<VV> Both Kinds of Music and a Greenbrier Sighting on the Net

[Tony Underwood]

At 05:20 hours 09/26/2006, airvair wrote:
>'taint any REAL hills in Michigan. No, the term "hillbilly" originated
>with Appalachian natives. BTW it's difficult to "farm" hills. THAT
>should have been your first clue. LOL



I don't need to be reminded of hillbillies...   some of you may know 
that I live in a valley... the Roanoke region of the Shenandoah 
Valley, with the Blue Ridge mountains on one side...

...and the Appalachian mountains on the other.    There are plenty of 
genuine honest to goodness pure-bred hillbillies around here who 
managed to get lost, stumbled down out of the mountains and wandered 
into town, and have been here ever since.


Some of them come from Franklin County, the moonshine capital of the 
USA, about 20 minutes south of here.



It is a sad legacy which I endure...   living here...   although I 
have acquired a cheap Corvair a time or two from individuals who 
could be considered hillbillies.    Of course on the other hand there 
are people I know from Franklin County who live in the mountains and 
you'd never know them to be such...  work here in town in white 
collar positions etc and are contributing members of society, 
although they likely have 'stills in their basements and keep corn 
mash cooking in the shed out back... the suits and office jobs are a 
cover.


Of course, these days the real money isn't in corn liquor but in the 
materials to make it...  country stores selling sugar by the ton and 
plastic jugs by the hundreds and claim they don't see any problems 
with such, all the while doing it all on a cash ticket, no names or 
addresses...  ;)

Not long ago, one of the stores got busted for supplying 
bootleggers... couldn't account for a couple tons of sugar and almost 
1000 plastic jugs all sold on three cash tickets, and records showed 
another couple tons of sugar in 100 lb sacks already paid for and to 
be delivered in a couple days...  to be made ready to ship out as 
soon as the buyer showed up to cart it all away.   The cops 
confiscated the rest of the jugs in stock, and when it showed up from 
the wholesalers, the sugar.    Nobody ever showed up to claim their 
purchases...  I wonder why...  ;)

Additional Corvair content?   A few years ago, it made the local news 
that a 'still was found by police in Franklin County following a 
tip-off from a guy who was mad at the bootlegger evidently because 
the bootlegger wouldn't give him any moonshine on credit.   Police 
found the 'still and almost 100 gallons of bootleg liquor stored in 
an old Corvair van on blocks which had been used as a "hunter's camp 
shed" during deer season.    The bootlegger, last I heard, wasn't 
caught, because the guy who dropped a dime on him only knew the 
bootlegger's nickname although he did know where the still and storage was.


Fortunately, none of these store folks had  anything to do with my 
Corvair contacts nor were any of these people ever arrested by my 
niece's husband (Franklin County Deputy-Sheriff who used to be a WWF 
wrestler... I'm not making this up).

By the way, the niece's mother, my sister, married a hillbilly (her 
2nd husband) from Mills Mountain in Franklin County Va.   He plays a 
banjo, speaks a strange dialect of English... I think it's 
English.    I try not to talk about it much...   I mention it here as 
a plea for pity and understanding.



tony..