🚀 go-pugleaf

Michael Wade <cellar@mwade.demon.co.uk> wrote:

>For the record, and in answer to an earlier question of yours, I am
>English born, of English parents.  Of course, I hardly need to tell you:
>I reek something rotten - you'll have caught the stench in Vancouver by
>now.    

A man in Croydon once boasted to me that he hadn't changed his
vest/undershirt for several years and he certainly smelled as if it
were true. Mind you, his companion, from Dublin, was quick to add that
he was also a long-term vest wearer - they were a malodorous pair!

Indeed, there seemed (in those days anyway) to be a general prejudice
against washing. Of course it wasn't easy to keep one's body clean in
their particular circumstances. The Croydon house had no bathroom and
the occupants literally washed in a tin bath in the middle of the
kitchen floor. The lavatory was outside, attached to the house, so one
had to go out the backdoor in all weathers to use it. 

The wife of the family told me that not so long before it had been a
shed at the foot of the garden and they had paid to have it moved as
the landlord had no interest in doing anything about it. The family
comprised a father, mother and four girls, all packed into two tiny
bedrooms and a front room which had been converted for sleeping use.
The only social room was the kitchen.

In the Army it was quite common to hear that so-and-so had been the
victim of a scrubbing in the showers by his squad. I concluded that
this antipathy to water was a hangover from the days when water was
dangerous, being associated with diseases such as the Plague. Older
people felt the same way about hospitals and would become panicked if
forced to enter one.

The housing in my own part of the world was little better. Most people
cooked over the hearth fire, using a swing-out iron gallows
arrangement (whose name I've forgotten) which had arms for suspending
a kettle and a griddle or a pot. People warmed their homes with peat,
which has an attractive flame but doesn'r produce a great deal of
heat, unlike coal. Plus it's a wearying task cutting and stacking
peat; in fact, being Hebridean was mostly hard work. Of course there
were benefits; especially the mackerel. To this day I get a craving
for fish and buy kippers to satisfy it. I'm also the local agent for
any venison my friends shoot as I still like it the best of all the
red meats.

Returning to poor people's homes, I've been in cabins in Appalachia
where the occupants cooked on wood-burning stoves; an extremely
skilled feat as it's very hard to maintain even temperatures for
baking, for example. That's where I first saw the Dutch Oven, a small
baking pan-like arrangement with a lipped lid. It's placed in the
middle of burning embers and more embers are heaped on the lid for an
even distribution of heat.

I also used soap made with lye there; many of the older people seemed
to prefer it to shop-bought. I spent lots of time examining the
home-made cabins, some of which were architectural masterpieces,
especially the hand-built stone fireplaces and chimney breasts, and
was very impressed by the skills of the people who produced beautiful
home-made chairs and other furniture. Despite "Deliverance" I found
the locals extremely friendly and sociable, and like poor people
everywhere, very proud and dignified. I re-christened the local town
"Loafer's Glory" as that seemed to be the main occupation.

When I was adjudged "safe" I even got to see a home-made still out in
the woods. The whole thing had been created from copper sheeting and
was very efficient, producing huge amounts of booze under the auspices
of three hard-working men. They taught me how to gauge alcoholic
strength by the size of the bubbles it produced (the bigger they are,
the higher the proof) and instructed me in the lore of moonshining;
for example they believed that a stream flowing off a north-facing
hill made the best whisky. We actually waded up an ice-cold stream to
get to the still; a manoeuvre designed to throw off any suspicious
revenuers nosing around and a useful reminder not to talk loudly or
drop litter anywhere.

This was a "commercial" still and the vapours were cooled back to a
liquid by being passed through a Ford truck radiator. The owner
cheerfully admitted that the booze gave one a bad headache as a result
(all that lead in the rad) and conceded he wouldn't drink it himself.
It was sold for shipping to Detroit or somewhere, where "niggers"
bought it; apparently this excused any failure to comply with the Food
and Drug Act or its local equivalent.

The local sheriff's attitude appeared to be that he'd break up a still
if he stumbled across it but he wasn't too anxious to go looking. I
guess he had to worry about getting re-elected, but I also understood
him to hint that he had a sneaking sympathy for moonshiners as they
were mostly poor people trying to make/save a dollar and provide
themselves with a bit of cheer. One man told me his proudest moment
had been when he decided to stop drinking moonshine. Given the quality
of what was coming out of the still I saw, it was a sensible decision.

In Georgia you have to sign for more than 100 lbs of sugar at a store
(to prevent moonshining), so the moonshiners brought their sugar in
from out-of-state. The traditional bottle is the Mason jar, as Hill
folks do a lot of home-preserving and the jars are readily available.

