It's not often you witness history, but I'm pretty sure this was the very first time those words were ever uttered in this Franklin Street hair salon.

The woman sounded certain. Having had family in North Carolina for some time now, I was less so. Folks here have always been considered a hard-drinking people, and not just on account of Cheerwine. In a state that has demonstrated a prowess for driving in circles at violent speeds and creating banking institutions that apparently do something similar, hand-making a tangible and consumable local product seems a nearly noble endeavor.

In a state known for creating and consuming, Orange County holds its head high. Ask any local over the age of 40, and odds are they can talk bootleg.

Keith Edwards recalls Fridays in the old neighborhood, when you could see a fair number of men coming from work looking a little sour and then returning five minutes later looking a whole lot more relaxed. When pressed about the location, she says it was pretty much on the corner of Cotton and Somewhere but that we better not use Ms. So and So's name. Done. We asked because the UNC Student Union is installing the "Because We're Still Here (and Moving)" exhibit about the history of Chapel Hill-Carrboro's African-American community for freshman orientation. We decided the community wall map should reflect more sustainable neighborhood businesses, i.e. where the bootlegger(s) lived.

My mother says their local bootlegger of note made a million thrice over and lost it every time. This was no mean feat in the 1930s. He wasn't just a bootlegger; he was a moonshiner. In those days, careers were less sequential. You didn't start out as an accountant, then become a hairdresser, then open a boutique; you did it all on Saturday. See a need and fill it. My grandfather collected the county taxes, ran a country store, and farmed a large tract of land, with the help of tenants with their own moonshine traditions.

So, the most prominent bootlegger in the county was not solely a bootlegger. He was a farmer, businessman and an upstanding citizen, except when he was ditching his plane into the cornfields, rising alive but noticeably unsteady. According to Mama, he was pretty much the first to install indoor plumbing. If that weren't impressive enough, in addition to plumbing in water from the well, he plumbed in whiskey from the still. His bathroom must have been a lively spot: just slip a gallon jug under the tub spigot and presto. See a jar and fill it.

My friend Jennifer's grandmother was equally upstanding. If she came through the church doors to find her grandkids listening to the car radio while still in the Lord's parking lot, she'd snatch a knot in them. No matter that at that very moment and in that very car trunk, she had both bootleg for sale and a loaded pistol. The woman carried her strategies and tactics with her.

Perhaps our dreadful economic situation, with job losses and funding cuts to every meaningful area of our community, encourages a stumbling trend toward self-sufficiency, or at least self-assessment. In college, my son made pocket change by wielding an unfamiliar foreign object, aka screwdriver, to accomplish exotic activities such as changing broken taillights. Turns out that students whose personal assistants rotate their fleet of cars and whose parents consult on international banking systems do not necessarily know how to change a light bulb. They certainly do not know how to make moonshine. They only know how to drink it. Perhaps knowing how to consume something without knowing how to create it is the beginning of dependency.

My grandmother made blackberry wine, a local tradition. Blackberry wine was the medicinal answer to whatever ailed you, including 4 o'clock in the afternoon. Her recipe is long lost. Orange County's once-ubiquitous locust beer? No clue. Down the road a neighbor's cousin has been perfecting his version of Orange County homebrew for 60 years. It tastes like Grey Goose, only smoother. Forget even asking for that recipe.

When I inquired of Mama how folks learned to make moonshine, she looked at me like I had lost my mind, even though we were talking on the phone. "Everybody knew how. There were stills all over the place. It's just corn, water, malt, and time." Actually, it's even less. Moonshiners started using white sugar instead of corn meal during Prohibition because it was cheaper and no one cared too much about quality when quantity was so tight.

There used to be a working still in the Playmakers Repertory props, confiscated long ago from a local moonshiner. Since we're rehearsing there for the Maymester tour of "Because We're Still Here (and Moving)" to local eighth graders, I thought I should at least investigate. Apparently, someone who saw an early performance decided a props closet was a sorry place for a fine machine and stole it back. See a need and brew it.

When men would come to my grandfather's store to buy bulk sugar, Grandaddy refused to sell it to them, on the grounds that they were probably using it for moonshine. I like to think he refused not because they were making moonshine, but because they were making inferior moonshine. They knew better. Bad moonshine is just never a good idea. Never.

Lynden Harris is the director of the Hidden Voices project. Contact her at lharris@hiddenvoices.org.

To learn more about "Because We're Still Here (And Moving)," read Dave Hart's story at www.chapelhillnews.com/front/story/41079.html