Bass moved onto some land just over the Tennessee line in North Carolina after he was caught making liquor in Tennessee. There was only a little log cabin there, and he moved his family into it. A logging company owned the land, but he just “homesteaded” it, not paying rent but living on it just as if he owned it. At some point, he paid back taxes that were due on it. He lived there for seven years, and it was considered his by some old law that was on the North Carolina books. We were not able to get all the facts quite clear on his homesteading the property, but when this story was written, he did own 126 acres.
I stayed here on this land for several years before I owned it. People kept on telling me, “That land’s your’n. You can take it.” The logging company that owned the land kept notifying me to move, or they was going to come out here and throw me out. They didn’t come, though. There was this fellow who was the lawyer for that company that owned the land. He was an awful good lawyer. I’d run up on him in Murphy, North Carolina, and he’d notify me to leave. And, I’d say, “You’d better be quiet, old man, about that.” Over the years there were different lawyers that had charge of this piece of land. They don’t allow homesteading no more. They said I was the last man ever to pull a deal like that. All you have to do is stay seven years—you have to stay twenty-one years on government land—seven years homesteading, and you can take hold. They done away with it right then.
I had to pay one hundred and twenty-five dollars in back taxes when I homesteaded this piece of land. That’s all it ever cost me. I’ve got a hundred and twenty-six acres left out of two hundred fifty-seven. I’ve sold that much off in lots for summer homes. There was a little old log house here. It wasn’t much bigger than this room here. It was just a little old shack of a thing. We moved in there. We had about five or six kids when we come in here. That house is tore down now. Then I built a bigger place and finally built this concrete-block-and-glass house about twenty years ago.
I farmed and made moonshine, too. We didn’t do much farmin’ no way. It’s hard to make corn here. It’s too cold. Budworms in the spring will git your corn. You can’t do no good. This land’s more for weeds and gopher grass and things like that. My wife, Callie, and the younguns worked like dogs. Now, my wife was a worker! She didn’t set around and twiddle her fingers and big toes. The children are all grown and moved away now. I’ve got a girl in Franklin, North Carolina, and one in Florida, and the rest of ’em scattered all over the United States. I’ve got a boy out in Oregon. There was a lot of money there when he went out there. Folks got a hundred dollars a day for work. He’s cut timber ever since he’s been there. I can’t tell you how many, but I’ve got about twenty-three grandchildren, and I believe about forty or more great-grandchildren. That ain’t many, maybe, but if I seen them all a-comin’, I’d sure move out. I ain’t having no reunion!
I never made any liquor before I was eighteen. Never got hooked up with it. It was something I just wanted to cultivate, I guess. I just got interested in it and got started on it and just didn’t stop. Sometimes I had four sixty-gallon barrels, sometimes up to twelve and fifteen, like that. It’s a job, too. At times I had people workin’ with me. At times I didn’t. I made liquor for thirty years, just the same as you’d be working on the job. And I broke the record of makin’ the best liquor that was put out. I took mine off from one-hundred-ten to one-hundred-twenty proof. It took a man to drink it; a boy couldn’t. I was making it down there in Tennessee, in the general area where Bill White later had his huntin’ lodge. Used to be liquor wasn’t so high. I sold lots of liquor from four dollars a gallon on up to twenty dollars.
PLATE 37 “I made one-hundred-ten proof and along like that. It was high-powered. I’ve got fellows drunk, took clippers and clipped their hair off and greased their head with axle grease.” (Monroe Life, September 14, 1977)
Most moonshiners make what’s called singlings. This means going through the distilling process once. I put mine through once, clean up the still, and run the liquor through a second time. We call that doublin’. That’s when you make your good liquor. I made a run one time using two bushels of rye, one bushel of corn, and one of Irish potatoes. If you’ve got beer that won’t work, you just cook you a little poke [cloth sack or bag] of taters and put a rock in it and sink it in your beer, and it’ll put it to work. I let a neighbor have a drink. I could hear him a-hollerin’ for ten hours nearly after he left my house. I stayed in the moonshine business for thirty years, and in all that time, they never once caught me. I came nigh to gettin’ caught a few times, though.
