NewSouth

My career as a Treasury Agent began on September 19, 1955, at Anniston, Alabama. All agents reported first to the state office in Birmingham where they were issued a .38 caliber revolver, a pocket commission (identification with photograph), a box of ammunition, and a pair of handcuffs. We were told to buy our own holster and a pair of lightweight boots for running. When I reached the Anniston office in the federal building, I found out that there were no secretaries and that each agent had to type all of his reports. At this time the agency was the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax Division of Internal Revenue Service, but people still called us ATU agents.

When I arrived at the Anniston office after lunch, the door was locked and a sign was posted on the door. It read "New man, go downstairs to the concession stand and tell Bob to let you in the office. He has a key." I didn't realize at first that Bob was blind. He walked directly to the office and unlocked the door. After he had heard my voice one time, he always recognized it later. The Anniston office consisted of the Investigator in Charge, Earl Snarr, and agents Gerald Powell, O.B. Hunter, and myself.

When I got inside the Anniston office that first afternoon, there was another note which read, "New man, have on green clothes and running boots and someone will pick you up in front of the Post Office at 3:00 a.m." O.B. Hunter picked me up. We joined the other officers, went to Muscadine and watched a distillery that the violators later abandoned. Many of the distilleries had to be destroyed with no arrests since the violators saw something that scared them. I found out in a hurry that I didn't have an eight-to-five job unless it was from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 a.m. the next day. However, I did not mind the long hours since looking for stills and running down moonshiners was so exciting. In fact, I sometimes wondered why they paid me since the job was so much fun.

Since the Investigator in Charge at Anniston, Earl Snarr, was such a character, I want to tell you something about him. Earl was a good officer and a great help to a young trainee. You could always depend on him to back you up. When I left Anniston, Earl was 68 years old and could walk most of the day in the woods. He had reached the age though, that he left the running to the three young agents.

Earl did not have to retire until he was 70. A few years later, the mandatory retirement age became 55. Earl liked to tell people that he was not born in the United States. Actually, this was true, since he was mostly Cherokee Indian and had been born in Indian territory before Oklahoma became a state. During prohibition days, Earl was a Federal Prohibition Officer working in Florida. At the end of prohibition, Earl became a federal agent with ATU in Florida. During shoot-outs on still raids, Earl had killed three violators in Florida and one in Alabama.

You might say that Earl was right ornery at times. He kept a continuing battle going with the state office in Birmingham and seemed to enjoy it. It was all O.B., Gerald and I could do to keep his office and personnel reports straight and keep him out of trouble. Earl remarried after he retired and moved to Destin. I attended his 100th birthday and his mind was still as sharp as ever. At the age of 101, Earl had his last wish fulfilled when he was buried in the cemetery at Oxford, Alabama, on the side of a beautiful mountain between his two wives who had predeceased him.

The counties assigned to the Anniston officer were Cleburne, Clay, Talladega, Calhoun, Cherokee and the eastern part of Etowah and St. Clair. Naturally, we spent much more time in Cleburne where the largest scale violators operated.

New employees were assigned to work with an experienced agent during the first year probationary period. I had the good fortune to work with Gerald Powell, a fine person and an excellent officer. Most of my time was spent in Cleburne, except during the undercover periods.

Working in Cleburne County was so much fun, not only because of the huge stills, but also there was so much cooperation between the law enforcement officers. Fratus Owens, an active young man, had been elected sheriff. It was a pleasure to work with him, his deputies, and the two ABC Agents Carl Jacks and John Lambert.

Bud Willingham was one of the deputies. He, Gerald, and I were on a distillery investigation in the Ranburne section soon after Bud began his work with the sheriff's office. We were near Bud's house about noon one day and were a long way from civilization, much less a place to eat. Bud invited us to eat lunch with him and his wife, a Holiness preacher who had prepared a delicious meal. She became more rhythmical and enthusiastic as the lengthy blessing continued, all in an "unknown tongue." I relate this story not to belittle her religion, but to simply tell of an event I had never experienced before. I respected her religion. I am sure she was a dedicated person and if she could preach like she could cook, who cared about English?!

Less than a year after I transferred from Anniston to Montgomery, I learned that Bud and another deputy had been killed during a high speed chase of a liquor car on the mountain road near Heflin. Working transportation at high speed was by far the most dangerous part of our job.

