March 22, 2009, - 8:20 pm
VIDEO-Big Govt Wipes Out a Taste of Americana: Marvin “Popcorn” Sutton, Moonshiner, RIP, A Tragedy Brought to You by ATF/DoJ
By Debbie Schlussel
Yet again, a Saturday Wall Street Journal “Remembrances” column is filled with another interesting American personality, who isn’t well known, but his story is entertaining. And his ending is a sad testament to what America has become and how it picks its victims and perpetrators in the eyes of the law.
Apparently and sadly, Marvin “Popcorn” Sutton recently committed suicide rather than serve his second sentence in the federal pen for moonshining. I don’t know about you, but this Appalachian legend producing moonshine without a license wasn’t harming me, and it smacks more of big brother at work and big government over-regulating Americans literally to death than it does a crime that harmed society.
There is no justice when this harmless 62-year-old hillbilly was about to serve more time in federal prison, when Hezbollah’s CIA/FBI spy Nada Nadim Prouty won’t ever serve a day in prison.
A scrawny, long-bearded mountain man with a foul mouth and a passing acquaintance with copper tubing and kettles, Marvin “Popcorn” Sutton seemed the embodiment of moonshiners of yore.
Brought up in rural Cocke County, Tenn., identified as one of four “moonshine capitals of the world” in the corn-whiskey history “Mountain Spirits,” Mr. Sutton learned the family trade from his father. The practice goes back to the Scots-Irish, who brought it to the New World, and it wasn’t illegal until after the Civil War, says Dan Pierce, chairman of the history department at the University of North Carolina at Asheville.
“This is something that legitimately is an expression of the culture of this region,” Mr. Pierce says.
Like his forebears, Mr. Sutton had brushes with the law, and was first convicted of selling untaxed liquor in the early 1970s. He mostly kept out of trouble after that, though friends say his nickname came from an unfortunate encounter with a balky barroom popcorn machine. But he was well known as a distiller around his native Parrottsville.
He was a familiar figure at the Misty Mountain Ranch Bed & Breakfast in nearby Maggie Valley, N.C., wearing faded overalls and with a back stooped, he said, from decades of humping bags of sugar into the hills. He picked the banjo and serenaded guests on the inn’s porch. He helped decorate the $155-a-night Moonshiner suite at the inn with some still hardware.
Mr. Sutton put a modern spin on his vocation, appearing in documentaries and even penning an autobiography, “Me and My Likker.” Souvenir shops in Maggie Valley sold his video, “The Last Run of Likker I’ll Ever Make,” and even clocks with his image on them.
Other moonshiners have gone legit and cashed in; a former Nascar driver and moonshiner now offers Junior Johnson’s Midnight Moon in Southern liquor stores. But Mr. Sutton insisted on earning a living the old-fashioned way, and in 2007, agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives busted him with 850 gallons of moonshine, stored in an old school bus on his property.
He was convicted in 2008 and was due to report to prison Friday, his widow, Pam Sutton, told the Associated Press. Instead, facing the verdict and ill health, he was found dead by Ms. Sutton at the age of 62 on Monday, and authorities suspect carbon-monoxide poisoning, according to the AP. The Cocke County district attorney’s office said it is investigating the death.
Although Tennessee was once a hotbed of moonshine and federal “revenuers” pursued bootleggers through the hills, an attorney for the Eastern District of Tennessee in Greeneville says he couldn’t remember the last federal prosecution of a moonshiner.
“Modern-day moonshining is the manufacture of methamphetamine,” First Assistant U.S. Attorney Gregg L. Sullivan says. “Tennessee is in the top five states nationally.”
Ms. Sutton discovered her husband in his green Ford Fairlane. “He called it his three-jug car,” she told the AP, “because he gave three jugs of liquor for it.”
I bet the ATF agents who busted Popcorn Sutton must feel real proud of themselves, while real threats in the ATF&E catogories are rampant around America. Way to go.
This 62-year-old man wasn’t a threat in any way. But, hey, why go after terrorists, armed robbers, drug dealers, and illegal aliens, when you can go after this poor, helpless guy from Appalachia just trying to survive. Sickening.
Rest in Peace, Popcorn Sutton, a genuine human specimen of Americana.
As far as real moonshiners from the hills go, you were “The Last One” (the title of the Sucker Punch Pictures documentary on Sutton).
Watch this video and see if you think this poor old man deserved prison time. Look at the guy. He was only 62 and looks like he’s in his nineties. Clearly he’s lived a hard life and is a victim, not a perpetrator.
WITH A NAME LIKE “MARVIN SUTTON” I’M GUESSING HE COULD HAVE BEEN A YID.
yonason on March 22, 2009 at 9:11 pm