Which moonshiner killed himself

I spoke to my father a month before he died. It was a short conversation. Losing both Popcorn and Grandma Bonnie within months of each other dealt a serious blow to the family. I cried for days, thinking that my family was going to disappear before I could meet any of them face-to-face. Thoughts like that stopped me in my tracks for weeks. Everyday things became alien to me.

I got lost in the grocery store. Where the hell is the bread? Condolences rolled in from around the country.

It took the edge off of my morbid thoughts to see all the amazing art created in the name of my father and moonshine. The wild adventures of a clever bootlegger seem to have inspired musicians the most.

In the beginning, the songs sent to me were soulful ballads of a skilled man hunted across the mountains because of his craft. As time passed, the songs became grittier. They became a call to rebellion, announcing the philosophy that a man will live on his own terms until his dying breath.

I have no doubt that many of these songs will be gathered in collections of Appalachian music, and a few may even become mountain standards. Popcorn adored music. Popcorn was buried beside his parents in a pretty mountain cemetery.

Not long after Popcorn was in the ground, the trouble started. Rumblings that his grave was being vandalized began. Hearing this, I roared in frustration and got on the phone. Trapped up in New England, I had no way to see for myself. After countless desperate calls to people in the area, a dear cousin from Waynesville, North Carolina braved the twisting dirt road that leads to the old burying ground.

She called me from the top of the mountain. After battling sucking mud, curious cows, and growing darkness, my cousin found the cemetery. The next day, I started making phone calls. I asked the police, city workers, and the director of the funeral parlor. No one would tell me. The legal power of a widow is substantial.

The widow thought this was enough of a reason to dig up Popcorn and hide his corpse. Through all this darkness, came brilliantly shining lights: my sisters and brothers.

Putting out Daddy Moonshine put me on the radar. My father created a lot of secrets. For over three decades, I thought I was an only child. After my father was gone, his secrets began to show themselves. My sisters and I were quick to bond.

Another angelic couple in Tennessee put together a Sutton family reunion at the Waterville Dam. Before I knew it, I was nestled into a mountainside in North Carolina, locked between the hill, a winding mountain road and a hard-running stream. I was surrounded by family and delighted to be there.

All around us, ancient trees rose up to keep us safe. The same curious cows that had eyeballed my cousin came out to take a look at us. His mortal remains have been removed but his spirit remains at the bend in the river.

His friends and loved ones will continue to visit him at his chosen resting place. My tiny clan of family met before the service to gather our nerves. There were people and reporters everywhere. Behind the podium were wreaths of flowers and other mementos of condolences. The service was a blur to me. People stood up at the podium and spoke. A woman sang. I tried to hear the words, but they kept slipping away. The memorial was terrifying for my little brother and me. I kept my brother, a young man not yet old enough to drive, behind me until we were safe in our seats.

All eyes took a turn running us over. We felt like animals in a zoo: the quiet mountain boy and his strange Northern sister. Before I knew it, I was back outside standing beside the smart black hearse and a pair of elegantly harnessed black horses that would lead my father to his second burial. The next day in Asheville, North Carolina, I saw the funeral procession on the cover of a local paper. The article told the story of what my siblings and I had been unwelcome to attend: the re burial of Popcorn Sutton in the side yard of his house in Parrotsville, Tennessee.

A few short miles from his original grave, cascading boulders and debris destroyed a large portion of road. It would take months to clear it. One of my younger sisters thinks it was our grandparents who brought down the mountain.

His headstone had been in place in the cemetery beside his family for over a decade. He knew what he wanted. His last wishes were ignored. In a handwritten will, Popcorn was very clear about his burial.

Moonshine is far from extinct. There are fresh faces blowing into the furnaces of new stills. In quiet country coves, tendrils of smoke are still climbing up to the sky. A few hours earlier she had buried Sutton, 62, in a private ceremony in the mountains around Haywood County, N. He went to his grave in a pine casket he bought years ago and kept in a bedroom. Sutton — nicknamed "Popcorn" for smashing up a cent popcorn machine in a bar with a pool cue in his 20s — looked like a living caricature of a mountain moonshiner.

He wore a long gray beard, faded overalls, checkered shirt and feathered fedora. He made his home in Cocke County, where cockfighting and moonshining are legend. Showed how to make moonshine He wrote a paperback called "Me and My Likker" and recorded videos on how to make moonshine.

Sutton conceded he was part of a dying breed in an interview last year with actor Johnny Knoxville for a video posted on Knoxville's "Jackass" Web site. Told to report to prison Sutton's widow said he'd just gotten a letter to report Friday to a medium-security federal prison in south Georgia to begin an month sentence for illegally producing distilled spirits and being a felon in possession of a gun.

He had pleaded guilty last April. On Monday, she came home from running errands and found him dead in his old Ford. Authorities suspect carbon monoxide poisoning.

Sutton's record stretched back to at least , when he was charged by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms with multiple violations of liquor tax laws. Get the new News Sentinel app. Local News. Posted: March 17, Marvin "Popcorn" Sutton. Posted: March 17, 0.

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