Unfortunately that was not to be. Ten days before he was due to report to prison to begin serving a two-year sentence for illegal alcohol production, Popcorn took his own life. It is something that still makes me seethe with righteous fury to this day. Popcorn was never hurting anyone. He was by all accounts a man so gentle that it's hard to imagine him even swatting a fly. But the government wanted its cut of "the action" and Popcorn was too obstinate to give up what he believed was not only his right, but his very heritage. Here are the many articles about Popcorn Sutton that I've written over the years and here especially is the post I made following his "death by government bastards", still to date the first and hopefully only time that I'm driven to use the "f" word in a piece of published writing.
It seems though that the past few years have proven that you can't keep a good legend down, because Popcorn has become a bona fide icon. A symbol, of what was good about America once upon a time and could still be good again. I was in a pizza joint near here last year and one of the employees was wearing a Popcorn Suttong t-shirt. I just had to compliment him on his attire. He also said that he wished he could have met the man.
Filmmaker Neal Hutcheson, who produced several documentaries about Popcorn Sutton and his craft, has written an amazing piece over at The Assembly about the life and times (and crimes?) of the mythic moonshiner. I thought I knew most everything there was to know about Sutton, but Hutcheson really surprised me with this one. It's absolutely well worth your time. I certainly came away from it a little more saddened, that I never got to meet Popcorn. But maybe generations still to come will discover Popcorn and in doing so will come to appreciate and admire the Appalachias culture that he proudly represented.