There were many ways to find illegal stills. The method of locating some of the huge stills in Cleburne was unique and would not have worked in other counties. On the morning of August 7, 1957, Gerald and I had no specific information that day so we decided to go to the back roads near Fruithurst and Muscadine and try to catch a liquor car or locate a still. Anything moving on the back roads was probably connected with liquor in some manner.

Gerald picked me up at 2:00 a.m. and we first drove around very slowly along the back roads in the vicinity of Fruithurst. Every so often we would get out of the car and listen for any noise from the burners of a distillery in operation. (This would not work for me now since the only thing my ears are good for is to hold up my glasses.) The big round tank-type stills in Cleburne County were usually of a uniform size since a standard width of sheet metal was used. The difference was the diameter of the stills. If the still was six feet across the top it held 993 gallons. If it was nine feet it held 1,904 gallons. In order to cook the mash the moonshiners used what we called "wraparound burners." They dug a furnace around the big stills and then made a big burner out of ordinary water pipes. The pipes were bent around the stills and numerous holes were bored in the pipes. These pipes were then connected to a 55-gallon metal drum containing diesel fuel. The drum had a connection for an ordinary tire hand pump so that the operator could pump up pressure to the burners. When the still was in operation, the burners sounded just like a jet airplane. The sound carried further at night and if the wind was blowing in the right direction, you could hear it for a half mile or more.

Since there was no activity around Fruithurst, we crossed U.S. Highway 78 and started riding the back roads around the Muscadine area. The Tallapoosa River is the dividing line between Alabama and Georgia in this area. Shortly before daylight, Gerald and I parked on top of a hill in the Tallapoosa river vicinity.

As soon as we got out of the car we heard the sound of the burners. It was difficult to determine the exact direction from which the sound was coming. After a while we could tell it was coming from the hollow on the east side of the road in the direction of the river. We were out of dynamite, hungry, and since it would take all day to complete the operation of a big distillery, we decided to go to Heflin and return after daylight to find the stills.

This was long before the days of fast food eating places such as Hardee's and McDonald's. About the only place to eat was the Two Sisters Cafe which was nothing fancy, but where the food was great. Our favorite breakfast after working several hours was steak cooked (rare, of course), scrambled eggs, grits and homemade biscuits, all for $1.75. You have to remember this was forty years ago when haircuts were 75 cents, candy bars were a nickel and Cokes were a dime. Most of the deputy sheriffs made about $200 a month.

At the Sheriff's Office we found Deputy Willingham and ABC Agent Jacks. Fortunately, Jacks had a trunk load of dynamite. It takes a long time to chop up a large distillery with a fire-axe. The Cleburne game warden was also present. Since he wanted to see the stills he came along with us.

We returned to the area where we had heard the burners, hid the car on a woods road, and began walking through the woods looking for the stills. At first we were unable to hear the burners. Later, we heard them and could smell the strong odor of cooking mash. We were getting close to the still but had not crossed the road through the woods by which the still was being worked. As it turned out the vehicles carrying raw materials and liquor turned off of the paved road about two miles from where we had hidden our car. The distillery road led from the paved road through the yard of a farmer and then across a flat river bottom pasture to the edge of the woods. The traffic to the farm house looked just like a normal farm operation.

Gerald and I moved to the edge of the woods to raid the distillery while the other three officers moved into positions in the woods behind the distillery so they could act as receivers in case we did not catch the operators in the stillyard. Both of the violators were from Tallapoosa, Georgia. Will Anderson was pumping up the pressure in the fuel drum to keep the burners operating and Melvin Coggins was pouring up whiskey into five-gallon containers.

The two men spotted us before we could get into the stillyard and started running, not into the woods as we had expected. Both jumped into the Tallapoosa River and tried to escape. The river was swift, but the water was only waist deep at that location. The river was not nearly as large as it was in Montgomery where it flows into the Coosa to form the Alabama. I arrested Anderson just before he reached the Georgia bank and saw that Gerald had Coggins in custody. I always enjoyed telling about the time I ran a moonshiner from an Alabama still all the way into Georgia before I caught him. Actually the race was only about 200 yards.

The big stills were situated in the shape of an "L" with long steam lines so that one condenser could be used. When the mash got hot, a metal cap, usually a bucket or tub, was placed over the hole in the still and sealed with a mixture of water and flour paste to keep the steam from leaking. The cap had a hole in the side and a steam line connected it to the thumper. The thumper was a metal container with a hole in each side. A steam line ran from the thumper to the condenser. The whole purpose of the thumper was to keep any bran or particles from being blown out of the still by the steam and stopping up the condenser. The steam line from the other side of the thumper was connected to a condenser, which in this case was a large truck radiator in a cooling vat that the violators kept filled with cool water.

