Three weeks later, I got a call. "Benny's got lung cancer. It's not looking good." It was a shock - he seemed so healthy at the time. Now Benny's passed away. I feel privileged to have met him.

Moonshine Today
As I said, times have changed. Just days after meeting up with Junior Johnson, Benny Parsons and retired moonshiner Willie Clay Call, we met up with the Illegal Whiskey Unit, a special task force with Virginia's Alcoholic Beverage Control. We rode with them to bust a nip joint, or underground bar in a rough neighborhood in Southwest Virginia. They wore bulletproof vests, and carried guns. "We need to wrap this up before sundown," they warned us. The neighborhood's known for drive-by shootings after dark.

Talk about culture shock. The moonshine of yesteryear embodies the rebel spirit of survival. It was about making a living to support your family during tough times. Even the stills were carefully crafted objects, oxidized copper made beautiful with the patina of time. It was an era of mason jars, 40 Fords, and bluegrass. Today's moonshine can be a brutally streamlined and practical business - one with plastic jugs, nondescript hauling vans and warehouse distilleries. By some estimates, it's a $20 million business in Virginia alone - that's $20 million that the government can't tax.

I was surprised to discover that moonshine, or homemade whiskey, is such a huge industry today. It's illegal because it's made and sold without taxes. With liquor stores everywhere brimming with cheap booze, I wondered, who's buying moonshine today? Turns out there's a huge market in big cities, especially in the south. As I watched the agents raid the nip joint, I asked one man (who refused to go on camera) what the appeal of moonshine was. "It's a culture, it's a nostalgia," he said. Did he think anyone would want to talk to me about it? "You ain't finding no one who talk to you," he said, laughing at my naiveté. He was right.

Today, moonshine can be a kind of gateway criminal activity to more dangerous crimes. Nip joints are like social clubs, some of them selling harder drugs. Agents looking for moonshine stills stumble into meth labs. And moonshine's also a crime that demands little time. Get arrested for a $20 rock of crack, and you'll serve hard prison; get busted for selling $10,000 in moonshine, and you'll serve a couple of months. Any enterprising criminal can do the math on this one.

Having seen both sides of moonshine - the old-time nostalgia vs. today's hardcore reality - it's hard to either completely celebrate or condemn it. I guess for me it comes down to greed. Getting by is one thing. Making a killing is another.