'Hunter Gray' hunterbadbear@hunterbear.org [marxist]
2014-08-06 10:44:49 UTC
RBB, taking a brief respite from the horrors of our contemporary world, has been talking about beer brew. Beer -- and wine -- may be OK for dudes and tenderfeet but here's the Real Stuff. (H)
HERMIT MOONSHINE [HUNTER BEAR]
I was in my late 'Teens -- the Army loomed -- and my good friend, Joe Janes, and I paid one of our frequent visits to our old hermit buddies who lived in isolated fashion [as hermits do] at the truly archaic Old Packard Ranch. That was located on the far, far upper end of the Verde Valley where Sycamore Creek emerges from the lower vestiges of vast and totally wild Sycamore Canyon, and just before its waters merge with the Verde River. Joe, ten years older than I, a veteran of the Battle of the Bulge and an Anthro of sorts, worked with me spotting and fighting forest fires on the Coconino National Forest, out of my home town of Flagstaff, Arizona. [We had some genuinely wild but strenuous times which we still recall most fondly. See this web-page [which I have posted a time or two] for an intro to those epochs,
http://hunterbear.org/reminiscence.htm
The hermits, old but ageless, were Joe Dickson, a retired hard-rock miner, and Jerry Greaves, a retired seaman who had somehow made it across the mountain ranges into the high semi-desert. The Old Packard Ranch was rumored to be populated by ghosts [including Old Man Packard] but the hermits got on well with them -- bolstered by a huge collection of Fate Magazine which focused, in popular fashion, on the supernatural. Early on, they came to see Joe Janes and I as kindred souls.
On this particular visit, Joe and Jerry told us proudly that they had just made a big supply of "juniper gin" for themselves and their few friends who occasionally took the somewhat torturous and rocky route to their bastion.
Joe Janes asked, reasonably enough, how they made the brew. They took us out onto the back porch and there, practically an antique of sorts even then, was a venerable Still -- manufactured by, of all things, Montgomery Ward ["Monkey Ward."] Even at that youthful age, I had some considerable knowledge of chemistry -- and had had at one time a large and sophisticated lab at our home furnished by a much older cousin [the one who gave me my first rifle when I was seven.] The Still was essentially a moderately large metal retort with a fairly long "barrel" emanating from its body and accompanied by a longish metal tube which was attached to the narrowed end. A coil was situated along the tube. The hermits carefully explained their Magic: first they gathered and mashed many, many bluish berries from the omni-present Juniper trees, put all of that juicy mass into the Still, poured in a fair amount of ethyl [grain] alcohol -- and carried the whole "package" to the bank of Sycamore Creek. They put in some creek water, and added some twigs from Sycamore Trees "for special flavor" -- and boiled everything down to residue via a small fire-stand they had constructed with appropriate metal pieces. The end of the tube went down into a gallon jug placed in the always very cold waters of the creek where its gases condensed into a grayish liquid.
They offered us some. Dutifully, but with instinctive trepidation, we each took a small glass. We drank.
If I had not then been at that moment dealing with a burning mouth and throat, I probably could have, despite the several feet between us, sensed Joe shuddering. Gamely we finished. In my mind, I recalled spilling sulphuric acid on my hand and wrist during an experiment and the warm-into-burn feeling that pronto-like followed -- before I poured out much neutralizing baking soda.
We stood there, faces red, tears in our eyes.
"Now isn't that damn good stuff?" said Jerry.
"Good," said the always well mannered Joe Janes. But the word came out with structural difficulty.
All I could do was Nod, dumbly.
Decades later, a good Ho-Chunk [aka Winnebago] friend of mine, Elliott Ricehill, who had spent a fairly long stretch in Iowa State Penitentiary before we were able to free him, told me that, when he was in the Inside, he learned how to make "good brew" in a conventional shower hookup.
He offered to show me.
I passed.
