Selling untaxed alcohol is a big no-no, but there still are those who try to get away with it. They’re called moonshiners, and they’ve been around since 1791, when the federal government placed a whiskey tax on any and all alcohol produced in the United States.
Kentucky was a hotbed for moonshine activities that became a game of cat and mouse as federal agents came looking for stills to demolish throughout the backwoods of eastern, south-central and western Kentucky. Although these back-road chemists might have operated on the theory of out of sight, out of mind, there was one Fed whose mission was to search and destroy.
His name was William Bernard “Big Six” Henderson, and no one did it better.
A few years ago, the History Channel produced a documentary, Rumrunners, Moonshiners and Bootleggers, tracing the history of moonshine. In it, Henderson was featured as the most legendary still buster, thus cementing his notoriety.
Henderson stood 6 feet, 4 inches tall, weighed more than 250 pounds, and sported a thick shock of white hair. “I could run like a deer, didn’t drink nor smoke, and nobody outran me,” Henderson once said.
Throughout his 28 years as a federal agent, he busted 5,000 stills and sent 5,600 moonshiners to jail, according to his personal daily record.
“You can do the math,” he said.
We did. Working a normal five-day work week, Henderson would have “busted” 178 stills per year or one every other day of his career as a “revenoower.”
He became so famous in some parts that moonshiners often painted “Big Six” on the sides of the barrels they illegally produced, knowing many of them would end up in his hands anyway. Thurlow, a moonshiner, named his still Big Six. Starting work one morning, Thurlow greeted it like a co-worker. “Good morning, Big Six,” he said to the still. “Why don’t we just run ourselves off a little batch, you and I? What do you say to that, Big Six?”
“That you’re caught, Thurlow,” Henderson said, stepping out of the mist.
Many kids in the 1950s and ’60s played games of cops and robbers or cowboys and Indians, but in the hills and hollows of Kentucky, a different version—moonshiners and revenuers—was popular. While the young boys were playing their games, girls inserted “Big Six” into their jump-rope chant: “My mother told me … to watch the still … in case Big Six … came over the hill.”
The people of eastern and south-central Kentucky didn’t have the still business all to themselves. In the 1950s, Golden Pond in western Kentucky was known as the “Moonshine Capital of the World,” with as many as 15 stills running a day, although locations in North Carolina, Virginia and Georgia also laid claim to that moniker. Eventually, the Land Between the Lakes project left Golden Pond a ghost town (now free of spirits) between Lake Barkley and Kentucky Lake as part of the Land Between the Lakes National Recreation Area.
Henderson chased moonshiners from one end of Kentucky to the other. His larger-than-life reputation developed from some of his own tales, and part of his legend was the fair treatment he showed to those he apprehended.
“I never regarded them as doing something evil,” Henderson said, “just illegal. I never abused them. Killed a few, but never abused them.”
The moonshiners Big Six Henderson tracked down respected him as much as they feared him. “Mr. Six,” one woman said when he arrested her husband for a third time, “we’re proud to have folks know we know you.”
Henderson was born in 1903 in Rineyville, a few miles from Elizabethtown in Hardin County. He died in 1987 at 84 and was buried in St. John’s Cemetery.
How did he get the nickname “Big Six?”
Many thought it was because of the .44-caliber pistol he was rarely seen without. Others said he threw a baseball much like Hall of Famer Christy “Big Six” Mathewson when he pitched in a semi-pro baseball league to pay for college and law school.
In fact, it became so embedded in Henderson’s name that by the time he became a U.S. marshal, “Big Six” was part of his letterhead and signature on his official correspondence.
Louisville resident Dr. Neal Garrison grew up in Bowling Green in the 1950s and ’60s when Henderson was the official timekeeper at Western Kentucky University games. Garrison’s dad, Dick, was Big Six’s assistant and took over for Henderson when he retired. “He was my godfather,” Garrison said. “He was close to lots of influential people, especially when it came to athletics.” He liked being a man of influence and befriended many athletes.
The crossover between Big Six’s career and love of sports is easy to explain. “It [busting stills] was a game to me—a challenge,” he said.