Five-gallon buckets were being used to catch the liquor as it came out of the condenser. The liquor was being poured into 55-gallon drums where it was "proofed." When the liquor first starts coming out of the condenser it is high proof, possibly up to 120. The longer the steam comes out of the still the lower the proof until finally it would be mostly water vapor. One hundred and seventy-two gallons had been distilled at the time of the raid. The two men were pouring the liquor into 55-gallon drums where they were using a hydrometer as in all of the big stills. This instrument is simply a glass tube with weight in the bottom that makes the tube float upright in liquid. It sinks in liquid up to a point set by the specific gravity. A scale on the tube gives the exact proof of the liquor. When the mixture reached 80+ proof they poured it into one gallon (paint thinner-type) cans that were lined with paraffin. These cans were put into "onion" sacks, five cans to a bundle and stacked for transportation, probably to Atlanta.

If these twelve stills were timely charged with sugar, wheat bran (shorts), water and yeast, a minimum of 1,000 gallons of liquor could be produced every week. The price of liquor at this time in Cleburne County was four dollars a gallon, and when transported to the wholesaler in cities like Atlanta, five to six dollars a gallon. The wholesaler would then make his profit by selling it to the bootlegger, who in turn would double his money by selling the liquor by the shot.

The seizure of these twelve stills with over 10,000 gallons of mash in 1957, when compared to the last distillery I seized in Pike County with 50 gallons of mash, readily indicates how the moonshine business had declined in two decades. The still seized in Pike County in the late 1970s consisted of a 55-gallon metal drum cooker. A story from the Montgomery area about this small still will conclude the moonshine tales.

The Dryden Distillery

For the first six months I worked out of the Anniston Office, I heard many stories about the brothers, Fred and Alta Dryden, of Tallapoosa, Georgia. They were considered one of the top five liquor combines in the United States. They operated mainly in Georgia and Alabama and occasionally in Mississippi. In later years I would come into contact with their distilleries in Montgomery, Macon, Elmore, and Russell Counties. We caught a number of their stillhands and seized some Dryden stills, but as a rule the Drydens would not come to the distillery themselves.

Monday, February 6, 1956, was a routine day with nothing special happening. I spent the morning going to Talladega to check a possible sugar outlet at the Pepsi Cola Company. After going by the sheriff's office in Heflin to confer with some of the local officers, I went home to my apartment in Anniston. Little did I know that a series of events were about to begin that would lead to the seizure of one of the largest distilleries ever seized in the state and to the arrest of Fred Dryden himself.

Earl called me that night and related the events that had happened. About 8:00 p.m. he had received a call from a young Oxford Police Officer who had stopped a one-and-a-half ton truck with a tail light that was not burning. The truck was fully loaded with flat, metal, one-gallon cans with five in each bundle. When asked where he was going, the driver stated that he was en route to a syrup factory in Birmingham and the cans were for use there. Fortunately, the officer was too smart to believe such a story. He called Earl, who arrived in the vicinity while the officer was giving the driver a ticket and warning him to get his taillight fixed. After the driver was released, Earl followed him along Highway 78 in the direction of Birmingham. This was many years before the interstate was built. Just a few miles before reaching Pell City in St. Clair County, the driver turned onto a dirt road at a sign stating "Hannah Dairy."

Tuesday, February 7, 1956, Earl dropped Gerald, O.B., and me out of the car at a point about a mile from the dairy. We remained in radio contact with Earl while we tried to determine if this location was where the distillery could be found. There was a large dairy with cattle all around the flat pasture. Around the pasture was a large wooded area where we could remain concealed and observe the activity with binoculars. There were several cars, trucks, tractors, and people around the dairy barn, which was a large cement block structure. Nearby was a large storage building of some sort. We could see a well-worn dirt road leading from the barn area out across the pasture. We decided to follow the road and walked parallel to it in the woods. About a half-mile from the barn, there was a weather-beaten old farmhouse where all of the traffic ended. There was another old building, also with a tin roof, nearby. It appeared to be some type of storage building. We were unable to look into the two buildings as they were in the open pasture, but we were able to get close enough to smell the strong odor of mash and see some electric wire that went into the house from the ground.

