Hill Women by Cassie Chambers

Author:Cassie Chambers
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2020-01-06T16:00:00+00:00

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My mother’s world was expanding around this time as well. When I was growing up, there were few things that received as much scorn from my mother as alcohol. She was opposed to drinking, so we didn’t keep alcohol in the house. Once, when I was a teenager, I found a few beers in the fridge. I immediately notified my mother. At the time, I was convinced some horrible human had planted them to make God mad at us. Now, I wonder if maybe my father just didn’t remember to hide his leftovers after his Super Bowl party.

My mother’s deeply rooted feelings about alcohol came from her childhood in Owsley County. There, alcohol use doesn’t just describe something you do; it describes who you are. You are either the type of person who never drinks or the type of person who is drunk all the time. The judgment leads many people who do drink to do so in private.

Historically, there was also secrecy around alcohol production in Appalachia. Moonshine gets its name from the way it’s made: at nighttime—under the shining moon—so that no one can see the smoke coming up from the still. The first moonshiners trace back to just after the American Revolution, when Scotch-Irish immigrants brought their whiskey-making traditions with them to the mountain hollers they settled. Moonshining increased in prevalence during Prohibition and the subsequent Great Depression because it was one of the few ways mountain communities could make extra money. They shipped most of the moonshine to larger cities, such as Chicago.

Moonshining began to decline following the Great Depression, but it still thrived in communities that had strict liquor laws. Owsley County was such an area: until a few years ago, it was a dry county, meaning it was illegal to sell alcohol there. Several of the surrounding counties were also dry, so the moonshine market remained strong. When I asked Aunt Ruth if moonshiners still existed today, she answered: “Why, Lord yes!” My father told me about a man who approached him in a parking lot a few years back with a mason jar and a conspiratorial smile. In 2018, law enforcement busted a moonshine operation in Louisville, Kentucky.

I’ve never been offered any moonshine myself, but that isn’t terribly surprising. Alcohol has a gendered history in Owsley County. Young men were almost expected to go through a phase of excessive drinking, “sowin’ their wild oats,” as people like to say. Women were not given this leeway. When my mother was young, one of her brothers showed up at high school “dead drunk” after drinking with some friends. Granny and Papaw rolled their eyes and sent him to bed to sleep it off. But Granny and Papaw wouldn’t let Wilma attend any gathering that might have alcohol. “You can’t be around those drunks!” Granny would exclaim. Anyone who drank was bad, Granny thought, but women who drank were especially bad.

Even though many Appalachian communities are dry, there is not a statistical difference between alcohol use rates in Appalachia and the rest of the country.

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