Professional Documents
Culture Documents
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I offer here the Moonshine Story as it was told in two very different kinds of
settings: formal interviews and everyday casual settings. In the first setting, I
was the one who initiated the interaction, and the conversation tended to
reflect my own sense of historicity (or at least what residents assumed was my
own sense of historicity). In casual settings, on the other hand, it was the residents who initiated and guided the conversation, and the exchange therefore
reflected their own relationship to the history and the past.
My Version of the Moonshine Story
If I had to tell the Moonshine Story in my own words, it would go something
like this:
In January 1941, Jim Gaines and his white neighbor, Evan Portnoy, two young men
living in Union, picked up 8 gallons of homemade whiskey from a local distiller to
be delivered to a predestined drop-off point in the nearby town of Charlottesville.
Distilling and selling home brewor moonshinewithout a license was (and
continues to be) illegal in the State of Virginia, but the young men decided they were
willing to take the risk in exchange for some extra cash. Jim was 28 at the time, and
it was his own 1933 Ford in which they transported the illegal substance.
Only a few blocks short of their final destination, the police raided the car. As though
they already knew what they might find, they went directly to the trunk where the
moonshine was concealed. The officers confiscated the alcohol and the car, and the
two men were arrested. Jim Gainess bail was set at $500, an amount far beyond his
financial means. Fortunately, as a barber in Charlottesville, Jim was something of a
local celebrity in the black community. A certain doctorthe only black physician in
towngenerously agreed to pay his bail, and Jim could return home for the time
being. The court date was set six months ahead to June 1941.
In the meantime, Jims wife, Catherine, learned of the events. Pregnant with their
first child, she was beside herself, first with grief and then with anger. When Jim
Gaines returned home she announced that she refused to raise a child with a parent
in jail. If Jim were to find himself locked away for any period of time, she would
promptly leave him.
Needless to say, the next six months were some of Jim Gainess longest. He had
already lost his car and now faced the real possibility of losing his family as well. Jim
had been making his own moonshine for some time, but this was the first time he
was involved in any sort of commercial transactionand it was also his first
encounter with the police. When June finally came around, Evan and Jim went
together to Lynchburg to be tried in the federal court. As the owner of the whiskey,
Evan was sentenced to 18 months in jail, and Jim was let off, paying only with the
car he had already lost. Thankful, but also quite shaken, Jim returned home to Union
and to his wife. It was his only criminal encounter. Their first child, a baby girl, was
born and died of pneumonia at the age of four months, but the Gainess had three
more children after that, all alive and well today.
I do not remember the first time I was told the Moonshine Story, but I know
that I heard it a lot. When Jim Gaines was arrested in 1941, the events left a lasting impression not only on Jim and Catherine but on the rest of Unions black
residents as well. It was not every day that a member of the community got
arrestedlet alone exonerated in a federal court.
Also, as aforementioned, Jim was a barber in one of only two black barbershops in the City of Charlottesville. These shops were in many ways the social
center of the black community in the area (including Union). These barbershops
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were the place where folks came to hang out regardless of whether they
planned to get their hair cut. It was a place where people came to find out about
the ins and outs of social events and gossip around town.
And Jim Gaines was more than just a central node of social knowledge: his
quick tongue and often-caustic personality made him the king of ranking in
the shop (or doing the dozens, as he might have said).1 The less-than-flattering
nicknames Jim gave to some of his customersBrick Face, Pea Eye, Dead Eye,
Mulewere insulting but also funny, and they stuck, so that even when I
began hanging out at the barbershop, Brick Face and Mule actually introduced
themselves to me by those names, appellations Mr. Gaines had coined more
than 50 years earlier.
Among his friends Jim Gaines was known as a bit of a troublemaker.
Although the moonshine incident was his only criminal encounter, as a young
man Jim managed to get himself into trouble in other ways. In fact, he met
Catherine while attending a private social club party to which he was not
invited. Catherine was quite taken by the strapping young man crashing this
black-tie event who so flippantly disregarded the rules for proper behavior
and who, moreover, owned his own car.