There was no doubt now as to the location of the distillery. We walked back to the location where we had dropped out of the car earlier, joined Earl and went to the state ATF office in Birmingham to get some extra agents, since a large distillery always involved several vehicles and men. Plans were made to begin continuous surveillance the next day and to raid the still house while the distillery was in operation.

Wednesday, February 8, Earl and O.B. dropped Gerald and me out at the same location before daylight. We began surveillance of the still house. The first activity began at 7:05 a.m. when a pickup truck arrived with a load of cans. Thirty minutes later the truck left empty. At 10:55 that morning we saw steam coming out of the front of the house indicating the mash was being cooked. The same truck returned about noon, stayed about ten minutes and left with a load of liquor. A green car and the same truck made a trip to the still house but returned to the dairy. Next, a truck made a trip to the still house but returned to the dairy barn empty. About 2:30 p.m. Gerald and I rejoined Earl and O.B. and the Birmingham ATF agents and made plans to raid the distillery the next morning. We had to keep it under surveillance to keep the liquor from being moved. O.B. and Gerald would be in the woods and maintain surveillance of the dairy barn and the large storage house where the liquor and supplies were being stored. Earl and I would be in the area of the still house, and six of the Birmingham agents would be in the radio cars, hidden in the general area off of Highway 78. Unfortunately, it was as important to hide from the Sheriff and his deputies as it was not to be seen by violators. If any liquor car moved that night it was to be trailed a considerable distance before arrest and the driver was to be held in jail with no contact with anyone until after the raid.

Earl and I saw a lot of activity before midnight. About 8 p.m. a pickup truck left the dairy barn area and traveled up the muddy, dirt road to the still house. At one point it sounded like the empty truck was going to get stuck in deep mud holes in the muddy road. The truck backed up to the front door of the still house and we could hear liquor being loaded. With such a heavy load, the truck really got stuck en route back to the dairy barn. Since there was a little knoll just above the location of the truck, Earl and I decided to crawl up on the elevated area with a pair of binoculars and see what was happening. There were two white men in the truck, which had been loaded with about 300 gallons of liquor. One of the men, realizing the truck was hopelessly stuck, started walking back to the dairy barn. The other young man lit a cigarette and climbed back in the stuck truck.

From our vantage point, Earl and I had a ringside seat and could see everything and hear most of what was being said. After a period of waiting, we saw the lights of a small tractor approaching. A Negro was driving and the white male was standing up on the tractor, holding onto the seat. They backed the tractor up to the front of the truck and tied a short chain to the truck. When they tried to pull the truck with the tractor, the wheels dug a deep hole and the tractor sank in the mud to it's frame. Now both vehicles were hopelessly mired in the bog. After a brief discussion and a lot of profanity, the Negro was selected to go back to the dairy and get the big tractor. This show was becoming a lot more amusing and interesting than the tractor pulls in mud seen on television.

The Negro man left and later we saw the lights of another tractor coming back. This time they had a larger tractor and also a long chain. They untied the chain from the small tractor and pulled it out of the bog with the other tractor. They were then able to get the truck out of the hole with the large tractor, which was on more firm ground due to the length of the chain. When the convoy started leaving for the barn, I felt like telling them they did not have to worry about parking the truck and tractors in the barn as they all now belonged to the government. I did begin to wonder however, since I was one of the newest agents hired, if I would have to drive one of the tractors back to Anniston the next day. Gerald and O.B. watched from the woods behind the dairy barn while the violators unloaded the liquor and stored it in the large shed just before midnight. There was no more activity Wednesday night.

Thursday morning, shortly after midnight, Earl and I moved as close as possible to the still house and maintained surveillance from the woods. (We also had several pretty good naps!) There was no activity until about 7 a.m. when a white male, later identified as Charles Lee Robinson, walked from the dairy barn to the still house. We could not smell any cooking mash and could not hear any blowers, so we waited to see what would develop before we raided. As a general rule, a large distillery of this size will be in operation every day. Mash from several of the fermenting vats will be distilled each day, recharged, and the process repeated the following day.

Several of the Birmingham agents maintained surveillance in the woods behind the dairy barn while the other Birmingham officers remained in radio contact in cars nearby. Gerald, O.B. and Sam Posey, the Birmingham Agent in Charge, joined Earl and me to raid the distillery. Because Sam was in charge in the Birmingham field office, he chose to join us.

