MoonShiner #7 Tommy Register Traditional Cache
horseshoechamp: Time to get ready for this years race
MoonShiner #7 Tommy Register
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You are searching for one of my well hidden ammo cans along with My Shine.
Inside the lid you will find part of the cords to finding my still.
Tommy Register was 22 years old in 1953. He and his wife, the former Imogene Dopson, were renting land and a dwelling from a man named Buck Rowe, south of Macclenny where they were living with their young son, Billy Ray. Times were hard, jobs were scarce, but Tommy was making a good living like many other Baker countians.... manufacturing moonshine.
Tommy was one of five children born to honorable but poor tenant farmers Bart and Daisy Harris Register of north Macclenny. Unlike his older brother, Hamp, Tommy did not plow in the hot dusty fields alongside the rest of his family from sun-up to sun-down.
With little schooling, Tommy turned to making moonshine at the age of 15. He sold it mostly to locals, but occasionally he hauled it to places like Valdosta, Georgia. He was earning a little spending money.
Making moonshine was not easy work. "No, you were always in a strain, watching, looking for someone to come along and catch you and tear the still up. Sugar was in 100- pound bags, and the whiskey weighed 55 pounds and that was pretty bad when you had to carry it a good ways. We toted a lot of ours on horses. we'd ride the horse to where someone would be with the car and supplies and then take the things to the still on horseback. The horse tracks would not easily give our location away because it was hard for the agents to tell what was going on with the horses. Back then everybody had a horse to help out with the work and they were all over the area,'. he explained.
At first Register said he ran his own moonshine still operation. 'Then, when the ship yards shut down in Jacksonville, me and daddy set up some stills on high ground out there in the woods. He had to do something to make a living, at least until things got better.
I never did get caught by them until they finally caught me at the hole. The hole was a 40x40 foot underground moonshine still operation located in South Macclenny near Woodlawn Cemetery, and that's where he was the day the special beverage agents came calling. The still was owned and operated by him and his daddy. After 'the hole' was discovered by Tomberlin and his agents, they arrested Register and took him to jail.
It was five years before Register would have a trial. "I come clear of the charges, I didn't serve nary a day, nor do I have one thing on my record.
The judge said I was not guilty. He said I violated the law, but he said they violated the law, too.
The beverage agents admitted they did not have a search warrant giving them permission to legally go onto Register's property the day they came calling in 1953.
Two weeks after Register's still was destroyed by the state beverage agents, the agents received a tip phone call about another underground still operation. This one was located in north Baker County and belonged to Register's brother, Hamp.
Back then people had just started tattle-tailing on one another.
When Register's daddy left the whiskey business, he lived on Social Security until he died at the age of 74. His mother, now 93, is still living.
"I'm proud of my mama. She was a good mama, always wanting us to do what was right. She knew we made whiskey and she didn't approve of it, but she knew we had to have money from somewhere. I think people way back then weren't in it for gettin' rich, they were in it just to make a living for their families. There weren't no real good jobs back then.
Register said he has no hobbies and stays around home unless he is visiting north of Sanderson with his mother who lives just down the road from his brother, Hamp.
"I don't ever think back too much about them moonshine days. It's something we used to didn't talk about. I figured we never would have need to either.
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