Moonshine

The Kremlin has ordered a major crackdown on the making of moonshine by Soviet citizens who have launched a home-brew rebellion against the anti-alcohol policies of Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev. The sale of sugar, a key ingredient in what the Soviets call samogon, is rising so rapidly this year that Gorbachev himself has called it "a scandal."

Police are using dogs to sniff out illegal liquor production in homes in the Soviet republic of Kazakhstan, the trade union newspaper Trud reported Sunday. After special training, two dogs called Taiga and Palma helped track down dozens of illicit distilleries in Central Asia, it said. The Soviet press has reported an increase in home brewing since Kremlin leader Mikhail S.

A batch of toxic moonshine liquor proved fatal to at least 33 people and seriously poisoned 39 others in southern China, state-run television broadcasts said Wednesday. About 200 doctors were dispatched Monday to treat victims around Nanning, the capital of Guangxi province about 1,400 miles south of Beijing.

One time I was at Huell Howser's house and drank moonshine out of a Mason jar. It was the aperitif to announce the feast of Tennessee smoked ham, beaten biscuits, black-eyed peas, spoon bread and Sally Lunn cake. It was just a ritual sip of moonshine for the stout-hearted to greet the new year the way they do it in Nashville, Huell's hometown.

Clayton McKinney made no effort to hide the .38-caliber revolver on his hip as he examined a friend's still tucked into a laurel thicket high in a mountain hollow. "I got one of my eyes knocked out four months ago. It's giving me all kinds of trouble," the night watchman said. "I don't know if I could see the law coming or not." McKinney, like his father before him, once used the pistol to ward off snooping revenuers over a lifetime of illegal liquor making.

Junior Johnson, a Hall of Fame stock car driver and successful car owner, has been granted a presidential pardon for a moonshining conviction in 1956. Johnson, 54, a lifelong resident of nearby Wilkes County in the Brushy Mountains, was convicted of manufacturing non-tax-paid whiskey after being arrested at his father's still. He served 11 months, until October, 1957, in the federal penitentiary in Chillicothe, Ohio. "I filed a request for a pardon just over five years ago," Johnson said.