My Mother, My Brother and the Possum

This is not something I remember on my own, just as a story related to me by my brother.  One must also realize at this time (around 1959, 1960) moonshine was still pretty common in our part of Kentucky.  So, this would not have been unusual.  Not the moonshine part anyhow.  How unusual the other part was I'll leave it up to anyone reading this to decide.

We lived in a log cabin at the forestry tower on Spring Knob.  The county line between Martin and Johnson county went through our front yard which was also the road to the parking spot beyond the house.  The house was four and one tenth miles from the blacktop road.  I have this marked down in indelible memory as what my dad always said about it.

My brother, at this time, was attending Mayo Vocational and Technical School.  He had quit high school so as to be able to attend Mayo and graduate before he was eighteen and the tuition went up.  So he would walk from the tower to the road to catch a ride to Paintsville to school each morning and he would run the distance back from the road each evening to go squirrel hunting before dark.

Somewhere along about half way between the road (At the afore mentioned "Spicy Gap" and the tower lived a man who made "charred moonshine".  I don't recall his name though I knew it very well at one time and I'm sure my brother could tell you with no hesitation.

Now charred moonshine was not like the normal rotgut stuff.  He bought used bourbon barrels and actually aged his product in them.  Very high class moonshine.  That is not unusual. Many of the Eastern Kentucky moonshiners made such quality product they were given jobs by the bourbon distilleries to make it for (legal) commercial sales.

One evening my brother was running from the blacktop to home when he passed this man's cabin.  He was asked if he would like some apples to take home.  So he stopped and the man gave him a bag of apples as well as some good moonshine.  How much moonshine I do not know though I was told by one person somewhat later in life my brother could drink a quart and you'd never know he had been drinking.  So, let us just say he had a quantity of the good stuff before he took his poke (yes, back then a paper bag was called a poke) of apples and headed on home.

It was getting fairly late and darkness was approaching as he walked (staggered?) on the road home when a possum (o'possum to you city folk) crossed the road in front of him and climbed a tree.  He put the poke of apples down and threw rocks at the possum (missing for obvious reasons) until it got too dark to find rocks.  Then he started throwing apples from the poke.  Prior to running out of apples he knocked the possum from the tree and it sulled up.  Otherwise known as playing dead.

So he took the possum by the tail and the poke of what apples remained and continued on home.  It was good and dark when he got home and everyone else was in bed asleep.  (Hey, no electricity and lamp oil costs money so we went to bead early)  So he came in the house and sat the bag down on one side of the door and the possum on the other and went to bed on the sofa he slept on and went to sleep.

Early the next morning he was awakened by my mother's screams coming from the kitchen where she had gone to start breakfast.  She was in front of the stove staring at the possum sitting on the kitchen table.

Funny, that is where the story always ends.  One day I'm going to have to ask my brother what ever happened to the possum.  I'm pretty sure we did not eat it though possum was a regular part of the diet in that part of the country at that time.