Her mother was considerably less impressed. Only after several months did
Catherine have the courage to tell her mother that she and Jim had secretly
eloped, getting married in the home of a pastor in a nearby town. When
Catherine moved to Union to live with her new husband, it was still several
months before the other young women were willing to accept her as a permanent fixture in Jims life. And so, when Jim Gaines was arrested, people
noticed.
When I first began working in Union in 2000 the Moonshine Story was
almost 60 years old and had already become part of Mr. Gainess own historical
repertoire as well as shared local lore. As a part of my field research, I conducted
hours of interviews with residents, collecting what academics often call life
histories: interviews in which an interviewer (usually an academic) asks residents (usually nonacademic) to share memories and experiences they have had
over the course of their lives. Luckily, however, being immersed in the field
meant that most of my time in Union was not spent in interview settings but in
the loosely structured activities that took place over the course of a day.
I learned that one of the peculiarities of doing fieldwork in a place that has
gone through the process of becoming a Historic District is that residents
develop a routine for the interviews and develop a sort of modus operandi
during the conversation for producing the kinds of discourse they learned that
researchers want (and expect) to hear. The moment I would pull out my notebook or place a tape recorder on a table, the social space would immediately be
redefined as a sort of research site, and residents would inevitably switch into
what I would come to call interview modetalking about the past in ways
that emphasized dates, names, major events, and so onan emphasis that they
did not put into histories that were told in other settings. I consciously aimed
to let interviews be guided in topic and form by the interviewee, but the kind
of space we jointly createdand especially the rolling tape recorder, the microphones, and my pen and paperall contributed to a sort of predetermined
knowledge hierarchy in which I, the researcher, was understood as the monitor for the kinds of knowledge presumed appropriate for these conversations.
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The interviews that I did conduct were certainly insightful in many ways,
but I also had the keen awareness that, away from the tape recorders, histories
had a distinct character that was entirely absent during the interviews. For
example, although the Moonshine Story was told with some regularity in
casual settings, this story never seemed to make it into the formal interviews I
conducted. When I asked residents to tell me about their lives or share
experiences they remember from their childhood, a particular set of narratives
would inevitably ensue. After months of conducting recorded interviews with
residents, I finally learned that sometimes I just had to keep the tape recorder
tucked away in the car and train myself to rely on memory for recording interactions with residents.
If it were not for my varied daily routine, I may not have paid notice to the
ways one-on-one life history interviews tend to create a peculiar kind of historical sensibility that is not reflected in the historical sensibilities of persons
outside of the interview: for example, life history interviews tend to focus
heuristically on the life of one individual, which creates a narrative in which
that individual is the effective protagonist while others assume the role of
supporting actors. Focusing on individuals as individuals also frames social
life in a hyper-individuated mode, rather than attending to the ways sociality is experienced by the narrators themselves. In the case of Union, peoples
lives were rarely experienced as individualized experiences; nor were they
usually articulated in these terms. Finally, the life history interview is often
steeped in questions that are designed to establish a chronological sequence
(e.g., How long did you stay away from Virginia? At what age did your
parents build this house? Where did you go after you finished your military service?), and the resulting narrative inevitably becomes centered
specifically on the passage of time. If it were not for the time I spent participating in other activities around Union, I might not have caught the differences (sometimes subtle, sometimes not) between how residents told history
in interview settings and how they talked about the past in informal settings
among themselves.
As I suggest above, in casual settings history was embedded into conversations that were focused on the present, gaining dimension and meaning
through the ways it inflected on current issues. History was rarely discussed as
a topic in its own right. Instead, fragments of historical narratives were conjured and interlaced into conversations about other topicsfragments that, I
argue, created a thick relationship with the past and affirmed a shared sense of
belonging to the community.
