Ball Troylyn - Pure heart: a spirited tale of grace, grit, and whiskey

QUESTION: IS WISDOM BORN OF EXPERIENCE,

OR CAN IT BE LEARNED BY READING A BOOK?

ANSWER: WISDOM KNOWS MANY ANSWERS,

BUT LISTENING IS NEEDED.

S ome people say if you dont live your dreams when youre young, you never will. Youll end up settling. Working a job just for a paycheck. Marrying someone you dont truly love. Cooking dinner every night. (Sorry, but I dont like cooking.) Youll never take that wild business chance or that Alaskan cruise. Youll never have that crazy affair of the heart. Youll wake up one day, realize youre past your prime, and think, Why didnt I take the chance? Why didnt I live when I was young and I didnt have all these sore muscles and responsibilities? Once you think that, they say, its already too late.

There was a time I thought that way, too. After twenty-four years of being a stay-at-home mother, I thought life had passed me by. I would sit in my house, exhausted, and think back on my childhood in rural Texas, when my father would sit with me at the end of a day spent working and ask me, What do you want to do, Troy?

I knew the answer. I wanted to be a wife and mother, have a big family, the usual stuff. But I also wanted to be an entrepreneur. I wanted to run my own business, just like Dad.

Well, how you gonna make that happen, Troy? Dad would say as we watched the beautiful Texas sunset. He wasnt patronizing me. He really wanted to know.

Even at ten, I knew the answer, because Dad had taught me well. I would go to college. I would get a good job and learn a business. I would look for an opportunity, a hole in the market nobody else had seen, and Id fill that hole with whatever was missing from the world. Then Id sell it. Id sell the product, the idea, the service. Id sell them on myself. I didnt know what my business would be. Maybe horses. I loved horses as a girl. (Still do.) Or maybe insurance, because that was Dads primary business. It didnt matter, because what I wanted was to create something of my own. Be the boss. Sell. Succeed. I imagined sitting on a front porch, just like my childhood porch, when I was an older woman (which to my ten-year-old self probably meant forty). Id have my handsome husband beside me, my kids and grandkids around me, and hundreds of friends spreading over my little corner of the world, laughing and carrying on. And Id be in the center, the queen, because my business would have provided for them all.

It didnt work out that way. I got the handsome husband and sons, but I had to give up my entrepreneurial dreams, and for twenty-four years my life felt small. For a while, it felt like my world shrank every year, until it was just me, in my house, by myself, taking care of my three boys, two of whom had special needs. And the smaller my life got, the harder it was to hold it together, and the more down on myself I became. On my worst days, I resented my husband, my sons, the friends who had left me behind. I felt lonely, and I felt guilty about that loneliness, because I knew I should have been happy living for my family, because my family needed me, and they loved me, and how could I be angry about that?

Then, in my late forties, I found my hole to fill in the last place I ever would have looked. I found it in moonshine.

Im probably not who you think of when you think of a moonshiner. I dont have a name like Willie Carter Sharpe... Okay, I guess Troylyn Wigginton Ball is pretty close. But I dont have Willies childhood in the Appalachian Mountains, or her teenage years working in an overall factory, or her diamond-studded teeth. That was the detail that caught Americas attention when Willie Carter Sharpe went on trial in 1935 for running carloads of illegal shine two or three times a day, three hundred sixty-five days a year, for ten years. More than enough runs, at $10 a pop, to pay for any kind of teeth she wanted.

Im from Texas. I grew up comfortable, first in the suburbs, then on a ranch. Ive always lived in good houses in nice neighborhoods. I wear boots, but the fashionable kind, and I always wear my pearls. If you saw me, youd probably think I was just another nice Southern wife, with an SUV and a lunch date at the Junior League. Youd almost be right. But I never joined the Junior League, and truth be told, I was never going to be happy lunching with the ladies.

And thats where my road and Willie Carter Sharpes meet. When the reporters asked her why she ran shine, Willie said, It was the excitement got me.

It was the excitement of white whiskeya.k.a. white lightning, a.k.a. mountain dew, a.k.a. moonshinethat got me, too. As soon as an old mountain man handed me a mason jar of the keeper shine, as he called it, I wanted to learn everything about it. I wanted to make it, then make it legal. Shoot-outs with the law, Willie said, made her feel alive. For me, it was realizing that real moonshine wasnt rotgut garbage. Traditional Scotch-Irish Appalachian moonshine had a history that dated back long before Prohibition, and it was one of the best hard liquors the world had ever known.

And nobody, anywhere, was making it that way anymore. When I discovered that, I knew moonshine was my opportunity. It was going to be my business and my adventure. I guess I hoped moonshine would save my soul.

Then my world collapsed, and moonshine had to save my family, too.

Pure heart is a whiskey-making term. The start of a distillation (known as a run) is filled with poisons that burn off at low temperatures. Thats the heads. The end of a run is full of greasy heavy oils that burn off at high temperatures. Thats the tails. The center of the run, where the temperature is perfect, is called the heart, because the spirit found there is pure and clear.

When I learned this, I vowed to throw the heads and tails away, so that my moonshine was nothing but pure heart. Ive done that since the first bottle of Troy & Sons, and I still do that today. Every drop of Troy & Sons whiskey is pure heart, guaranteed.

I also vowed to incorporate that concept into my daily life. Every decision I make, whether for my business or my family, I try to make with a pure heart. I throw away the light poisons of shortcuts and half-truths. I throw out the heavy poisons of anger, fear, and resentment. I try to do whats right, because when you are drinking (and thinking) from a pure heart, youll never regret your actions the next morning.

So please, sit back with a spiderleg of Troy & Sons heirloom moonshine, as my great friend Forrest Jarrett would say, and relax. Have two spiderlegs, actually, because as Forrest is fond of saying, while holding out his cup, Bird cant fly with one wing, so best give me two. Hes a man not afraid to mix metaphors, or a stiff drink.

Not a straight whiskey drinker? Heres a favorite cocktail recipe:

1ozTroy & Sons Platinum heirloom moonshine

1/2oz fresh-squeezed orange juice

1 oz fresh-squeezed lime juice

3/4 to 1 oz simple syrup (half sugar, half water, mixed and dissolved), depending on how sweet you want the drink

Or just have lemonade. I dont drink much myself. I had my first taste of alcohol, a glass of red wine, when I was forty years old, so this isnt a drinking story, anyway. Its a story about pursuing your passion, no matter how old you are or how high the mountain in the way. Whether I sell another bottle of moonshine, or make another dollar, doesnt matter. Ive helped the people I needed to help, and Ive loved the people who gave me their time and talent, and Ive found my lifes purpose in the trying.