The history of moonshine uncorks a long pull of other ways to say it, including:
• Corn squeezin's. Moonshine recipes call for everything from watermelon rind to raisins, but the primary ingredient is corn.
• White lightnin', white dog, white mule. Whiskey's amber glow comes from aging, which moonshine isn't. Moonshine looks as clear as water in a Mason jar.
Also, White Lightning (1973) is a made-in-Arkansas movie about a crooked sheriff out to jug a moonshiner (Burt Reynolds).
• Radiator whiskey. Some homemade stills run the moonshine, or 'shine for short -- the hooch, that is -- the firewater, snakebite medicine, panther's breath, catdaddy, mule kick, donkey punch -- through a car radiator.
• Rotgut. Manure, dead possums and other tidbits are the among the ingredients that federal agents report having found in outlaw moonshine.
• Head-buster, popskull -- a whop to the head.
• Who-shot-John? The moonshine done 'im in.
• Mountain dew, not to be confused with the soft drink of the same name. But Mountain Dew soda, in the 1950s, played up the idea that it was made by hillbillies the same as you-know-what. "It'll tickle yore innards," the label promised.
Sources include Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture and federal Bureau of Tobacco, Alcohol, Firearms and Explosives.
Style on 07/27/2014