The Moonshine Story in Interview Settings
On a warm March afternoon in 2002, having just finished eating lunch, Jim
Gaines (now 89 years old) and I were sitting on the enclosed porch of his
home. Reflecting on the first signs of springlittle yellow dandelions blanketing the ground outsideI told Mr. Gaines that Bill Anderson and I had
been making dandelion wine. Mr. Gaines said he never learned how to make
wine. With a glint in his eye he added, I know how to make whiskey, though.
Describing the copper sheets that are used to make the distillation drums,
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Mr. Gaines commented, It was terrible. Mama was real upset. If I had not
spent time in Union in casual settings I would not have known the Moonshine
Story or what mama was upset about. But I did know, and so I prodded Mr.
Gaines to tell me more.
I was happy Mr. Gaines brought up the story that I wanted to get on tape
and thought this would be the right opportunity to do so. I asked if I could
bring my tape recorder in from the car. Sure, honey. Go ahead, bring it in,
Mr. Gaines replied, and in moments I was back on the porch and ready to
record. With the tape recorder on, Mr. Gaines looked at me and asked, What
do you want me to tell you? Tell me the story you just told me about the
whiskey, I said. Mr. Gaines laughed and changed the topic. We talked about
lunch, we talked about physical therapy, we talked about a recent photo of Mr.
Gaines in the local newspaper and about the senior center where Mr. Gaines
sometimes goes. Finally, after about ten minutesand without my solicitationMr. Gaines was ready to tell me his interview version of the Moonshine
Story. Lay [those things] somewhere, and Ill tell you the story, he said.
Then, closing his eyes, he took the time to frame the events into a narrative
that was appropriate for the tape recorder. Only a few minutes earlier, before
I brought the tape recorder into the house, the exchange flowed effortlessly:
copper drums, mamas anger, the six-month waitall swirled into easy conversation. Only a few minutes earlier, and now Mr. Gaines was sitting in front
of me with his eyes closed considering what he might say. Lord, you gave me
a hard job this time, he said. I told you people get mad!
OK. . . . [Switches to formal tone.] A friend and I take a shipload to North Mountain.
Pick up 8 gallons [whispering] of moonshine. Bring it back [pause] Lord . . . [struggling
to remember the address] Short Fourth Street. Get raided by the federal officer. [Switches
to regular tone.] And I cant think of his nameI dont think I remember. [Returns
to formal tone.] I get a summons for court
A what? I asked.
A court summons, he explained. A federal warrant. Pick up on January. The court
summons was for June. [. . .] Got the summons . . . No. [Corrects himself.] Got off bail:
500 dollar bond. [Regular tone.] Aint gonna go on naming no names now! [Formal
tone.] 500 dollar bond by a doctor friend. From January, the trial in Lynchburg in
June. . . . Go to court in June. Lost my car. It was taken for the amount of alcohol. State
law. [. . .] At the trial in June, the owner of the alcohol got 18 months, and I was
exoner. . . . [He laughs, then collects himself and resumes formal tone.] I was excused
after losing the car. Case.
With the tape rolling, the social space in which we were interacting transformedand along with it so did the story about the moonshine. The language
was formalized. The sentences were shortened. The tone was serious, almost
forced. Instead of looking at me (as he had done in the first version of the story),
Mr. Gainess eyes were now fixed somewhere far away. He chose his words
carefully. They were focused on dates, events, places, facts. And I felt frustrated. I wanted the human side of the story, but Mr. Gaines offered a court
transcriptstyle narrative.
Although it had some similar contours to the history I was familiar with, this
was not the Moonshine Story I had come to know through interactions around
the community. Half jokinglybut also with a stubborn persistenceMr. Gaines
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had narrated a story that was formal, rigid, focused on dry facts, and meticulously careful not to mention any names. Half jokinglybut also with a clear
message underlying the jokehe ended his story as though he had been testifying in court: Case, he said. Surprised and a little disappointed I joked
along, Case closed.
Why was this version so different from the ones I had heard before? We were
talking about an illicit activity, and Mr. Gaines was careful to respect the privacy of those who were involvedeven though many of them had been dead
for years. But he could just as easily have left out private names and still kept
the spirit of the narrative I had heard on other occasions. And yet he chose not
to. I reflected on the circumstances of this narration and compared it with other
times I had heard the story.
