, you don't
stir it with a stick but a long wooden fork. I've whittled many a one."
He retrieved from the pile of stone what was left of the stirring fork.
"Have it long so you can retch far all around the barrel," he said,
measuring the fork against his own height. With unconcealed pride he
explained the various steps of making corn whiskey in his own primitive
way. He told how the thumping keg in which it was aged was first
carefully charred inside to add a tempting flavor, and how the barrel in
which the cornmeal and malt were placed was made of clean staves of oak
or chestnut, or whatever wood was at hand. The wood was cut green and
when the mash began to work the liquid caused the staves to swell and
thus make the barrel leak-proof.

Never once in his explanation did Jorde Foley say moonshine, or shine,
or mountain dew.

"Whiskey, pure corn whiskey," he repeated, "when it is treated right
won't harm no one. And when a body sees the first singlin' come
treaklin' out the worm, cooled by the cold water that this worm is
quiled in," he indicated the location of the barrel, "somehow there's a
heap of satisfaction in it. Seeing that clear whiskey, clear as a
mountain stream come treaklin' into the tin bucket or jug that is
settin' there to ketch it, it makes a man plum proud over his labors."

Jorde looked inward upon his thoughts. "Many a time me and Cynthie would
take a full bucket to a neighbor's when there was a frolic, set it in
the middle of the table with a gourd dipper in it, and let everyone help
hisself to a drink. Why, there was no harm in whiskey in my young day.
And us people up here didn't know or need no other medicine."

In the bat of an eye Jorde Foley explained how pure corn whiskey had
cured cases of croup, saved mothers in childbirth, cured children of
spasms and worms, and saved the life of many a man bitten by a
copperhead or suffering from sunstroke. "Once I saw Brock Pennington
stob Bill Tanner in the calf of the leg with a pitchfork. Bill he bled
like a stuck hog and we grabbed up a jug of whiskey and poured it on his
leg. Stopped the blood! No how," Jorde was off on another defense, "land
up here and in lots of places in these mountains is not fitten to farm
so we have allus made whiskey of it after exceptin' out enough for our
bread. Good, pure whiskey that never harmed no man that treated it
right, that's what we made. In Pa's day he sold it for fifty cents a
gallon. Us Foleys in my day so