This is an I-Heart podcast.

Guaranteed Human.

And we continue with our American stories.

Steve Earle's 1988 hit single, Copperhead Road, tells the story of the bootlegging

Petamore family and a son who takes a decidedly more mellow route after two tours of duty in Vietnam.

But while the story of the Petamore family is pure fiction, the story of Moonshine Mama,

aka Maggie Bailey, is not.

Here to tell the story is J.D. Phillips of the remarkable YouTube channel,

The Appalachian Storyteller. Take it away, J.D.

In many ways, Maggie Bailey was your typical mountain girl.

Growing up on Pine Mountain, just north of the Virginia-Kentucky border, she was born in 1904, on this rocky hillside farm where her paw barely scratched out a living from the poor rocky soil.

Now, money was scarce back in those days, all across the mountains. There was only a few ways

that hill folk could get their hands on some. One way, well, that was selling blockade corn liquor.

And with so many miles to feed, Maggie's paw did what he had to do to make hens meat.

So, from a young age, Maggie spent many a night, standing barefooted, on the top of a split-bottom chair with a long wooden paddle,

stirring her paws mash, and keeping the firebox stocked with plenty of firewood.

Little did she know, but her paws nightly schooling on the fine art of crafting white mule would end up defining her life.

By 1921, Maggie was 17.

Oh, these were exciting times.

The newly built railroad brought strangers from all over America.

Maggie met a professional gambler and a coal businessman who dressed in fancy suits

and even had the first pocket watch that the young girl had ever seen in her life.

...