Indiana Moonshine

.................................... Model A Ford



My dad bought his first car, a Model T, when he was just fourteen in 1931. He relates a great story about the time he hauled moonshine in his Model T. My dad lived with his parents in northern Indiana, five miles from Lakeville, a small town ten miles south of South Bend. A neighbor who lived nearby offered illegal whiskey to the area residents. One day this neighbor approached my father, a boy of about fifteen, with the proposition of hauling moonshine from South Bend to the local area. Dad would receive five dollars, a lot of money in the 1930s, to haul the five gallon tin. Being just a young kid, my dad could not resist sampling the merchandise on the trip back. Of course, one sip was more than enough as it was powerful stuff. He later learned that the moonshine was cut with fifty percent water before final retail distribution.


I wrote Indiana Moonshine with the connections of Model T, Moonshine, and Indiana rolling around in my head. Please keep in mind that neither of my grandfathers made moonshine and that my Dad only made the one bootleg run described above.


Indiana Moonshine

Now everybody believes
That Moonshine was only in Kentucky or Tennessee
That’s what they perceives
I am here to tell you that just ain’t so
Plenty shine made in Indiana and Ohio

Granddad boiled it strong
Cooked that moonshine way back there on the farm
Distilled it all day long
Dripped Hooch almost every day
Daddy drove the booze in his Model A

Granddad never took a drop
But he knew how to boil it up from corn mash
He learned from his Grandpa
Came from down in Tennessee
Back in eighteen ninety three

All a hundred eighty proof
Daddy carried to the south side of She-call-go
Took the old forty-one root
Switched the springs with steel shims
Made for a rough ride on his shins

Put a V8 into his Model A
Had the fastest car on that side of the state
Delivered every Thursday
A tanker in the Model A’s rear
He drove that Ford with no fear

During those prohibition dates
Granddad had the biggest still in Posey County
Maybe the biggest in the state
FDR pledged prohibition closure
So Grandpa voted for Mr. Hoover

Well the country moved wet
And Granddaddy’s distill business went dry
They found the still one sunset
And tore all the copper down
So Grandpa moved into town

Daddy sold the Model-A
To a guy who took it west and chopped it to a pup
Who wrote a song one day
About the Hot Rod Lincoln
Its speed and its eight pistons

Now you know the whole story
I’m here to say my pappy once drove that Model A
Years before it came to glory
It hauled shine thru Indiana
In that great prohibition era

Now everybody believes
That Moonshine was only in Kentucky or Tennessee
That’s what they perceives
I am here to tell you that just ain’t so
Plenty shine made in Indiana and Ohio
Plenty shine made in Indiana and Ohio
Oh yeah Indiana and Ohio

My pappy once drove that Model A
That’s what I’m here to say
Plenty shine made in Indiana and Ohio
And that’s why I’m here to tell you so
Oh yeah Indiana and Ohio

Copyright 2011 Wayne Nolen. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.