The Moonshine Story in Casual Settings
And here was my second surprise: Though I knew I had heard the
Moonshine Story many times before and could recite the events with some
detail (as I do above), I could not recall any setting in which the story was actually narrated from beginning to end. A search through my field notes confirmed my suspicion. The Moonshine Story hardly ever showed up in my notes
even though I knew it frequently found its way into conversations I had with
residents throughout the day. How could a narrative that appeared to be so
prevalent (indeed I myself had identified it as part of the local historical repertoire because of the frequency with which it was told) be almost entirely absent
from my field notes? Was the narrative not as prevalent as I had originally
thought? Was I consistently omitting it from my records? I searched through
almost two-years worth of notes for remnants of the Moonshine Story.
A hint of the narrative surfaced in an entry from March 2002 and began to
reveal how a narrative could have been both eminently present in local historytelling practices and almost entirely absent from my notes. Here, again, I was
talking to Mr. Gaines. A neighbor was preparing to leave after a short visit. Id
better get going, he announced, already halfway out the door, my wifell get
mad if I stay out any longer. I just stopped by to say hello. Thinking about the
neighbors relationship with his wife, I was reminded of Catherine Gainess
response to her husbands potential incarceration.
Hey, Mr. Gaines, I asked, what car were you driving when they took it
awayyou know, that story you told me?
He asked, What, with the alcohol?
Yeah.
Mr. Gaines squinted his eyes, thought about it for a quick moment and said,
It was a . . . thirty . . . three . . . Ford.
A 33 Ford?
Yeah.
When the Moonshine Story did make it into my field notes, as in this
entry, these were times when I myself brought up the subject. Why did it not
show up on other occasions? The above exchange makes it perfectly clear
that the story had been recounted in my presence before this exchange
(because I knew to make the connection among an angry wife, moonshine,
and the confiscated car). When had I heard it, then? There was no moment
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I could recallno setting in which the story was told to me in full. And yet
I knew it.
In my field notes I focused on conversations and experiences I had over the
course of a day, and the exchanges I recorded attend specifically to the topics
that were being discussed. But Union residents regularly embedded fragments
of historical narratives into these everyday conversations. When I first entered
the field and was not familiar with the local historical repertoire (in other
words, when I was decidedly not part of the community), such embedded fragments would be too obscure for me to recognize. The subtle innuendoes made
over the course of a conversation about another topic would be lost to meas
they would be to any interlocutor who was not a member of the community. If
I participated in a conversation about the price of copper, for example, a resident might have made reference to copper drums being buried in the ground,
but as an outsider I did not have the appropriate knowledge of the local historical repertoire to decode such a reference as a history fragment.
The longer I spent in Union and the stronger my ties became with some of
the residents, the more familiar I became with the narratives people shared,
and I became better able to pick up on history fragments that were subtly
embedded into conversations in which I participated or that I witnessed.
Gradually I learned to recognize the fragments and began piecing them
together to form my own understanding of Unions history, but when it came
time to write my field notes, those history fragments rarely made it in, because
they were mentioned only as short asides in conversations that were about
other topicstoo tangential for me to remember or, by then, too obvious to
be mentioned in my notes.
There was never one defining moment when I heard the Moonshine Story in
its entirety. Instead, the accumulation of history fragments over the course of
time allowed me to build a dynamic relationship to the narratives in the same
way that a community member might build up his or her own dynamic relationship to history over the course of a lifetime: a few sentences here, a mention there, references that at first seem obscure, little by little fleshed out into
thick understandings of Unions pasts. The history fragments that I happened
to accumulate reflected the particular social relations in which I was embedded and the conversations and relationships I had with different residents over
the course of my research. Other residents had accumulated a very different
set of history fragments based on their own unique set of social relationships.
