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Kiln man no\^ sells drums he wouid use for stills
Former moonshiner, bo(
By WAYNE DUCOMB JR.
A former third generation Kiln moonshiner and bootlegger today sells the steel bafjels and scrap metal which he used to fashion into stills he operated throughout Hancock County.
Greg Cuevas, 40, of Cuevas Road in Kiln now is a mild-mannered religious family man who makes a living by selling 55-gallon steel drams and scrap metal. He is also a legitimate welder these" days.
Cuevas, a tall burly soft-spoken man, is proud that for almost seven years he has not distilled or drank a drop of alcohol.
Although he has pledged to his family never to engage in that covert and ‘exciting’ lifestyle again, Cuevas recently recounted his experiences as a historical record from one of the last contemporary Kiln moonshiners and bootleggers.
He revealed that up until the evening of Jan. 9, 1977 he was an alcoholic, a fighter and made or sold all the moonshine wiskey he could.
But that night at a Kiln watering hole, Cuevas said a man hugging the bar with a beer in his hand wearily looked up at him and said, “Doth sayeth the Lord.”
Cuevas said he usually wouldn’t have noticed the man or what he had said, but it suddenly dawned on him that he was on rocky ground with his third marriage in his early-thirties, had been arrested three times and convicted once for moonshining, and didn’t have a dime to his name—to quote a frequently used phrase, he realized it was time for change.
It began when he was a teenager. Cuevas would carry one-gallon glass jugs to and from stills and load trucks with liquor for moonshiners.
He later began to run (transport)
loads of wiskey made by local moonshiners with souped-up cars sporting overload springs which allowed large heavy loads to be carried.
He recalled frequently delivering large loads of the clear moonshine to a former Waveland truck stop where a major national distiller would fill a tractor-trailer rig with Kiln liquor which was then apparently transported to company distilleries for processing to resemble the various liquors ‘legitimately’ sold by the firm.
The truck driver would pay for the Kiln whiskey with a ‘pillowcase full of money,’ he added.
But after observing several still operations and receiving extra training at home, he decided to begin making his own ‘shine.’
“Moonshining had been a family tradition for 80 or 90 years or more. My father and grandfather both made
INSIDE SHED OR BARN IN WINTER IN HOLLOW WITH TREE COVER IN SUMMER
THUMPER CAN
WASTE BEER BUCKET
PROPANE BURNERS
CONTEMPORARY STILL—Diagram of a contemj structed primarily with 55-gallon drums based oi Greg Cuevas of Kiln, a former moonshiner and bo the ‘buck’ is dipped from the top of the fermenting The same rye can be utilized about eight times ii takes about five days, but the best whiskey is prt batch. Cuevas says important items to bring when box of kitchen matches, three 25-gallon propane t and 1,200 pounds each of rye and sugar. (Art by W