Home Made Beer and the Great Camping Caper | Eastern North Carolina Now

The Al Pop story, homemade beer and the future cop.

    Nineteen Sixty Two was the year that Clint graduated from Clarkston High School. He had a classmate that lived right across the street from him named Alfred. Al had a storage shack in his back yard where either he or his dad made homemade beer. Al would take orders for the weekend during the week at school. After a deposit was received, he would leave the beer order in a paper bag inside the signal box at the Rays Road and Ponce De Leon crossing.

    The beer was placed in old quart containers and capped. While I do not ever remember seeing the production facilities behind Al's house, I do remember many occasions picking up the product at the Railroad Crossing. Each bag would be marked with the name or initials of the buyer. I do not ever recall anyone steeling someone else's package.

    Clint and I had planned a camping trip at Stone Mountain and had placed the order and paid the money. We picked up the package or a Friday and put it in a backpack. Since we were not going camping until Saturday, we placed the backpack in an enclosed storage room under Clint's back porch. The room had been built with concrete block and we used as a hobby shop and radio room as we were into short wave radios at the time.

    Sometime before we had planned to pick up the package, the beer must have overheated and blew up. The backpack contained most of the glass but the beer scent was all over the yard and house. Clint's parents asked what that awful smell was. Since Clint was into building rockets and often used chemicals to make the propellant for the rockets, he explained that it was an experiment gone bad. I am not too sure anyone believed the story but we thought we had got away with the caper.

    We had affectionately named the bootleg beer "AL-POP". Alfred went on to become a helicopter pilot in Vietnam and eventually a pilot for the Dekalb County Police where he served for many years. I think the statue of limitations has expired by now but I am sure the proof is long gone.

Submitted by Bobby Tony