Moonshine Memories

Liquor Hauler Recalls Wild Rides, 50 Wrecks And More

FLAG POND, Tenn. – Make way for the last of a dying breed.
“I stand six feet four,” said Tim Loyd “Tiny” Tilson, “and three-quarter inches.”
And 340 pounds.
That’s Tilson, a big man with a big heart and an equally big lead foot. Folks who knew the 57 year old in his younger days may recall a wild man that he stopped being 15 years ago.
Then again, some never really knew the story of Loyd Tilson, also known as Whiskey Runner, Tiny and TLT.
“A lot of people didn’t even know I hauled liquor,” Tilson said. “There are people I went to church with and knew all my life who didn’t know I hauled liquor.”
Boy did he ever haul liquor. But not beer, plain ol’ whiskey or wine; Tilson hauled illegal moonshine for more than two decades all over Unicoi County, Tenn., from about 1968 until about 1989.
“I was about 17 years old the first time,” Tilson said recently, seated in his home. “I didn’t have a driver’s license.”
Yet, as he retold the story, a little light twinkled in Tilson’s eyes.
“Ooooooh,” Tilson said as his eyes widened and he flashed a grin, “it was a thrill.”
So went the days of Flag Pond’s king of thunder road.

GROWING UP
Tilson grew up in a one-room house that was little more than a shack.
Ramps grew out back and still do. A creek flowed a few feet away and still does. Their electricity came from an extension cord laced through the trees, across the creek and plugged into his great aunts’ Susie and Laurie Tilson’s house.
“It was rough,” he said.
The rambunctious son of Reuben and Kyleen Tilson owned a magnetic personality and a fearless bent. He worked hard, played hard and seemingly tried real hard to find trouble.
“I went to work at 12 years old for 25 cents an hour. I’d spray apple trees after school. I’d work in the tobacco fields,” Tilson said. “Times were bad. There was many a night we’d have nothing but a baloney sandwich for supper. But we didn’t go hungry.”
If he was bitter about those days, Tilson never let on.
“I don’t regret what we went through,” Tilson said. “I grew up not asking for help. I worked for what I got. Everything I’ve got now is bought and paid for.”
Today, Tilson’s home seems like it’s a million miles away from where he grew up, even though it’s just a 10-minute drive away.
Twenty years ago, Tilson would have made that 10-minute drive in about five minutes – two or three if under hot pursuit.

THUNDER ROAD
Tilson neither made moonshine nor made a fortune on it, but he sure peeled the pavement throughout Unicoi County, Tenn., running it. He would pick it up from those who made it and then deliver it to those who wanted it.
“I have made as high as $500 a night, but that was a lot of liquor,” Tilson said. “That was in an old Chevrolet panel truck, a ’53 or ’54. It had a 250-gallon tank in it.”
By the light of many a Tennessee moon, Tilson screamed through the night like lightning on a rail, wheeling whatever was in his hands hell bent for leather. Equally wild, flashing red lights from pursuing police cars became a familiar sight for Tilson.
“My grandpa used to chase Loyd,” said Kent Harris, sheriff of Unicoi County. “He was a police chief from 1949 to 1977. That was the heyday for whiskey running.”
Last May, Tilson climbed into his Ford Bronco and retraced some of the curvy, mountainous roads across which he emblazed a mixture of burned rubber, gas and moonshine.
“Whiskey running, outrunning the law – I’ve had the law after me so many times,” Tilson said. “A lot of the wrecks I had, I was practicing. I’d get up on the old ridge road after midnight and practice.”
Imagine it. High, narrow mountain roads and sharp curves. Look over the side and the ground falls far below. No guardrails.
And yet a big ol’ grinning Tilson raced those roads and the cops as if he were Junior Johnson tangling with Richard Petty on some NASCAR track. Then again, he’d do the same thing in town, too. Easy does it did not register in Tilson’s vocabulary.
“It was a thrill to me,” Tilson said. “I played with the law. I’d come through town and knew all the back ways. I’d see the law go by, and come in behind ’em, then take off down another alley. It was a lot of fun.”
A typical load of liquor was about 12 cases, which amounted to about 120 gallons. During Tilson’s day, a gallon of ’shine brought about $20.
Now, barreling the back roads with Johnny Law on your tail and 120 gallons of liquor in the trunk may seem dangerous, but there were more serious perils involved in running moonshine.
“I’ve had my windows shot out,” he said. “If I made a run faster than the other guy, then it knocked him out.”
Meaning, the other guy lost business. Meaning, whether it was Tilson or anyone else, trouble would come as a result.
“Then if you got your windows shot out, you’d go faster,” Tilson said. “I’ve had bullet holes in the car and didn’t know where they came from.”

