his treasured A-Model Ford to seek a suitable location to run one final batch of traditional bootleg whiskey. Through the laborious process of clearing a site, building a furnace, brewing corn mash and distilling high proof moonshine, Sutton reveals the craft of traditional distillation as practiced by his forbears and reveals a lifetime of memories in the trade.

Now, I've seen photos of Popcorn's more current installations and know they don't resemble anything like this...The Last One is more about the way 'shine was made back in the day. And Popcorn has a dying swan tendency to proclaim he's making a "last" run, but as his court sentence proves, it's his inability to stop making illegal liquor that's the problem.

You can pick up a copy of The Last One at Neal Hutchinson's Sucker Punch Pictures. It's a good historical A to Zed of setting a still up and the music is really good too.