A Woman of the Century, Frances Minerva Nunnery (1898–1997): Her Story in Her Own Memorable Voice as Told to Cecil Dawkins

11: Whiskey-Making and the Bishop’s Visit

All of us living out in that country had a hard time buying good liquor. Traders made you buy worthless stuff before they’d sell you one bottle of good whiskey.If I wanted good liquor on hand for the cowboys and hunters and other visitors to the ranch, I had to drive down to Juarez to buy it.One fall after the kids were back inAlbuquerque going to school, this guy Sam, who was digging a well for me, decided we’d make our own. Whiskey has to be made in winter because you have to pack the coils in ice to cool them, and of course you had to get the ice off the ponds after they’d frozen over.You get your liquor from the distilled steam off the fermented stuff. Rationing was still going on because of the war, but as a rancher I could get all the sugar I wanted with my gasoline stamps. Sam had a still and he loaded it up and brought it down to Spur Ranch. We put the still in a back room of the ranch house, and he got some corn chops working to make the sour mash. The still was going barooom barooom barooom when Sam looked out the window and yelled,“Oh God,here comes the bishop! What’ll we do?” 11 ❙ WHISKEY-MAKING AND THE BISHOP’S VISIT ❙ 78 ❙ ❙ WHISKEY-MAKING AND THE BISHOP’S VISIT ❙ It was the Mormon bishop from Luna ambling up the hill on his horse.Whenever it got too late for people to make it home at night, why, they just stayed over at somebody’s house. And it was too late for the bishop to make it back over the mountain to Luna. We couldn’t stop the contraption and it was making a hell of a racket. I had to think fast. I told Sam I’d go into my room and get the radio going full blast, and he could get the bishop into a pitch game outside my bedroom door close to the fireplace to get the full benefit of the noise. I turned on the radio and prayed the batteries wouldn’t run down, and Sam got the bishop into a game while I kept running in and out the back door, bringing more wood to put under the still. After a while the bishop said,“Doesn’t that woman ever turn that radio down?” Sam said,“No! I’ve been here a week working on that well and I never yet got any sleep. She keeps it going like that day and night.” I doubt the bishop got much sleep either. The whiskey never finished till three in the morning,and he got out of there before sunup . So we managed to get by without the bishop learning we were making liquor. At daylight Sam sent me into Magdalena, a seventy-mile round trip, to get some oak kegs to put the whisky in and let it age. When I brought them back to the ranch, he said,“Th’ow some gasoline in them and th’ow in a match. That’ll char the barrels.” I did as he directed, and I really charred those kegs. There was nothing left but the hoops. So back I went to Magdalena for more barrels—another seventy miles—and we charred them all over again, with less gasoline this time. We put the kegs in the attic to let the whiskey age.When finally we tasted it,I spit the stuff out on the floor and had a coughing fit. “God, Sam,” I said,“this stuff tastes terrible.” Sam said it was only about 120 proof. He drank that whiskey but I never did. When a bakery burned in Socorro, Sam got the notion to try it 79 ❙ A WOMAN OF THE CENTURY ❙ again.We had all the corn we needed, so I went down and got about fifteen hundred pounds of that damaged sugar from the bakery fire. This time we put the still out in a bunkhouse. I wasn’t going to have the stuff in the house any more. Sam knew all about making whiskey, but about this time his wife took sick.He had to go home to look after her and wouldn’t be there to run off the whiskey when it was ready. So he got this guy Rex and...