Moonshine Runners' Cent Pouch: Stamped Coins, Receipts and Warning Signals

What the Runner Carried Next to His Skin

Of all the luggage a runner ever carried on the Pittsfield-to-Concord road, the smallest was the most important. It was a pouch of calfskin or smoked deer hide about the size of a hen's egg. He hung it on a rawhide thong round his neck and tucked it inside his shirt, or else had it sewn into the armpit of a wool coat, where no decent deputy would care to put his hand. In it a man kept his name, his alibi and his warning signs, all in copper and paper. Let us untie it upon the bench as we would any specimen in the laboratory, and see what falls out.

A good pouch had three pockets, stitched with waxed linen thread. The left pocket held stamped cents, the middle held folded paper, and the right held notched coppers. The left told who you were, the middle why you were there, and the right whether you ought to be there at all. A runner who mixed up his pockets was soon a runner who mixed up his teeth with the road.

Consider the road itself. From my door on the Suncook Valley Turnpike to the State House in Concord is about fifteen miles as the crow flies, and the crow carries no jugs. One goes down through Epsom or across through Chichester. Should the Chichester bridge hold a deputy smoking his pipe and feeling important, one swings north round through Loudon and comes at the capital from behind, the way a sensible man comes at a mule. Farms stood along every one of those roads. Some would water your horse and hide your load in the haymow for a jar. Some would run straight to the sheriff. Some were friendly last month, but the wife has since come home from a temperance meeting in Concord with a pamphlet and a look in her eye. A runner needed a way to tell them apart in the dark, and we made one out of the only thing a Yankee trusts more than his own mother: money.

The Stamped Cent and the Wart After the N

I strike coppers at my anvil with my own punch, reading G. G. WILKINS, PITTSFIELD N.H., and half of Merrimack County has carried one. In a runner's pouch, though, such a cent was not spending money. It was a calling card. He would arrive at a buyer's back door, which might be at a livery stable, behind a harness shop, or in the cellar of a so-called temperance hotel, and the buyer would ask whether he had change for a Wilkins. The runner dropped a stamped cent in his palm. The buyer ran his thumb over the stamp in the dark, and if it was true, the door opened.

I filed a flaw into my punch on purpose. The period after the N in N.H. sits a hair high, like a wart on a parson's lip. Any fool with a brass punch can cut the letters, but he will not know about the wart.

In December of '64, Deputy Abner Pease tested that principle for me. He was a long, damp, yellow-whiskered fellow with a face like a boiled turnip somebody had sat on. He had a Concord tinsmith cut him a counterfeit punch and struck it on a brass saloon token from Manchester. Then he put on a farmer's frock, smeared his boots with cow manure for authenticity, and came up my dooryard after dark asking for change for a Wilkins. Barnaby reached him before I reached the door. My bear has smelled my anvil every day of his life, and brass smells sharp and sour to him, like a church bell licked by a liar. His chain reaches exactly to the third flagstone and Pease stood on the fourth, but Barnaby reached him anyway. One claw tore the frock into five long strips. Pease's suspender buttons let go together, his trousers fell to his knees, and down he went face first in the snow. Barnaby sat on him.

I held the brass cent to the lantern and found no wart after the N. I let Barnaby keep his prisoner till sunup and brought Pease a blanket and a cup of hot cider with no spirits in it, so the county could not say I had bribed a deputy while he lay down. At dawn a pail of molasses moved the bear. Pease went home down the turnpike in a torn frock, one boot, and his trousers in his hand. Barnaby is a better judge of metal than the Concord assayer, and he works for molasses.

Paper Too Dull to Doubt

When Mr. Lincoln's men passed the Revenue Act of 1862, a receipt for any sum over twenty dollars had to carry a two-cent revenue stamp. The government meant it as a tax, and we took it as a gift, for a stamped receipt looks as official as a death certificate and is twice as boring. A runner carried one folded in quarters to agree with his cover story: twenty-two dollars for nine barrels of cider vinegar, delivered to Concord. One February night Deputy Thaddeus Grout of Chichester, who could not read his own name carved on his tombstone, studied such a paper upside down, moved his lips, and pronounced it in good order.

A receipt is a lie written down where it can be checked, however, and my guest Junior Vance of Wilkes County, North Carolina, learned what that costs. His gasoline carriage rode low under forty gallons, so he carried a feed-store receipt for four hundred pounds of laying mash. Outside Statesville a deputy named Hollis read it and announced that his wife had wanted laying mash all week. Then he followed Junior to the feed store in the morning, polite as Sunday. Junior had to buy the whole four hundred pounds with his own money to make his story true. Hollis paid him two dollars and ten cents for his hundred, and Junior's aunt kept the best-laying hens in Wilkes County for a year.

