Over the weekend, some friends and I made a day-trip up to Gastonia, North Carolina, which is about thirty minutes south-ish from Charlotte. It’s sort of an annual trip that we make so we can go to Mary Jo’s Cloth Store, typically to get fabrics and materials needed for Dragon*Con costumes. Despite the fact that I don’t really need any substantial fabrics for what I plan on doing this year, I still committed to being driver. Regardless, while on the way up I-85, a particular billboard had caught my eye.
LEGAL MOONSHINE AVAILABLE EXIT 19B
Moonshine? As in the nuclear race fuel that farmers and rednecks made on their fuel that was usual like 200 proof and could get a human being drunk as easily as it could strip the paint off of an automobile? And it was being sold legally? Oh man, this I had to check out, and since I had the almighty power of being driver, everyone else was at my mercy to indulge in this crazy notion that I needed to acquire said legal moonshine for myself.
About twenty miles into South Carolina, I get off the exit, and I’m admittedly a little worried that we’ll find this place at all; after all, the billboards were in Georgia, and I hadn’t seen a single advertisement since entering South Carolina. But lo and behold, there’s a farmer-looking old man with a huge white Santa Claus beard, and he’s wearing overalls and a straw hat, holding up a sign that says MOONSHINE with an arrow pointing at what appears to be kind of a house-looking structure, with lots of stuff built upon it to make it look more like a place of business.
My first concern was that the fact that I didn’t have any cash on hand; I mean, here I was looking to get some moonshine, there was no way that someone selling moonshine was going to accept anything other than cold hard cash right? I asked the farmer man if they were cash only, and he’s all like “Naw! We take cards!” So without any further hesitation, I whip into a parking spot, and we’re out the car going inside.
Upon entering, I’m expecting more old farmer-types, the kind of guys you would envision being moonshiners, but instead we’re met by a country-hot young woman, and instead of a place with like hidden compartments and wooden crates filled with mislabeled mason jars to hide the fact that they’re peddling moonshine, is a pretty well meticulously organized-looking store, with hundreds of jars of moonshine for sale, in various flavors.
In addition to the moonshine, is a gift store, with lots of hilarious moonshine-themed goods. I really wanted one of their shirts, but they only had XL and higher, making me feel a little oddly inadequate for a second. If I ever swing by this place again, I’m definitely getting the mason jar goblet. I regret not getting it then.
Anyway, to cut to the chase, I ended up picking up a jar of moonshine, because how the hell could I not go to place selling moonshine legally, and not pick up some? I have yet to actually crack into it, because honestly I’m a little scared of it. I’m pretty sure it’s not going to make me go blind, or dissolve my insides due to the fact that if they’ve gone to the trouble to legalize themselves, they’re liable for a modicum of safety of consumption of their product, but it’s the simple fact that it’s named moonshine that gives me some reluctance.
But really, I think these guys are geniuses in a way. Moonshine is illegal, because essentially nobody wants to pay taxes on it. But someone who does go through the trouble to pay taxes on it so that they can sell it, they’ve kind of got an unopposed market with it. I mean at $26 bucks a jar, it’s not like someone could go in there and go “hell no, I’ll get my moonshine somewhere ELSE!”
Also, this place had a petting zoo outside, so I’m led to believe. There’s a fenced in yard portion of it, where there are chickens and pigs running around, and the deck above it was full of goats staring down at us. Apparently, the practice is that a quarter gets a little bit of feed, that customers can put into a bucket and dumbwaiter it up to the goats.
I really hope this place lasts, because it’s looking like the kind of place that is a mandatory stop when passing through the Clemson area in the future. Might have to consider like trips to Greenville or something for some minor league ball to have a good excuse to pass through.
The bottom line is that I now have a jar of moonshine. Until I definitively know when the next time I might pass through South Carolina and have an opportunity to acquire more, it’s a safe bet that I’m going to be pretty protective of my moonshine and drink it in pretty rare or special occasions. But one of my favorite parts about getting this moonshine is just the amusing notion that I can say that I have a jar of moonshine. Seriously, how many people can really claim the same thing at the current moment?
