ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, October 28, 1996 TAG: 9610280124
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JAN VERTEFEUILLE STAFF WRITER
EX-``REVENUER" Jack Powell has published "A Dying Art," a collection of stories from his days as a still-buster. Powell and his ax retired five years ago from the business.
To hear Jack Powell tell it, the good guys were as wild as the bad guys back in the old days of running down moonshine stills in the backwoods of Southwest Virginia.
"We lived sort of fast, we drove fast, we had to shoot straight. We did some things I guess that [bordered] on unpopularity, let me put it that way," the retired "revenuer" says.
"But it's rough work, tough work. You lay out here in these woods in every kind of weather, you don't mind playing some cards, drinking some liquor."
Powell retired five years ago, after 35 years chasing down untaxed whiskey as a Virginia Alcoholic Beverage Control agent. He has just had a book published, called "A Dying Art," which is part history, part war stories.
A natural storyteller, Powell's book is written in the same breathless, stream-of-consciousness style as he tells his tales.
And has he got tales.
Catching moonshiners and busting up stills was hard work that called for rough-and-tumble law enforcement agents who could live by their wits. Powell, for instance, recounts how he was once put on probation for 12 years - an unheard-of length of time, even for a revenuer:
While celebrating at a Giles County restaurant - with legal liquor - after a still raid, Powell tried to arrest the restaurant owner for pouring himself a drink while working, a violation of state law. Powell ended up being thrown out the front door - twice. Bruised and bloodied, he decided to go get his gun. Fortunately for all involved, his supervisor interceded. Powell was sent up to Richmond for a discussion with his superiors - a trip he was forced to make often - and was allowed to keep his job. But, he writes, "I got indefinite probation and was told not to ever go to the restaurant and motel again."
He lists his "accomplishments" on the job: "Made to pay for two cars, jailed, abused by authorities, nearly shot several times, snake struck four times, a dozen fiasco-skirmishes, fifteen automobile fender benders and three totals."
He also received five commendations for outstanding and meritorious duty.
It's clear from his book that while he took his job tracking down bootleggers seriously, Powell has admiration for those he pursued for 35 years.
"They have been our adversaries, of course, because they were evading the very taxes you and I have to pay," he says. "But other than violating tax laws, you can say the majority are pretty good, hard-working people and always have been."
That didn't mean bootleggers wouldn't take measures to keep the revenuers from interfering with their livelihood, however. Powell details some of the inventive means bootleggers used to keep their stashes safe: steel traps set in holes where the whiskey was kept; lines of thread strung around stills that, when broken, would indicate revenuers had been there; rattlesnakes placed in coolers of shine.
Powell left the Roanoke Police Department in 1957 to join ABC, covering Southwest Virginia in the days when catching moonshiners involved high-speed chases along mountain roads and hiking through the backwoods to bust stills with his favorite ax, nicknamed "The Devil."
His book reveals a few dirty little secrets of the trade, too. There was the big bust that national media were invited to cover and that agents griped among themselves had been staged, with moonshine seized at other locations and brought in "to set a new record" in front of the press.
"Word was that the stills were seized several days before the action began and guarded by government and state agents until The Washington Post and other high-powered news media arrived," he says in his book.
And then there's the old-time agent, nicknamed "Tombstone" Johnson, whose record-setting arrest counts prompted an investigation by his office. Turns out he was copying names off gravestones in local cemeteries and turning them in as arrests, according to "A Dying Art." He got away with it for a while though, since none of the suspects, of course, ever appealed their convictions.
Powell, 63, now works part time as a court security officer for the U.S. Marshals Service in the Poff Federal Building in Roanoke. His book is the culmination of 20 years of writing down stories, he says.
The topic is one that fascinates people. And unlike, say, drug dealers, moonshiners have been romanticized figures in popular culture - outlaws, but not outcasts. And there's still a big market for their raw whiskey, particularly up North, Powell says, as evidenced by the thousands of gallons of "white lightning" still transported there.
"There's a certain novelty about moonshine college students like. People like it at Christmas to put on their fruitcakes," he says.
"But no, not that much moonshine's going to fruitcakes."
LENGTH: Medium: 93 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: ERIC BRADY/Staff. Retired ABC agent Jack Powell holdsby CNB"The Devil," an ax he used to bust stills, next to a demonstration
still in Franklin County. color.