Growing up as a red-blooded boy in Tennessee, I learned about moonshine early on. The truth is I’d rather take a gulp of paint thinner than tilt a jar of “mountain likker,” but because I loved to mess around with the devil, I got pretty intrigued by the whole thing.

It was the aura that held the appeal, don’t you know. I mean, if “Thunder Road” was showing at the Broad Street Drive-In we’d sneak some buddies through the gate in the car trunk - even if we all had money – because that was only fitting. C’mon, Robert Mitchum himself would have done it!

The reason I bring this up is because Marvin “Popcorn” Sutton, a notorious moonshiner from Parrottsville, Tn., thumbed his nose at the Feds one last time on Monday. He was supposed to report to prison this week to begin 18 months in “the cross-bar hotel” for brewing moonshine, but was found dead instead in an apparent suicide by carbon monoxide.

“Popcorn,” a very colorful guy who got his nickname from a storied altercation with a popcorn machine one time in a mountain bar, was caught last year when a raid on his property revealed three 1,000-gallon stills, about 800 gallons of “white lightening,” hundreds of gallons of sour mash and goodness knows what else.

The thing that really got him was that he had, as always, a bunch of guns lying around and the Feds really frown on felons with firearms. There is also “a story with legs” circling around that “Popcorn” had just been told he had cancer pretty bad so that, too, had to be a factor in his apparent “death before dishonor” move at the end.

Everybody knew the 61-year old with the long beard and close-cropped noggin had made many a “batch.” He was a shoo-in for the Moonshine Hall of Fame, if there is such a thing, and was nationally known, especially after his autobiography, “Me and My Likker,” was published to loud applause. Further, he was constantly in one documentary after another on the delicate art of distilling spirits.

But almost a half-decade of fun, the attitude of living life “my way” and “being my own man,” came to a crashing end on a rainy and gloomy afternoon the day before yesterday. Despite the fact the presiding judge had over 100 letters in support of “Popcorn,” the assortment of facts that he was still on parole from Cocke Country, his other “priors” for “manufacturing,” and the gun charges were too much to ignore.

Yes, there was that old junk school bus, where the jars were carefully stacked, just so, for anybody who had the money. Ole Marvin wasn’t long on checking IDs, but the better fact was that he sold mostly to friends and acquaintances. I mean, there wasn’t a great big billboard or one of those blinking signs that said “We’re open!”

That’s part of the lure of moonshine. Sharing the secret is a big deal. Once when we were skipping school and thirsty for adventure, I knew of a place about an hour’s drive from Chattanooga that was “running a batch” so a carload of us went to have a look.

Now you talk about “call before you come;” I made sure those boys knew we were on our way. Further, after we had walked about mile into the woods we started hollering, calling out, to tell those tending the fire it was us, not the revenuers. Are you kidding me? You walk up on a still and you’re a threat to be shot. There ain’t no talking before the trigger-pulling, either.

Well, we finally found the still by smelling the smoke. It was settled down between two huge rocks, with a real cold stream running through that condensed the vapors just swell, and the two characters running the still thought it was wonderfully funny when one of my cohorts, a guy who’d never had a pimple, promptly spit up his first-ever drink of the ‘shine.

The whole thing has just been so much fun down through the years. One of Chattanooga’s premier attorneys still has a ’40 Ford with built-up shocks and heavy springs that was used to run the stuff on certain nights. The car will still fly like a fresh bullet, too.

And just last night I was sitting in a crowd where there was a guy who grew up down on the river and has driven many a load. Now he’s getting old and has just recovered from open-heart surgery, but I know. And he knows I know. And he also knows when I see him and confirm he’s still got that bad-boy twinkle in his eye, I not only respect that but I swear I still like it.

So it is with Marvin “Popcorn” Sutton. Nobody wanted to see him go like he did, but, scratch if you will, the “death before dishonor” deal gave him the final say. He was able to thumb his nose at the Feds one last time.

And while I abhor the way he went, I also think it was pretty dadgum cool.

royexum@aol.com