The way I kept from getting caught was, I stood in with the law. I was acquainted with the law and got along with them. I guess they just took a liking to me, and I got along. This talking about ’em and going on and all such as that won’t work. I never give ’em a dime. I never give ’em no liquor as a bribe. Never bought them off or nothing. The federal men didn’t watch moonshiners so close back then. However, they’d come in there sometimes. They didn’t work at it then like they do now. I had a brother, Goldie, over here that helped build Fontana Dam, and he was acquainted with a fellow by the name of John Morton who was a federal man. Old John got word on me, and he came over where I had my still. He hung around in the territory playin’ cards and drinkin’ a spell. Me and Goldie had been up the river there on the ridge to see about the beer on our still, and we heared somebody drivin’ up. We backed our car down, went back down the road, and come up like we were waiting. We wanted to throw them off from comin’ down that way. The man asked if there was any liquor in this country that a man could buy, and I said, “Yeah.”
I didn’t know him, but Goldie knew who he was. The man asked, “How much would a half gallon cost?” I said, “It’ll cost ten dollars.” God! He fell over and went to kickin’ like he was dyin’. He said, “Ten dollars?” I said, “Yeah.” He decided he wanted it anyway. He said, “When you gonna bring that liquor?” I said, “I ain’t going to bring it. You have to go get it.” Well, we brought him up to right over there [near Bass’s house]. Him and Goldie stood over there and talked. I come over here near the house and got this fruit jar washed out, and it was ready to go. I had that liquor hid right out there in the thicket, and I was about to go out there and get it. Goldie come over here. He said, “Don’t you know that’s John Morton?” I said, “No.” He said, “That’s that federal man.” I just run over there and give his money back. I said, “Here’s your money.” He said, “What do you mean?” And I said, “There ain’t no liquor for you. I don’t know what went with it.” I just turned around and walked off. He said, “Wait a minute.” I come back over here to the house, and I had a thirty/thirty lever-action high-power gun. I walked over there to that big white oak. I said, “Come on over, Uncle John.” And he never come. I didn’t aim for him to come, for I knowed if he did, he might find this liquor. That’s the closest I ever come to gettin’ caught. He stayed in this section, though, and he went on over to Hanging Dog, and a cousin of mine was making liquor then. Morton said, “Can I get a quart of liquor?” My cousin said, “Yeah, I guess.” And he turned around to his boy and said, “Go get this man a quart of liquor.” He come back and handed the liquor to his daddy, and his daddy handed it to Morton. And Morton said, “You’s all under arrest.” He took ’em both and put them in jail right there.
I moved my still occasionally. I stayed in some places back up off in Rough Ridge that I cleared out—pretty good new ground. I made it all over these woods here. I didn’t stay in one place all the time. You can’t go to sleep there. You’re lookin’ for something you don’t want to see, and that’s the law. There’s something or another all the time. You’re busy. You’ve got something to do, not just sittin’ there sleeping. The beer will scorch and ruin. I’ve made a run or two of apple brandy and peach brandy, too. Now, that’s something that you can drink—that’s good! You run them apples in this summer when they come in. You fix them where they won’t freeze, and they sit there till next summer. Then you run them off.
They’re all rotten, just fermented. There ain’t nothing much left in there, just juice. You get one quart of brandy out of a bushel of apples. That’s all you get. That’s a slow-runnin’ business. You mix sugar with the juice, and you can make good drinkin’ liquor and good brandy, too.
If you get a good run out of cornmeal, you get two gallons of liquor to the bushel of meal, and that’s about all you’ll get. If I make a run with syrup liquor using sorghum instead of granulated sugar, I might get a good mash and good liquor. Then next time the liquor might be just as foggy—nasty-looking stuff. It’s not consistent. It don’t run out the next time like it ought to.
PLATE 38 “Whoa, mule, whoa.” Bass, before his arm was shot off, hauling fodder on a sled pulled by a mule
Most of the people come and got it. I never took much liquor away. They come and got it. There’s been fellows come out of Atlanta here looking for my liquor. I didn’t carry my liquor out in a truck. I’d carry it out on my back. Years ago, my brother and I hauled crossties to Murphy, North Carolina, on a wagon. We’d put bundles of corn tops for the mules to eat on the top of the load. And in each bundle of tops, we hid a gallon of liquor. In Murphy, we’d find a friend who let us know the whereabouts of the high sheriff and the revenuers. If they were anywhere around, we’d get that liquor sold and get out of there.
