"There are two kinds of whiskey," Harris Lee explained, "One is pure corn whiskey and the other is called wolf pot. This type consisted of wheat, bran, sugar, yeast and water. The recipe is 100 pounds of sugar, 100 gallons of water, 25 pounds of wheat bran to each 100 pounds of sugar and 1/4 pound of yeast. Moonshine stills were usually built in the woods close to the water. It was usually made at night because the fire was made really hot by burning old tires and this created a lot of smoke and the 'revenuers', as they were called back then, could follow the smoke and locate the whiskey stills which they would then destroy. After the fire got hot they would burn wood to cook off the whiskey. It took 72 hours to ferment. The first whiskey run would be sweet mash and the second run would be sour mash. If you used rye instead of wheat it would ferment in 48 hours."
During WWII Harris Lee joined the Marine Corps where he and his good friend, Sisco Alan Purdy, spent 45 days straight on the front line on Okinawa in one of the bloodiest battles of the war. Afterwards he was stationed in North China on garrison duty, where, like thousands of other young men, he had time to think about his future after he mustered out. Harris Lee never doubted that he would come back to Madison County and enter the family business. But he realized that in order to make serious money in the moonshine business, he was going to have to be much better organized.
Possibly one of his inspirations was his aunt, Laura Hardin, known to everyone as Aunt Laura.
Aunt Laura had been involved in the whiskey business most of her life before she opened up a honky tonk called the White Castle, at the intersection of Meridian and Winchester Road. She had a driver, E. Polo, who made weekly trips hauling beer and whiskey from Paducah, Kentucky, and the club featured live music two nights a week. The White Castle was a huge success, drawing many customers away from other bootleggers. Unfortunately for Laura, one of the bootleggers had paid off an official in return for exclusive rights to the area. After repeated warnings, the bootlegger hired a man to walk into the White Castle and shoot Laura in the leg. T. Hopper drove her to the hospital but was ambushed and killed on the way back to the White Castle.
As soon as Aunt Laura could walk, she went back to the White Castle where some of her family was waiting.
"Audy, get your gun," she said. "Where are we going?" Audy replied.
"You'll know when we get there!"
Laura went straight to the office of the high official. Sitting on the edge of his desk she confronted him, saying she knew he was trying to put her out of business and that he was involved in killing her employee. "After today," she said, "you take care of your part of the county and I'll take care of mine."
"I knew they would come after me," she later said, "so I put men on the rooftop and O. Walker at the door. Sure enough they came and it was like the shoot-out at O.K. Corral with everyone firing guns. The only person that got hurt was D. Taylor, a local attorney. After we ran them off they didn't bother me no more."
Aunt Laura provided a lesson that was instilled in Parcus from a young age. "You got to be organized."
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