Best, Hunter Gray [Hunter Bear]
HUNTER GRAY [HUNTER BEAR/JOHN R SALTER JR] Mi'kmaq /
St. Francis Abenaki / St. Regis Mohawk
Protected by NaŽshdoŽiŽbaŽiŽ
and Ohkwari'
Check out our massive social justice website:
www.hunterbear.org
Member, National Writers Union AFL-CIO
The Stormy Adoption of an Indian Child [My Father]:
http://hunterbear.org/James%20and%20Salter%20and%20Dad.htm
(Photos)
My expanded/updated "Organizer's Book,"
JACKSON MISSISSIPPI -- with a new 10,000
word introduction by me. Covers much of my
confrontational social justice organizing life to
date. Contains much how-to grassroots organizing
methodology: http://hunterbear.org/jackson.htm
Forest Fires in the West (including the life of an old-time
fire lookout: http://hunterbear.org/forest_fires_in_the_west.htm
HERMIT MOONSHINE [HUNTER BEAR]
I was in my late 'Teens -- the Army loomed -- and my good friend, Joe Janes, and I paid one of our frequent visits to our old hermit buddies who lived in isolated fashion [as hermits do] at the truly archaic Old Packard Ranch. That was located on the far, far upper end of the Verde Valley where Sycamore Creek emerges from the lower vestiges of vast and totally wild Sycamore Canyon, and just before its waters merge with the Verde River. Joe, ten years older than I, a veteran of the Battle of the Bulge and an Anthro of sorts, worked with me spotting and fighting forest fires on the Coconino National Forest, out of my home town of Flagstaff, Arizona. [We had some genuinely wild but strenuous times which we still recall most fondly. See this web-page [which I have posted a time or two] for an intro to those epochs,
http://hunterbear.org/reminiscence.htm
The hermits, old but ageless, were Joe Dickson, a retired hard-rock miner, and Jerry Greaves, a retired seaman who had somehow made it across the mountain ranges into the high semi-desert. The Old Packard Ranch was rumored to be populated by ghosts [including Old Man Packard] but the hermits got on well with them -- bolstered by a huge collection of Fate Magazine which focused, in popular fashion, on the supernatural. Early on, they came to see Joe Janes and I as kindred souls.
On this particular visit, Joe and Jerry told us proudly that they had just made a big supply of "juniper gin" for themselves and their few friends who occasionally took the somewhat torturous and rocky route to their bastion.
Joe Janes asked, reasonably enough, how they made the brew. They took us out onto the back porch and there, practically an antique of sorts even then, was a venerable Still -- manufactured by, of all things, Montgomery Ward ["Monkey Ward."] Even at that youthful age, I had some considerable knowledge of chemistry -- and had had at one time a large and sophisticated lab at our home furnished by a much older cousin [the one who gave me my first rifle when I was seven.] The Still was essentially a moderately large metal retort with a fairly long "barrel" emanating from its body and accompanied by a longish metal tube which was attached to the narrowed end. A coil was situated along the tube. The hermits carefully explained their Magic: first they gathered and mashed many, many bluish berries from the omni-present Juniper trees, put all of that juicy mass into the Still, poured in a fair amount of ethyl [grain] alcohol -- and carried the whole "package" to the bank of Sycamore Creek. They put in some creek water, and added some twigs from Sycamore Trees "for special flavor" -- and boiled everything down to residue via a small fire-stand they had constructed with appropriate metal pieces. The end of the tube went down into a gallon jug placed in the always very cold waters of the creek where its gases condensed into a grayish liquid.
They offered us some. Dutifully, but with instinctive trepidation, we each took a small glass. We drank.
If I had not then been at that moment dealing with a burning mouth and throat, I probably could have, despite the several feet between us, sensed Joe shuddering. Gamely we finished. In my mind, I recalled spilling sulphuric acid on my hand and wrist during an experiment and the warm-into-burn feeling that pronto-like followed -- before I poured out much neutralizing baking soda.
We stood there, faces red, tears in our eyes.
"Now isn't that damn good stuff?" said Jerry.
"Good," said the always well mannered Joe Janes. But the word came out with structural difficulty.
All I could do was Nod, dumbly.
Decades later, a good Ho-Chunk [aka Winnebago] friend of mine, Elliott Ricehill, who had spent a fairly long stretch in Iowa State Penitentiary before we were able to free him, told me that, when he was in the Inside, he learned how to make "good brew" in a conventional shower hookup.
He offered to show me.
I passed.
Best, Hunter Gray [Hunter Bear]
HUNTER GRAY [HUNTER BEAR/JOHN R SALTER JR] Mi'kmaq /
St. Francis Abenaki / St. Regis Mohawk
Protected by NaŽshdoŽiŽbaŽiŽ
and Ohkwari'
Check out our massive social justice website:
www.hunterbear.org
Member, National Writers Union AFL-CIO
The Stormy Adoption of an Indian Child [My Father]:
http://hunterbear.org/James%20and%20Salter%20and%20Dad.htm
(Photos)
My expanded/updated "Organizer's Book,"
JACKSON MISSISSIPPI -- with a new 10,000
word introduction by me. Covers much of my
confrontational social justice organizing life to
date. Contains much how-to grassroots organizing
methodology: http://hunterbear.org/jackson.htm
Forest Fires in the West (including the life of an old-time
fire lookout: http://hunterbear.org/forest_fires_in_the_west.htm