Though histories such as the Moonshine Story were rarely recounted as complete narratives as Labov and Waletzky (1967) term them, the fragments
added up over time, allowing both speaker and listener to develop a dynamic
and personal relationship to the history and a thick relationship to the past.
Moreover, the more time one spends in the community, the more history fragments one is likely to be familiar with (and to share) and, by extension, the
more deeply embedded one becomes in the community.
Conclusion
Writing about a very different group of people living in another part of the
world, Richard Price notes that among the Saramaka of Suriname the sharing of
historical knowledge is, in his words, deliberately incomplete. The Saramaka,
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according to Price, tell only fragments of stories and will leave out most of
what the teller knows about the incident in question (1983:10). Price explains
that such fragments make clear . . . why learning a historical story may take
a full lifetime in this society (1983:130).
Unions residents also engage in a sort of fragmented history telling, and
although the social and political context in Virginia is quite different from that
in Suriname, history-telling practices among the Saramaka are quite relevant in
Union as well. Away from the tape recorders, Union residents offered only
fragments of an event at any one time, leav[ing] out most of what the teller
knows of the incident in question. And so the listener builds a thick relationship to the historical event being recounted.
The time lapse between hearing one fragment and another, the thoughts in
which one engages in order to complete the gaps in ones knowledge, even
hearing different history fragments from different narratorsall feed into an
infinitely complex relationship to history that is superimposed upon or knotted into one another (Geertz 1973:10). The complexity of the relationship that
residents develop to the set of shared historical narratives certainly rivals the
complexity of any Geertzian wink.
Moreover, because these historical narratives are not fixed in writing, history continues to have a dynamic social life within the community. The fragments that I heard of the Moonshine Story are different from the fragments that
another resident might have heard. At different moments, different parts of the
story become relevant, and the longer one lives in the community, the more history fragments with which one is likely to be familiar and the thicker ones relationship to Unions past. Between those who have heard different fragments
of a story, then, residents are able to form another layer to an already thick
historical narrative.
It is precisely this thick fragmented history telling that is most revealing,
I believe, of the role that history plays in producing a shared sense of community. As with the Saramaka, learning history in Union also takes a full lifetime. When I first arrived in Union, references to the Moonshine Story were
lost on me because I was not familiar with local history because it was told in
ways with which I was not initially familiar. Because the references were
obscurebecause there is no natural, innate connection (that I can detect, at
any rate) among moonshine, a 33 Ford, and an angry wife, for examplethe
ability to make such a connection is a subtle yet powerful way for residents to
affirm their own membership within the community and to distinguish those
who are clearly not part of the community (even if they happen to live in close
proximity).
I have used myself in an anecdote showing my initial lack of knowledge of
the local historical repertoire and later a burgeoning understanding of it to
explain how community membership is established through the sharing of history fragments: I remember laughter and surprise one day when I somehow
managed to respond appropriately to someones embedded history fragment.
Look at her! someone called to the others, as though delighted with the first
steps of a small child: What do you know about the old 33 Ford? Until then,
I could certainly participate in conversations with residents of Union, but it was
only when I could pick up onand respond tothe fragmented history telling
that my place in the community started to become established. Not having to
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References Cited
de Certeau, Michel
1988[1975] The Writing of History. Tom Conley, trans. New York: Columbia
University Press.
Geertz, Clifford
1973 Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture. In The
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Basic Books.
Jackson, John L., Jr.
2005 Real Black: Adventures in Racial Sincerity. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press.
Labov, William, and Joshua Waletzky
1967 Narrative Analysis: Oral Versions of Personal Experience. In Essays on the
Verbal and Visual Arts. Proceedings of the 1966 Annual Spring Meeting of the
American Ethnological Society. June Helm, ed. Pp. 1244. Seattle: University of
Washington Press.
Lvi-Strauss, Claude
1966[1962] The Savage Mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Price, Richard
1983 First Time: The Historical Vision of an Afro-American People. Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins University Press.
Trouillot, Michel-Rolph
1995 Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History. Boston: Beacon Press.