Call things by their right names . . . Glass of brandy and water! That is the current, but not the appropriate name; ask for a glass of liquid fire and distilled damnation.

I meet with CFOs from many companies about currency, but it is often the president of a liquor importer who talks to me. It affects 100 percent of the cost of goods and receives attention at the highest level of the firm.

We recognize that we have to become better at recapturing our market share. Liquor companies are doing a good job at targeting beer drinkers and beer-drinking occasions. So we know who the enemy is and we have to do something about it.

In the Mountains, they cooked, too.
Joe Godwin made liquor in Muscadine. Moe Shealey made it in Mineral Springs. Junior McMahan had a still in ragland. Fred and Alton Dryden made liquor in Tallapoosa, and Eulis Parker made it on Terrapin Creek. Wayne Glass knew their faces because he drove it, and made more money hauling liquor than he ever made at the cotton mill. He loaded the gallon cans into his car in the deep woods and dodged sheriffs and federal men to get it to men like Robert Kilgore, the bootlegger who sold whiskey from a house in Weaver, about ten minutes south of Jacksonville. "I could haul a hundred and fifty gallons in a Flathead Ford, at thirty-five dollars a load," he said. Wayne lost the end of one finger in the mill, but he was bulletproof when he was running liquor, and only did time once, for conspiracy. "They couldn't catch me haulin' liquor," he said, "so they got me for thinkin' about it.

Gin was mother's milk to her.

Alcohol is a very necessary article . . . . It enables Parliament to do things at eleven at night that no sane person would do at eleven in the morning.