MoonShiner #9 Hamp Register
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You are searching for one of my well hidden ammo cans and My
Shine.
Seventy-seven-year-old Hamp Register sits in the living room of his
modest frame home north of Sanderson looking westward across a vast
pasture where a mixed breed of roaming cattle graze. In the
distance he can see the simple home where his 93-year-old mother,
Daisy Harris Register, lives. To the south flows the cool, dark
waters of Cedar Creek beneath an old plank bridge. Up and down
sandy Hamp Register Lane, that passes in front of his dwelling, he
is surrounded by five generations of his family.
Amid triumph and tragedy, this son of a poor, but honorable and
hard-working tenant farmer has amassed a 900-acre family compound
by the sweat of the brow. He is more than just a tobacco farmer,
cattleman, dairy farmer, timberman and rancher. He is also a former
moonshiner.
When Hamp had an opportunity to go to work for Marion Construction
Company making 30 cents an hour, he took it. "That was a
considerable better job," said Lettie. "When I first started
working with the company, it was back when they limited the hours
you could work," said Hamp. "When I was helping to build SR 301 we
could make 42 hours a week. If I made the 42 hours I made $12 a
week. "I rode to work with a man who was foreman. Later, I rode
with another man, in the back of his pickup and I remember I liked
to have froze to death."
"Me and my brother-in-law put us up a little still over there by
his house in north Macclenny. I'd work every day and go back over
to his place at night where he was staying with his mama on the
Donald Crews place. I think he was still in school at the time. We
didn't have but about five or six barrels, but we got us up a
little stock and we didn't know who to sell it to until Wallace
Dupree came along. His wife's uncle was living at winter Haven so
he took our moonshine down there and when he came back he gave me a
stack of dollar bills this high. I think my part came to $300. I
said, 'Now, what am I going to do with this money, keep it, farm
with it or what?' I paid my farm off with it. "We kept on making it
and selling it to Wallace and I made a little money.
"Revenuers would come around all the time and we usually knew when
they were out," she said. " We had our ways of letting the men
know. We'd raise an old sheet or some kind of flag up on the house
and when they'd see that they knew to be cautious. They could see
it from the branch when they were down there working," she said.
The Registers handled their money cautiously and frugally, slowly
investing in property as it became available around them.
As time progressed, so did bigger ideas for the moonshine industry.
"We never did let our children mess with it," said Lettie. "I
helped him, but they didn't." In the early 1950's, state beverage
agents began coming around more often and it was getting harder to
hide moonshine stills, no matter how deep in the woods or far down
the creeks. "We started doing business with Junior Crockett. He
would buy all we could make," said Hamp. "The revenuers were
tearing stills up a-going and a-coming, and we decided we'd put one
underground. So junior got someone to come in from Jacksonville
with a drag line and dig the hole. We had bought the old Oscar
Kelly place that had been turned into a turkey farm. It had a big
two-story house there that was partly finished. We let, Herman
Ruis, who had been turpentining with us, and his family move into
the house so he could work at the still and look after things. It
was a pretty good-sized hole they dug. We walled it up with lumber
after that man dug the hole. We covered the top of it up with dirt
and placed a chicken pen on top of the entrance. We had to move the
old chicken coop to even go down in it. We had about thirty barrels
down there.
Hamp said he couldn't remember just how big the still was, but he
thought it was about a 20x3O. He couldn't remember the yield,
because it varied, he said. And word leaked of the undertaking,
even though those connected with it were expected to be loyal and
not talk. And about a year after the elaborate underground
operation was built, the revenuers made a house call.
"No, they'd been watching us for awhile," he said. "And the way
things were changing, people had started reporting everybody and
they had reported us. They knew it was inside a chicken pen. "It
was my still, and my still alone." said Hamp. "Junior Crockett was
the middle man. He bought my whiskey and Glen Johnson hauled it for
him.
State and Federal agents for years had sought to corner Junior
Crockett, the man they pegged as the 'Shine King' or 'Kingpin' in
Baker County moonshine operations. Headlines blared of the arrest
in the Florida Times Union on Thursday, January 29, 1953. The
article described the still as being "elaborate" and located about
seven miles northwest of Macclenny. It reported that the still
operation consisted of a 600-gallon capacity distilling pot and 70
barrel fermenters, containing 3,500 gallons of mash. The agents
reported seizing approximately 1,000 gallons of moonshine liquor in
one-gallon cans, wrapped in onion sacks. The still was said to be
in an underground hole, about 40 feet, by 40 feet, with shoring to
hold up the ceiling and about two feet of earth above the ceiling.
The article said that on the surface, the site appeared to be a
chicken yard with out-buildings covering the vents. Below the
ground, bottled gas had been used to heat the pot and the mash was
fermented from the fermenter to the pot by an electric pump. The
place was outfitted with electric lights. One Cadillac and two
trucks were seized as well as the land and the still, the article
reported. Temporary bond was $500 each for Crockett, Register,
Herman Ruis, Lewis Moore, and Albert Mitchell.
The Registers turned to farming, exclusively, and extended their
efforts in the dairy, timber, cattle and tobacco enterprises. They
did well through hard work and long hours. They determined to
educate their children and shield them from the poverty they had
known and the moonshine industry that helped them escape from it.
"It took the moonshine to help me get my feet on the ground, but
that don't mean I didn't work for it," said Hamp. "All my children
have got homes out here on this place and the grandchildren are
coming back all the time. I told my mama she wouldn't have to go to
a nursing home as long as I can help it so she stays here on the
property with us, making five generations.
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
Ebbgrq