Sam Posey was quite a character. There were only two of the old Prohibition Agents left in Alabama, and only about five in the U.S. Like Earl, Sam was about seventy and approaching mandatory retirement age. In his younger days he had the reputation of being a great runner, not for speed but for endurance. Sam, who was part Indian, had no patience at all, however, instead of slipping quietly into a stillyard and utilizing the element of surprise, Sam, would start running full speed ahead when he got to within thirty yards of the still. Once in a while a moonshiner would be so startled he wouldn't run but if he did, as a rule, Sam would win a long-winded footrace. Sam also had a unique method of bringing a lengthy footrace to an end. On a number of occasions he was known to have ended a lengthy race by throwing his service revolver and hitting a violator in the back of his head. Sam had to be the only law enforcement officer in history who ever threw his pistol at a violator.

There was nothing in the official ATF Manual that stated, "Under no circumstances will any agent be allowed to throw his pistol at a violator." The lack of such a statement, of course, was based on the assumption that no normal agent would do such a stupid thing. However, nobody ever accused Sam of being normal.

From Chapter Five

A paid informant took Art to Pell City and introduced him to a stillhand known to work for a large scale violator. The informant's work was done, and Art took it from there and did an excellent job.

Art got friendly with the stillhand, who got him a job with "the big boss man." Art started working at the stills and hauling liquor back to Anniston. He would haul liquor to a wholesaler in Anniston and we would set up surveillance and catch some liquor cars or seize the liquor later with a search warrant.

Everything was going fine until one morning as Art and three moonshiners were working at the still, one of the men said to him, "You know what? Last night I dreamed you were a Federal Officer." All of the laughter and conversation stopped. There was dead silence, and all eyes were upon Art. Without hesitation he grabbed the moonshiner and said, "I am. You're under arrest." The moonshiners thought this was very funny, and after they all had a big laugh, they went back to work. Had Art seemed nervous and tried to defend himself, the results might have been quite different.

A short time later, Art was en route to Anniston with a hundred gallons of liquor. As was the usual custom, the back seat had been removed and the cans were stacked in the trunk and on the back floorboards up to the windows. Those in the back seat area were covered with a blanket.

Just before he reached Anniston, he saw the red lights of two city police patrol cars on the road just ahead. Thinking it was a road block and not wanting to lose the load of liquor, he just turned into the nearest driveway and parked in front of a strange house. Actually, there had been a wreck on the highway.

This was in the middle of the summer, long before cars were air conditioned, and both windows in the front seat were rolled down. As Art sat there for a minute, trying to determine a course of action, a man suddenly stuck a .45 caliber pistol against the side of his head and announced, "I've got you. I'm going to blow your brains out you S. O. B. (no initials used). I know you've been shacking up with my wife!"

It seems the man's wife had been having an affair with someone unknown to the husband. He worked the night shift at a factory in Anniston. The husband had chosen this particular night to catch the unknown lover. He had left for work as usual, and then had doubled back and had hidden his car and concealed himself in the bushes around the house. There he was waiting patiently when Art drove up.

Art's immediate response was, "I've never seen your wife. I'm just a liquor hauler en route to Anniston with a load of whiskey. When I saw the red lights flashing, I just pulled into this driveway to keep from getting caught. If you don't believe me, just look under the blanket in the back seat."

The man looked under the blanket, saw the load of liquor, and believed Art's story. He seemed somewhat disappointed, however, that his plan to catch his wife's lover had failed. With the pistol still pointed at his head, Art obeyed the man's orders and went into the house where his captor called the Anniston Police.

The police officers soon arrived, seized the car and liquor, and took Art to jail. Art called his contact, Agent Gerald Powell. Gerald contacted a trusted police detective who would keep Art's true identity secret. The two of them destroyed the liquor. They left Art in jail to see just what would happen.

Sure enough, the next day, the "big boss man" came to Anniston and posted a bond for Art. The investigation was still alive. It continued for several more weeks. Several cars and quantities of liquor were seized. Numerous employees, along with "the big boss man" were arrested, but the exact relationship between "the big boss man" and the sheriff was never determined.

One of the largest distilleries seized in Alabama, the Dryden distillery at Pell City, was in St. Clair County. It was included in the Cleburne County operations as the violators operated there. This was just a onetime deal in St. Clair. The moonshiners found a good location that was soon discovered. They never returned to St. Clair, but were found in Cleburne County several weeks later.