PLATE 39 “I’ve been in jail a many a time—just for packin’ a pistol.” Bass after his arm was amputated
About 1931, I was over at Unaka Valley one evening. There had been a meeting over there. A bunch of us fellows was sittin’ on a’ old, crooked pasture rail fence. One of the fellows’ brothers was drinkin’, so he and another boy took the one who was drunk up to his sister’s house. I waited on ’em down there at the fork of the road. The others had gone on, and I was by myself. This fellow Johnson come up and said, “What’s argon’ on here?” And I said, “It ain’t anything to ya.” That’s all I said, and he just hauled out his gun and went to shooting. The first time he split my hat brim right along there, and the next time, he hit me right in the neck there. I had my pistol stickin’ out of my belt, and as I come off’n the fence, I came out with a gun. He throwed his flashlight down. Now, the sky was clear, but there was white clouds a-blowin’ over along like that—the moon was shining—and he throwed his flashlight down. I grabbed my pistol and shot him right through the thigh. He shot six shots and hit me twice. He was a bad shot, but he’d killed seven men. I made the sixth man that man had shot that didn’t die. He’s dead now, but I don’t know what he died from.
They put me in jail that night. I’ve been in jail a many a time—just for packin’ a pistol and getting drunk and disturbin’ the public worship and such as that. We’d get in a fight right in the middle of the meetinghouse. We didn’t care. We didn’t care for nothin’. I stayed in jail maybe a month. Three men signed my bond for me, but the doctor wouldn’t let me out of jail before that. He said, “It’s that big artery. If you were to sneeze or cough, and it was to break, you’d bleed to death. You’ve got to stay here till that heals over.” I don’t know. I may have stayed there two months. It was two years after I lost my arm before I was tried for that shootin’. They waited till my arm got well before they tried me.
The judge who tried me was a mean old devil. He handed down my sentence. Then he got to vilifying me, talking mean to me. He kept saying things to me like: “Shooting up the law. We’ve got to have lawmen. We’ve got to have the best citizens,” and all such as that. I said, “Judge, you’re just a d——liar. There sits the outlaw. He’s killed seven and shot me, and you call him a good citizen?” He said, “Get him, Sheriff. Get him out of here.” The sheriff had me by the belt a-pullin’ me toward the jail door, and I was a-cussing him. The judge said, “I wish I hadn’t already passed sentence on you. I’d give you a hundred years.” I served nine months in the chain gang, built nine months on the road for shootin’ Johnson. I was a water boy on the road and that was all I had to do. They was good to me, and I was quiet. I didn’t raise no disturbance, for I knowed if I did, I would just have to make more time.
Some people I knew had signed a petition for me to get out. One man told me, “Mr. Dockery, I’ll not sign that. I’m going to write a letter in a day or two, and that will do more good.” And it did. He wrote the governor a letter. Then he said, “Dockery,” he said, “it looks like the chips are for us. It looks like you are going to get to go home in a few days.” He said, “Everybody’s for you.” Well, that cheered me up. Then I heard from him sayin’ that this big crook that drove a transfer truck and came down to a nearby logging camp every Saturday night, was telling the governor, “Keep Dockery there in jail the longest day you can.” He says, “That’s the meanest man that’s ever been in this country. We’re afraid to go to bed. We’re afraid he’ll burn the house on us. Keep him in there the longest day you can.” And he wrote that. He wrote that to the governor, and the governor mailed it to me. I wish I’d kept that letter, but I don’t know—I guess I just burned it then. That man was related to my family. Him and my daddy was first cousins. I made it hot for him when I come back from jail, though.
I was talkin’ to one man who’d been elected sheriff four times in one town in North Carolina near where I lived. He was strict and straight. He was a tough one. He would convict you whether you was guilty or not. I was talking to him up there after he got out of the business, and he asked me if I was makin’ liquor. I told him, “Yeah.” He said, “Just keep on makin’ it.” It wasn’t his job to worry about it anymore. I ain’t made no liquor now in a long time. It got so dangerous around here. There is too many people in these woods. I ain’t made no liquor in a long time.
