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More Fun with Booze and Books
May 10, 2007
Got fond memories of 1920s Appalachia, running jugs of contraband for your Uncle Sousey? Interested in recreating the boozey experiences of your favorite character from Southern fiction? Care to spend the night blinking hard and falling off chairs?
If you answered yes to any of those questions, you'll want to pick up an excellent new how-to, just out this month from Lark Books, called Moonshine!
I know what you're thinking: isn't moonshine the stuff what makes hillbillies go crazy? No worries: with the expert guidance of author Matthew B. Rowley--a food historian with a genuine Masters of Health Care--there's very little chance you'll wind up, say, dead from the waist down.
In fact, not only is moonshine safe, it may very well save your life. Just ask a country doctor from my home state:
"Even today...some doctors still prescribe medicinal whiskey. One rural doctor from Georgia...told me that he always stocks moonshine confiscated by the local sherriff for certain patients who hold high regard for moonshine as a tonic and restorer but don't put much stock in pills and pharmacies. 'If I prescribe pills and a shot of moonshine, then they know they're getting real medical treatment. Otherwise, they just don't take the mdicine.'"
It's tricky work making moonshine, and not for the impatient, but well worth it for the medicinal benefits and, of course, the soothing taste of burning gum tissue. I was at school in Nashville, working a big fat writer's conference when I tried it for the first (and, so far, only) time. A friend from small-town Tennessee brought a big, beautiful, crystalline jug of some stuff his dad scored. Setting up the auditorium for the keynote speaker, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Yusef Komunyakaa, we knocked back gulp after gulp (chased with gulps of coca-cola). It went down like napalm. It rendered me unable to stop blinking. It made my chair extra slippery. Later, it made a half-dozen babbling Komunyakaas spin out across the stage. Most of all, it made me want more of it--right away. Still does, actually.
Posted by Marc Schultz on May 10, 2007 | Comments (0)
