‘Family tradition’ or outlaw tradition?

As I read a recent Knoxville News-Sentinel story about corruption in these here hills, the old Hank Williams Jr. tune “Family Tradition” kept running through my mind. While that’s a light-hearted take on some old mountain traditions, the newspaper story revealed a much darker side to it all, an outlaw tradition.

It’s a story of a culture of moonshining, whoring, gambling and stealing that has been unfolding right next door to us in Western North Carolina for four decades. It’s the criminal legacy of Cocke County, Tenn., which sits right next to Haywood and Madison counties in the Tar Heels state.

It’s surprising that we don’t hear more about these goings on, especially since it’s so close. And its hard to believe that some of the criminal enterprising doesn’t seep over the borders. It must.

In an exhaustive chronology that appeared in the Knoxville newspaper Aug. 1, the newspaper details the federal government’s war on the criminals, including another recent sweep.

Federal and state authorities have been targeting the county for at least four years, deploying everything from undercover FBI agents to helicopters and SWAT teams to support an investigation that has reportedly turned up a dizzying array of criminal activities: drug trafficking, chop shops, the hijacking of interstate shipments, organized gambling, prostitution, money laundering, racketeering and public corruption.

The story revolves around one character, in particular – Cocke County Sheriff D.C. Ramsey, who has worked in law enforcement circles all his life and has been in trouble just about as long.

Two of his officers have been arrested by the FBI on drug trafficking charges in the past few weeks, and one of them has already admitted in federal court to sidelining as an armed cocaine dealer. Ramsey’s department wasn’t invited to a recent series of raids that uncovered a pair of brothels as well as two multi-million dollar illegal gambling operations that were allegedly thriving in his jurisdiction. More raids have targeted an auto parts store, a flower shop, and the home of a Newport Police Department captain.

The story noted that at one cockfighting ring, federal agents estimated that $3 million had been gambled on fighting birds in one day. All you have to do is drive around rural parts in WNC to see large rooster farms, and you can’t tell me these ol’boys just like having chickens. Hell no – they’re raising them to fight.

Since the probe began about four years ago, criminal charges have been filed against at least 168 people as state and federal agents have cracked down on vice and associated crimes.

The story shows us the long association Ramsey has had to the troubles:

One prosecutor has said the current probe represents the “last gasps” of an outlaw tradition that began generations ago, and it appears that the first acts of the drama now unfolding in Newport and Del Rio may have begun as long ago as the 1960s, when Sheriff D.C. Ramsey was a young constable elected to patrol the roads of one of East Tennessee’s roughest areas.

The story delves into East Tennessee’s evolution, one that is tied to Ashvegas, as it attempts to answer the question of how this all started:

Perhaps it was in the 1920s, when Prohibition offered undreamt-of riches to poor farmers and hillbillies willing to risk the ire of the federal government by becoming bootleggers. The county hardly had a monopoly on moonshine, but the men who prowled the hills and hollows near the North Carolina state line and clashed with federal “revenuers” have become legends.

Or maybe it started during World War II, when hordes of military servicemen flowed through the area by rail and car while traveling between Asheville and Knoxville. According to some accounts, the war drew prostitutes and cash-hungry investors of the worst sort to the mountain communities of Newport and Del Rio, forever changing the area’s political and economic landscape.

By the early ’60s, the area of eastern Tennessee (and probably parts of WNC)

was famous throughout the Southeast for its selection of beer joints and willing women. The death of federal prohibition a generation earlier had barely slowed down the illegal booze trade in East Tennessee, where most counties – including Cocke – were still “dry” when it came to liquor sales. The ban on spirits meant there was a lot of cash to be made for bar owners who offered illicit moonshine or whiskey on the side, and having a few working girls on hand only raised the profit margins that much higher.

The story said the brothels were little more than a few trailers set up behind a bar. Serve the boys some moonshine, then let ’em take the girls to the trailer out back. I’m afraid to imagine what an east Tennessee whore might look like – I imagine those girls that seduced Inman in Cold Mountain, only with fewer teeth.

Back to the story:

Vice of all kinds flourished openly, especially in the numerous taverns on Asheville Highway that catered to a rowdy subculture that liked to indulge in moonshine, stockcar racing and cockfights. Bar operators had little fear of arrest from local police and sheriff’s deputies,…

And so it goes. It’s 2005, and while there are still outposts of moonshining and prostitution, the drug trade has usurped that. Cocaine and meth are where the money is these days. But travel back into some of these hollars, and you’ll find some family traditions flourishing.