Hooper’s Bald is a prominent mountain in the vicinity where Bass was raised. We had heard of Hooper’s Bald because it was once a famous game preserve. In our general conversation, we asked Bass if he knew anything about the preserve on Hooper’s Bald.
Some people who developed a game preserve on Hooper’s Bald brought buffalo and Russian hogs in here years ago. I seed the first ones they ever brought here. A fellow by the name of Brian Radford had one of them buffalo in a cage-of-a-thing. Them horns were about six inches long, and they was black from one end to the other. We boys would slip along, and we had a walkin’ stick, and we’d jab him, and he’d stab them horns through that thing. Radford said, “Ah-ah-ah, you boys, don’t do that. Don’t do that. He’ll break out of there.” We’d jab him with that sharp, pointed stick, and he’d just let go and stab them horns through that cage. They was just little old pine boards. If he could’ve, he would have tore out of that cage and left. They brought them Russian hogs in here years ago, and these woods was full of ’em. They just ain’t here no more. When they first brought them here, they was mean! If anybody got around where those hogs had little ones, they’d run the person up a tree. No, I never did have one to chase me up a tree, but I’ve witnessed it.
I do more trappin’ than anything. Of the eighteen bears I’ve killed, I trapped most of them. I snared mine with a hollow log and spring pole and cable. I’d put bait in that log, and he couldn’t pass it up. He’d go in there to get it. That spring would trip and catch him by the hand, and he couldn’t do no good but run around. It’s been about sixteen year since I’ve killed a bear. Last fall, down the road there, I seed signs of a bear, but I never did locate it. Something ’r ’nother happened to it.
“Let me tell you about Bass.”
~Bill White says, “We hit it off good.”~
Bill White grew up in the mountainous area around Tellico Plains, Tennessee. When he was a boy, he met Bass Dockery and tells us about that in this interview. We had not heard of Bill White before we went on our first trip to meet Bass. We stopped at his store and trailer park to ask for directions to Bass’s house. In the course of that conversation, he told us some interesting things about Bass and how he had come to know him. We asked if we could come back and interview him later in the afternoon about his friendship with Bass. He said, �
��Sure,” and the information Bill gave us helps to make this a more complete story about Bass Dockery. Without Bill’s help, Bass’s story would have been quite sketchy.
Several years after he returned from World War II, Bill bought property along the Bald River Gorge near Tellico Plains and bordering National Forest land in the midst of excellent hunting and fishing country. When this story was written, he and his wife lived in a house they built after their hunting lodge burned down. They ran a small convenience store and trailer park. People would leave their vacation trailers there year-round and stay in them throughout the late spring, summer, and early fall. Bill White is a very interesting person himself, and when we returned during the winter to have him approve the article as we had typed it, we took pictures and copied old pictures of his, and talked to him more about his life.
—Bridget McCurry
I have been right here sixteen years. I used to own a forty-room hunting lodge right up there [points to a location about one hundred yards from the store]. It’s burned down now, and I now run this hunting and recreation camp.
I know a little about mountain ways. You take care of your own and let the other fellow take care of his own. It’s not just Bass. It’s everybody in these Appalachian Mountains. They are all like that. They’ve got their own code. They’d rather settle their own arguments, their own feuds, than have outsiders, The Law, come in and try to tell them so-and-so. Usually the Appalachian people back in the mountains think it’s a one-sided deal because if a man killed my brother, say, then why should The Law or somebody else come in here and kill that person, take him out and put him in jail, or do anything with him? That’s my grief. I’m supposed to go out there and punish the killer. That’s strictly up to me to do. That’s my revenge, not theirs, not The Law’s. That’s the code these people like to live by. If a man does something to you, then that man’s the one to be punished by you, not the judge down there sittin’ on that stand. He ain’t done nothing to that judge. He done it to you. He stole your horse. He’s done something to you. Well, go over there and steal one of his horses. That’s the way it’s supposed to go down. If somebody steals one of your horses, well, you go over there and steal one of his if he’s got any, and if he ain’t, you steal his brother’s horse. Then, if they don’t like it, they can take care of the brother that stole your horse. It cuts down on a lot of things.
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