Notched Coppers Under the Capstone

Every friendly farm on the Concord roads had a particular capstone on its wall with a hollow beneath it, perhaps the third stone past the gatepost or the one with lichen shaped like a cow. The farmer left a copper cent there, and the runner read it with his thumb. One notch at Lady Liberty's chin meant come in, the barn is open and the dog is tied. A notch at the back of her head meant the law had been by that day, so keep driving. Two notches meant a deputy sat in the parlor that very minute. A rim filed smooth all the way round meant the house had gone temperance. A notched penny under a rock is only a penny under a rock, and no magistrate can hang a man for being careless with his change.

The Coinage Act of 1864 brought trouble. It made the new cent of thin bronze that takes a notch about as well as a Shaker takes flirting. The same act gave us the two-cent piece, the first coin of this Republic to bear IN GOD WE TRUST. That same year Congress outlawed the private tokens that merchants had struck in the tens of millions since '62. My counterstamps went on honest government copper. As for files, Hosea of Barnstead once lost his and tried to notch an 1851 large cent with his teeth. He cracked his left incisor to the gum, and I pulled it and charged him eleven notched cents.

Junior used signals of his own in the South. His Charlotte buyer, Shorty, opened only to a silver dime drilled through Liberty's ear, which Junior wore on a bootlace round his ankle. In Junior's words, "A man's foot is the last private place in North Carolina." The dime was lost fording a creek near Moravian Falls, and Junior was saved by the backup password: Shorty had no mule, having sold it in '52. A red flannel union suit on the Pruitt clothesline meant the law was in the hollow, until one Monday washday sent Junior forty miles round by Wilkesboro on account of Mr. Pruitt's bellyache. After that the signal became a washtub turned upside down on a fence post. A signal is only good if it has no other use.

Last came a bribed deputy's nicked penny on the dash of his car. One night a brand-new deputy sat behind it in the borrowed car, and Junior hollered good evening to him. Eleven miles of switchback later, Junior lost him in Ernest Hagaman's cornfield, and he left a pint and five dollars on Ernest's porch for the corn. Junior's verdict deserves a place in any laboratory notebook: "A penny's only as honest as the hand that put it there. The penny didn't lie, Doc. It just didn't know who was sitting behind it."

Why You Shall Not Hammer a Still From Your Pouch

Some genius will propose melting pennies into a pot. Do not. The bronze cent is copper with tin and zinc, and tokens are often brass, which sometimes contains lead. Zinc and lead have no business near hot spirit vapour, and lead solder is how men poison their customers. Build with pure copper joined by silver solder or a proper mechanical union. Copper carries heat evenly and catches the sulphur in the vapour as a dark film, letting the honest spirit go by. It does that work only while bright, so scrub it with vinegar and salt after a run, then rinse until no vinegar remains in the seams.

A word on the cuts, given for history and education only, since making spirits for drinking without a federal permit is unlawful. Fill the pot no more than about three-quarters full of fermented wash. Keep a low fire, never seal the still, and never leave it alone while it runs. Methanol boils at about a hundred forty-eight degrees Fahrenheit and ethanol at about a hundred seventy-three, so the poison comes first. From a small pot, throw away at least a little more than a gill of foreshots for every five gallons of wash. Catch the heads in small jars and smell each one until the varnish smell gives way to clean, sweet hearts. Set the oily tails aside to run again.

Ashes, Blue Flames and Tavern Gospel

Cletus 'Rabbit' Miller of Wilkesboro asks whether hickory ash in the thump keg cleans out bad heads. It does not. Hardwood ash is mostly potash, and potash makes lye, so with the grain oils in hot low wines you have started a soap kettle in your still. It foams up the line, it may plug the worm, and a plugged worm builds pressure in the doubler. The heads boil early because they are light, with ash in the keg or without it. A thump keg makes spirit stronger, not honest. Red oak shavings are a good idea in the wrong place, because oak ages spirit over months and years, and coopers prefer white oak in any case because red oak is open-grained and leaky.

The blue-flame rhyme is a lie as well. Methanol burns a pale blue, so a man can test a jar of foreshots, approve it, and go blind. A spoon flame is no reliable test for lead either, because the test for lead is in the still. The bead knows nothing about poison, and a strong spirit full of heads beads beautifully. Bury all three myths in one grave, keep your copper clean, and keep your fire low.