When I was growing up in eastern Tennessee, we had the murder capital of the US right up the road in Cocke County, a little town called Newport. Not Detroit or Cleveland or St. Louis, but Newport, Tennessee. Why? Moonshine war was going on at the time. Dumbasses who thought they knew how to make whiskey used lead-soldered radiators as condensers in their stills. The moonshiners would sell the whiskey anyway, knowing the consumer would go blind or die.
Amidst all of this in the 70's, there was a single sheriff who stood up against the corruption of the moonshiners in western Tennessee. Opposed by the State Line Mob, and The Dixie Mafia (Yes, there really were such organizations that existed back then) this sheriff of McNairy County, Tennessee simply wanted a place that he could call 'home', and enjoy the benefits of lving in a rural community. Immortalized in the film "Walking Tall", it was none other than
Sheriff Buford Pusser.
What eventually drove the unethical moonshiners out of business was the price of sugar going up and the price of taxed whiskey coming down. Simple
economics of supply and demand.
It all came back to me recently seeing this video by a new group called "State Line Mob". Thought I'd share a memory: