RUINT

 

Earlier, I saw a movie the second time, Lawless. It would be categorized an independent, not made in Hollywood by Hollywood formula. Singer/songwriter, Nick Cave, wrote the screenplay. John Hillcoat directed it. The film was made from a true story written in book form by the son of the young guy, Jack Bondurant, whose perspective the story followed, The Wettest County In The World, by Matt Bondurant. The time was early 1930s, prohibition days. The place was Franklin County, Virginia, which runs between Martinsville and Roanoke in the southwestern region of the state. The Bondurant brothers were making liquor and shipping it to Chicago in the back of an Model A truck with a wooden bed. They made some good money fast. The Feds send in a G-man to take care of business, an arrogant lawman above the law. The story is around his arrival and the eventual killing of him by the people he'd made life rough for. It brought to mind the end of Peter Matthiessen's novel, The Killing Of Mr Watson, where everybody concerned shot him down.

 

the brothers Bondurant

them's some hillbillies

 

Lawless is a well told Southern story that brought to mind two films made from stories by central Tennessee writer, William May, That Evening Sun and Bloodworth. This movie, Lawless, came to mind to see again after I heard about and bought  from the liquor store a pint of some white liquor, moonshine, a new brand, Broad Branch. It is made from the formula of a man whose liquor spoiled me years ago. He stopped making it and evidently worked out a deal with a small distillery around Winston-Salem to make liquor commercially from his, heretofore secret, formula that came down from his great great grandfather. It has his name on the label, "Frank Williams Method, spirits distilled from a mash of grains, cane and hops." Frank is an artist of the pure. This Broad Branch spirits is 91 proof and only sold in pints, the curved pint bottles that fit comfortably in pockets. This is good sipping liquor. It is the only liquor I've bought in a store that is the equal of Frank's. His other would be around 140 proof. It will get you there in a hurry.

 

mountain spring water

 

This bottle I bought is from batch 001. I bought two to give one to Justin. He wants to keep his unopened. He'll put it in the safe with his guns and ammo. I thought about keeping an unopened bottle and first thought was, Why? I don't have half a century of future like I did half a century ago. I have so little future left, it encourages me to focus more on the now, which I like. It is nice not filling in the blanks of unknown future with I'm-gonnas and I-oughtas, just leaving it free to be the now when now gets there. I wanted to taste the liquor, not leave it in a bottle. It seems too much like breaking the flow to leave it in the bottle. The bottle is its vehicle of transportation from where it's made to my tongue. This is the liquor I will drink from here on. It's somewhat ideal to be able to go to the liquor store and buy the liquor that ruint me about a decade ago. I've been tipsy a few times drinking with Frank at Jr's house with Jr and Jean and me at the kitchen table with Frank over the best liquor there ever was. Frank kept us all bent over with laughter. Frank is a classic storyteller, tells the stories from his adventures along a lifetime of a multitude of adventures, the kind most of us don't want for ourselves for being so mortally dangerous.

 

air bellows drive-thru art museum night

 

Frank has a brilliant mind, has an infinity of knowledge in his head, knowledge from first-hand experience. He becomes a master at whatever he turns his hand to. He buys a house that needs some repairs, subtracts the cost of the repairs from what he pays for the house, makes the repairs himself, fixes the house up like new, inside and out, lives in it awhile and sells it for a good profit. He makes good money buying and selling. He has the air of a man comfortable talking with men, center of attention, the kind of man men are drawn to for the masculine performance, tells good jokes. Frank does Man well. He has the knack for the American, and in his case Southern Appalachian, vision of what constitutes a man. He's comic and friendly, loyal, and when Frank is your friend, he is the very definition of a friend. He's good people. I'm grateful to him for making his secret art form available so readily. It is so good, I can only come close by calling it liquid candy.  It is for sipping, not for gulping. I don't like getting fuzzy headed anymore. This time in the life when I feel the beginnings of the fuzz, it feels like I'm wasting good liquor. I drink it not for the fuzz, but for the taste and inhaling the spirit in it.   

 

air bellows drive-thru art museum night

 

 

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