Photograph of Aunt Julia McCreary sitting in a rocking chair reading a book by the fireplace.

Photograph of young Roy McCreary crossing a bridge with a walking stick on a path in the Hills of Tennessee, thinking about his future. Beautiful scene in the Hills of Tennessee.

Photograph of a jug of moonshine hidden in the stump of a tree. Narrative by Junebug Clark: This photo appears in Joe's book "Back Home" where it is captioned, "The Old Marketplace" Photo by: Joe Clark, HBSS. Clark PhotoFile: 0088-1

Photograph of a jug of moonshine hidden in the stump of a tree. Narrative by Junebug Clark: This photo appears in Joe's book "Back Home" where it is captioned, "The Old Marketplace" Photo by: Joe Clark, HBSS. Clark PhotoFile: 0088-1

Photograph of a moonshine jug hidden in the crevice of a tree. The moonshine jug is a big black bottle, and is centered in the photograph. The tree is weathered and seems to be eaten by termites, and takes up the rest of the frame.

Photograph of a jug of moonshine hidden in the stump of a tree.

Photograph of a jug of moonshine, placed in a hollow tree. This image is mounted to the right of a poem by Joe Clark, titled "Sally's Still."

Photograph of Aunt Oma Wright and Aunt Julia McCrary seated by the fireplace in their home in 1942, Cumberland Gap Tennessee. (Aunt Julia is seated in the rocker)

Photograph of a miner using a long hand drill in the mine. To his left is a pickaxe and on his head is a hat with a headlamp attached. The miner's face and clothes are covered in grime and coal dust.

Photograph of children lined up tasting the sweet sorghum molasses off shortened sorghum cane used as a tasting spoon. The envelope containing the negative is annotated "stir-off".

Narrative by Junebug Clark: Photograph of Uncle Wylie and Aunt Nora Treece on their front porch in Cumberland Gap, Tennessee. There is quite a bit of information to be found about this couple in the National Geographic December 1943 issue "Home Folk Around Historic Cumberland Gap" which can be found in the Clark Family Collection. Photo by: Joe Clark, HBSS. Signed by: Joe Clark, HBSS

Narrative by Junebug Clark in the summer of 2014 Molasses Making Stir-off - Walking My Girl Home Overall Background: These Molasses Making Stir-off photos were shot by Joe Clark HBSS in the early to mid-1940s. Either on the farm of Fred Whitaker about four miles southwest of Cumberland Gap, or in Cumberland Gap on the farm of Baptist preacher the Rev. Hugh Vancel. More information about these images can be found in scrapbooks in the Clark Family Collection at the University of North Texas Special Collections Library. Specifically in a Detroit news pictorial article published December 13, 1942 titles "stir-off party" where mountaineers make molasses and merriment. Also in life magazine published November 13, 1950 [page 156] titled “Stir-off Time in Tennessee, Fun Starts in Hills as Molasses Boils.’ Also in the library is the NBC Today Show story on Joe Clark HBSS by Bob Dotson. It features Joe Clark returning to Cumberland Gap Tennessee to photograph a molasses stir off taking place in the same location as some of these photographs and attended by some of the same people in the early 1980s. Let me briefly set the scene of the time and era that these photos were made. …

Photograph of a jug of "Wild Spirits" from a still hidden in a tree in the hills of Cumberland Gap, Tennessee.