Grandpa Snake: Moonshiner (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781530917624)

I grew up in Southern West Virginia during troubled times, when the coal mines were being mechanized and labor strife and strikes were common. Perhaps, that is why I feel sympathetic toward my grandfather and the area. My father and mother met when they were both working in grocery stores in Lester, the site of this story, just after Prohibition ended. After a dozen years, they managed to own a grocery store in a town nearby. My father was a kind-hearted soul and extended credit to the miners during one of their many strikes. They promised to pay him back, but his credit ran out before the strike ended. They never paid him back and he lost his business. We had to move in with a cousin and my father was forever after a broken man. He and my mother both worked at minimum-wage jobs, paid back all their debts, raised three children and eventually helped me through Engineering School. (I paid back my school loans in a few years.) During his moonshining period, my grandfather reputedly traveled extensively -- to avoid the Sheriff and escape prosecution for making illegal whiskey. (That is one reason the book skips some years.) Perhaps my own fondness for travel came from him. During my Chemical Engineering career, I often claimed that engineering was in my genes, saying that my grandfather was a biological reaction and distillation specialist. He could be said to be a fervent pioneer in Bio-chemical Engineering as he maintained a laboratory in his basement. West Virginia is again weathering difficult times. I made a trip back to Lester while writing this book. Although I saw no illegal stills and didn't run across any bootleggers, I also saw very few active coal mines. The coal fields were a shadow of their former glory, as was West Virginia.