Moonshine Memories - Softcover

Allison, Thomas R.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1588380335 ISBN 13: 9781588380333

Publisher: Newsouth Inc, 2001

Synopsis

Signed and numbered limited edition, leatherette bound with photographs.

When Tom Allison became a U.S. revenue agent in 1955 in Anniston, Alabama, he was issued a .38-caliber revolver, a badge, a box of ammunition, and a pair of handcuffs. He had to supply his own holster and a pair of lightweight boots for chasing fleeing suspects through the woods and fields and across the branches of mostly rural counties. He was later transferred to the Montgomery office, where he continued his career of enforcing the laws against illegal whiskey stills. For three decades, Allison and his fellow officers located and staked out stills, caught the "violators" when they could, and broke up their operations. Along the way he saw and heard it all, and his stories of his experiences are as potent as the shine he worked to eliminate. Here are the first-person stories of lawmen, informants, prosecutors, defense lawyers, and, of course, the shiners themselves. Allison's Moonshine Memories is part memoir, part history, part folklore, and thoroughly entertaining.

About this title

About the Author:

Tom Allison is now retired and lives in Montgomery, Alabama. He is a graduate of Huntingdon College and Jones School of Law.

From Publishers Weekly:

This book of tales from Allison's three decades as a federal agent raiding illegal liquor operations in the South stems from stories he told his grandchildren. Though they are colorful evocations of a period that no longer exists, he fails to persuade that these stories deserve a wide audience. Allison has a certain charm as he describes his hardscrabble fellow agents who combed the rural byways in the 1950s, '60s and '70s, searching for stills and outsmarting often dim-witted moonshiners. The few pages he devotes to the decline of illegal liquor activity are interesting and leave one thirsting for more. Perhaps it's the range of eclectic people he worked with and encountered (like a naked moonshiner) that allow him to say, "I was very fortunate to have had a job that I enjoyed so much." The judges Allison describes are also characters, although some readers may be appalled by their propensity to convict. Allison's gushing fondness for his longtime wife is refreshing, as is his joy in the life he has led. But his unqualified insistence on employing the term "Negro" because it was the term used then, and his apparent disdain for the changes in race relations that he has witnessed--stating, for example, "The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was one of the most drastic laws that Congress had ever passed"--are unlikely to win him many readers outside of his home region. 8 pages illus.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Newsouth Inc
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 1588380335
• ISBN 13: 9781588380333
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 375