An older man spent an hour or so interrogating me on my (I must admit,
extensive) knowledge of moonshining and then produced a bottle of the
most exquisite corn whisky which I would have expected to pay for up
to $50 in any Canadian liquor store. It was made without sugar being
added (which meant that the mash only produced about one-sixth of the
amount that would result if sugar were used) and the difference in
quality was startling. The corn used was called Holcombe's and was
white; apparently the very best. It was reminiscent of a brandy in
some ways, but with a range of subtle flavours that were new to me.

My host bemoaned the slipping standards of modern moonshining, but
conceded that to make what he offered me was a lot of labour with very
little return. He gifted me the bottle and I understood that it
represented a large slab of his time and expertise and was duly
profuse in my thanks. I understand that moonshining is becoming a
fast-dying art in the Hills as marijuana has a much better resale
value.

I subsequently made a brandy from purple plums with no sugar and it
tasted like liquid plums; smooth and delicious. When sugar is added, I
have no difficulty in detecting its presence as a certain sameness is
introduced into the alcohol, no matter what its base. My personal
favourite is potato whisky which has an oily, tongue-filling texture.
The mash ferments at blinding speed with much foaming over but the
results are well worth the constant mopping-up of the kitchen floor!

The Hills dialect is very reminiscent of Scotland in its structure and
the vocabulary is a linguist's delight. People have "kin" living in
other places and those who make their own soap are "old-timey folks."
I heard at least one man playing on a home-made banjo and as is my
wont, whenever I produced my hip flask I was immediately hailed as "a
good ole boy!" 

Some of the women were strikingly Irish in appearance; lots of blondes
too, so I guessed there was English/German blood in the population.
Not too many signs of inbreeding; maybe I was never introduced to
families with that problem. The subject came up and I mentioned our
own problems in the Hebrides with it, but nobody seemed too
enthusiastic about discussing it, which suggested it was bit more
common than my hosts wanted to admit.

The kids were heart-wrenching in the poverty of their lives and openly
admired anything I owned which cost more than $1. I gave away about
half my luggage as a result. It was a different experience to see how
thrilled a kid can be at getting a hopelessly over-sized used T-shirt.
They longed to go to the City, just as we longed to go to the Mainland
when I was a child; with its sophisticated pleasures like "The
Cinema."

I've travelled widely in my time and the kids are always the ones who
break the ice wherever one goes. In the Sahara I had a little band of
dedicated slaves following me everywhere and imitating me to the point
that if I stopped to have a pee they'd all have one too! Having a pee
in the Sahara is a tricky operation as there isn't a lot of cover and
the Bedouin women tend to wander by, trying not to look too interested
if they think one is about to unbreech. Rather oddly, the men squat to
pee in the desert, so with judicious adjustment of one's robes the
whole affair can be managed with a degree of privacy. A guaranteed way
to find people in the desert is to have a pee; women appear instantly
where only moments before the empty sands stretched to the horizons!

I found the people in the Hills to be very like ours in that little of
interest happened in their lives and when it did, the retelling was
savoured for years after. Our most interesting oldest inhabitant was a
man who had spent years as a smuggler between Tangiers and Spain and
spoke Spanish as well as Gaelic. In the same way there was an oldest
inhabitant in Loafer's Glory who had been affiliated with some way
with the Mob in Chicago (probably supplying moonshine) and who was
considered a local legend and the absolute authority on anything
brought to his attention. Indeed the Hills almost are an island in
many ways, with personal projects like hunting for food or carving
something going on all over the place. I liked the ambiance, as they
say in more sophisticated circles, but I'm not sure I'd like to live
there permanently unless I was really too old to care any longer.

At the moment I'm engaged in a project which looks as though it will
make a great deal of money; the avoidance of tax on which concerns me
to no small degree. (And at this point I should pay tribute to two
people on s.c.s. who are working hard on research and other matters
for me.) So I think one of the things I'll do is go back to the
Sahara, to a village I stayed in where the entire economy depended on
900-odd olive trees, a camel and a well. This unlikely scenario
supported some 350 people whose menfolk spent months out in the wastes
in what can only be called Stygian conditions, digging salt slabs to
enhance their income. When I was last there I toyed with the idea of
buying a donkey engine for them, but was dissuaded by an American oil
engineer who explained that if it broke down the village's economy
would collapse as they would come to depend on it and probably eat the
camel, but would have no way of fixing the engine.

My new plan involves getting them into the camel breeding business. In
local terms, a good camel costs about the same as a Cadillac, which
puts any such scheme well beyond their means, but supporting it is no
big deal as camels mostly live on prickly pear and there's a ready
market for them, at worst as food. A small herd would get this village
off to a flying start IMHO as local expertise about camels was
profound; they just need the materials. It seems to me that to employ
my ill-gotten gains in such a way would be far more satisfying and
worthwhile than simply handing it over to the Canadian government to
finance political junketing. Plus it gives me something to do other
than support distilleries and complete the ruination of my liver.

Just some meanderings...

M�cheil Rob MacPh�druig
Dr�idh:duine-uasal