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In the first installment of Crime and Punishment, I shared with you the arrest record of my Uncle Marlin, one of my great-grandfather’s younger brothers. I also speculated that the arrest had something to do with moonshine. Well, I did a bit of asking and confirmed that suspicion. According to my Aunt Madie– one of Marlin’s nieces and one of my grandfather’s younger sisters– it was a moonshining arrest. Here’s how it went down:

Apparently Marlin was an avid moonshiner, making and selling the stuff from his home. His house stood right along the road, so there was literally a market of consumers passing him by. He was so close to the road, my Aunt Madie said, that he’d often jump off of his porch, flag down passersby and sell them a bottle of moonshine.
He sold it to everyone, and one day he inadvertently offered to sell moonshine to a police officer.
As the story is told to me, Uncle Marlin didn’t try to hide his actions or deny what he was doing. “You caught me fair and square,” he told the cop.
And that’s the story behind the record.