Porgy & Bess - Rapid River Magazine

R A P I D R I V E R A R T S & C U L T U R E M A G A Z I N E
fine art
Artist Draws from Personal Experience Growing Up
in the Mountains of Western North Carolina
My father was a moonshiner.
He grew up during the
Depression. The only
paying jobs for young men
were logging and making
moonshine for older, more prosper
farmers. That is how he met my
mother. He was working at my grandfather’s
still and went to the house to
take a bath. He asked my mother for
a comb. When she was telling me this
story she said, “I thought he was the
prettiest thing I had ever seen.”
At 6' 2", muscular and trim with
thick red hair and deep set blue eyes
he was handsome. And he would say she was
“the prettiest girl in the entire country.”
They were married for life and had
eight children. I was the third. By the
world’s standards I guess I was poor in material
things, but rich in a wonderful childhood
filled with love and laughter.
My brothers and sisters and cousins
and I would play in the meadows and
streams where every few yards we could see
BY LUCY MULLINAX
A few days later
a young man who
helped my daddy and
brother with the still
appeared at our door
in a frantic state. He
said the Feds had
found the still and he
had run away and was
Pasture on Hwy. 63, in Leicester, painting by fine artist
sure they were close
Lucy Mullinax, the Moonshiner’s Daughter.
behind.
My daddy was
the remains of abandoned stills. You could
at his regular day
tell what they were from the blackened job and I was the oldest child home that
charred rocks and broken glass fruit jars day with my mother. I pulled him inside
that winked in the summer sun.
and closed the door and pointed to a small
I helped my daddy at a still one time opening to the attic. I helped push the man
by carrying sugar and jars to the sight. We into this hiding place.
followed along a thin path through the dense In the meantime the Feds had gathered
woods. He walked a few steps ahead of me in our yard and were screaming and yelling
in silence, his shadow long and dark in the at my mother, which infuriated me. I went
early light.
Continued on next page
Painting by Lucy Mullinax.
Barn in Madison County, on Hwy. 209,
painting by Lucy Mullinax.
30 March 2010 — RAPID RIVER ARTS & CULTURE MAGAZINE — Vol. 13, No. 7