FIGHTIN’ LIGHTNIN’ RUNNIN’ MAN
Tilson did not simply run liquor; he drank it, too. In bars, in cars, on a stool or on a road, it didn’t matter. Naturally, being the highly sociable sort that he was, Tilson did not drink alone.
Sometimes his uncle, Gene Richards of Bluff City, Tenn., accompanied him.
“I’ll tell you what, he was a wild man back in those days,” Richards said.
Oh yes. Gunpowder coursed Tilson’s veins back then, a volatile man if made mad. Ignite him with an insult or a violent challenge, and he grinned. And when Tilson grinned, watch out.
“He’d smile at you and next thing you knew, you’d be down,” Richards said, laughing loud. “Buddy, he could hit hard. Next thing you knew, son, it was over with. I saw him hit a feller one time, one lick and he went the length of a truck.”
With his huge frame and mountain-chiseled muscles, Tilson was not an easy man to whip. Toss Mason jars full of ’shine in his belly, and Tilson was a man who by his own admission did not care to kill, though he never killed anyone.
“I’ve been cut seven times,” Tilson said. “I’ve had black eyes, busted nose, busted mouth. Shot at, I don’t know how many times. I’ve had pistols stuck between my eyes and knives at my throat.”
Yet caught on the wrong end of Tilson’s ham hock-sized fists, many a man wished they hadn’t.
“Let nobody kid you. He was a big man, and he could lick you,” Richards said. “Nobody in Flag Pond messed with him. He was stout as a bear.”

50 WRECKS?
Yes, 50 wrecks.
“I’ve totaled 50 cars,” Tilson said with a prideless grin. “I’m lucky to be alive.”
Boy, howdy.
There’s a gigantic rock abutment into which he crunched a car. And walked away. There’s a creek into which he flipped a car, top down and nearly drowned. And walked away. There’s a house into which he crashed, lost his door and earned a cut wrist. And walked away.
“That was down here above the Roadside Diner,” Tilson said. “This guy bought him a brand new Dodge Challenger. We got up to the top of the hill, and we scooted right into this house, ended up in the bedroom.”
Surely that ended the adventure. But no.
“We backed out and went on,” Tilson said. “I went to grab a hold of my door, and there was no door. I got out and there was the door, hanging onto the back fender. I didn’t know we had cut a light pole in two, but that’s what got my door.”
But it didn’t get him. Tilson credited an unseen angel who kept watch through the thrills and the spills and the collective brushes with death.
Like one of the times he wrecked his car into a creek.
“Upside down,” Tilson said. “I cut my wrist and got four stitches. I was drunk. If they hadn’t of gotten me out, I would have drowned.”
Now that must have been his worst wreck.
“I should have gotten killed. It’s a miracle,” Tilson said. “I’ve had four stitches out of all my wrecks. Everybody says the Lord was watching over me, and I reckon He was.”

LIQUOR TO THE LORD
No need to consult a genius. Wrecks, fights and liquor lead directly to the steel bars hotel – jail. At least for Tilson they did.
“Oh lordy,” Tilson said, “I’d say I’ve been in jail 25 to 30, 40 times, mostly for fighting and scratching or drunk in public.”
Bear in mind that Tilson then or now did not view the police as his sworn enemies. He liked many of them, and many of them liked him, too.
“I remember him being a friendly person. I always liked Loyd,” Harris said. “We call him Tiny. If he tells you something, you can take it to the bank. It’s a dying breed of people.”
Harris flipped open his department’s file on Tilson. Thick could best describe its size.
“Loyd was a little rowdy,” Harris said with a smile.
Then Tilson changed 15 years ago. In jail for the umpteenth time – drunk, fighting, etc. – his rowdy ways ended on Aug. 17, 1994, his last jailhouse stay.
However, he intended to do more than simply quit his wild ways.
“I decided that when I got out I was going to kill myself,” Tilson said, with no hint of a smile on his face as his lip trembled lightly.
“God intervened,” he said. “While I was in jail me and the good Lord got to talking. I asked God to forgive me and to take the craving for bars and liquor out of my mouth.”
When Tilson took his last giant step out of jail, he did so a changed man.
“I’ve not drank a drop since,” he said. “It makes cold chills come up on me knowing what I was going to do, and yet God saw to it that I didn’t.”
Tilson turned to trucking and worked as a long haul truck driver until last August. To see him was to see the picture of a happy-go-lucky, life-loving soul.
“I enjoyed running moonshine, fighting and drinking,” he said. “But I’ve found out that it’s a lot more fun without all that. I thank God for watching over me all those years.”

THUNDER ROAD’S END
In the years since, Tilson fought leukemia twice and twice the leukemia slipped into remission. Then bad news returned last summer. Cancer. Then leukemia.
Cancer treatments began in September. As weeks turned to months, his once mighty steps slowed as his breath became harder to catch.
The man who once could and did whip five men in a night and muscled a rocketing car around tight mountain roads didn’t even have the strength to attend church at his beloved Sweetwater Church of God in Flag Pond.
“You know I’m dying,” Tilson said last week from his hospital bed.
And he did. Tilson’s thunder road ended on June 3 at age 57.
“Lord have mercy, everybody in the country knew Loyd,” Richards said. “Loyd was a good, likable person. I thought an awful lot of Loyd. I don’t know anybody like him.”
One reminder remains of Tilson’s whiskey running days.
Hidden deep inside his refrigerator, inside a label-free Mason jar, sits an undisturbed pint of moonshine from which he never took so much as a sip.
“I’ve had a ball since I quit drinking liquor,” Tilson said two weeks ago. “I know when it’s daylight and dark, raining and sun shining. I’ve had a ball.”

TOM NETHERLAND is a freelance writer. He can be reached at .