“Big Six was close to [WKU Coach E.A.] Diddle and [the University of Kentucky’s Adolph] Rupp and helped them recruit. He was also close to Moose Krause at Notre Dame and one of the reasons [Louisville’s] Paul Hornung went there,” Garrison said.
Henderson was proud of his association with Cliff Hagan, one of Kentucky’s greatest basketball players.
“My first memory of Big Six was in 1949, right after our Owensboro team won the state championship,” Hagan said. “He was the timekeeper. I scored 41 points in our win over Lexington Lafayette, and he came out on the floor and handed me the game ball. He said, ‘I’ll probably get in trouble for this, but I want you to have this ball.’ ”
Hagan’s friendship with Big Six grew, and they even traveled together on a college visit to Notre Dame. Hagan, of course, eventually chose UK, where he put together a legendary college career.
Hagan wore No. 6 at UK as a tribute to his courtside friend who often told him about his raids.
“Big Six was such a character and sometimes would embarrass his wife, Gladys, with all of the stories he told. He even had a hand-printed necktie that showed me shooting a hook shot. It was sometimes funny when he had it on and was around some people from Western, he’d put his hand over it to cover it up.”
Henderson’s connection to WKU was special, too. “It was about 1928 when I first met Coach Diddle,” he recalled in an oral history. “I played against Western for L&N Pan-American.”
For decades, Henderson’s association with the school grew as he became the official timekeeper for Hilltopper basketball games.
He thought so much of Diddle that on Jan. 6, 1962, in recognition of WKU’s 1,000th game, Henderson personally went out in the Bowling Green community and raised 1,000 silver dollars to present to the coach during the game.
Tom Curley has been part of the Kentucky high school state basketball tournament stat crew for 45 years and operated the clock for the old ABA Kentucky Colonels basketball team. Before that, he manned the clock for several games at Diddle Arena while a student at WKU in the 1960s.
Curley remembers the first time he met Henderson at the state tournament. “I was scared to death. He was so intimidating,” Curley said. “He’d show up in a coat and tie, wearing a cowboy hat with that big gun on his side. We had three seats—one for Big Six, one for his gun and one for me.”
Curley said Henderson liked to engage the crowd, especially those sitting behind him. “Later in his career, he paid more attention to the crowd than the game. Sometimes, as much as a minute would run off the clock because he was talking and not paying attention.”
Henderson was such a storyteller that he once participated in a national storytelling festival in Tennessee.
Big Six stories took on a life of their own. There were a couple, however, that were a little far out, but still believable. Well, maybe. “Dad played poker with Gen. George Armstrong Custer,” Henderson was quoted as saying.
Yes, Custer was stationed in Elizabethtown for two years. According to Henderson, Custer tried to persuade his dad to re-enlist in the Army, but he declined, missing the opportunity to die with Custer six months later at the Battle of Little Big Horn.
The time frame may not match the story, but that’s not to say Big Six wasn’t confused—or maybe he lived by the adage that facts should never ruin a good story.
In an 1978 interview, he claimed a friendship with Babe Ruth. “I was there when Babe hit his called shot,” which Big Six called his biggest thrill.
It was the third game of the 1932 World Series in Chicago’s Wrigley Field, in which the Yankees swept the Cubs 4-0. “I was sitting up there in the box seats he’d given me,” Big Six said. “ ’Course, that’s why I was so fond of Babe.”
Henderson would have been 29. How Ruth and Henderson became acquainted, no one knows. Big Six played semi-pro baseball and worked for the L&N. Major League Baseball teams traveled by train then, so there’s a chance they could have met as the Yankees traveled from New York to Chicago. Or they might have crossed paths at one of the Yankees’ barnstorming games in Louisville.
Big Six’s life reached folk hero status, earning him a spot in Esther Keller’s book, Moonshine: Its History and Folklore. Between what others said and what he said about himself, stories—embellished or not—have kept his exploits alive 30 years after his death.
It was no myth that he could creep through the woods as quiet as smoke and could run like a deer for miles. Usually, he didn’t have chase his quarry. “Homer, halt,” he shouted at one fleeing ’shiner. The man froze in his tracks. “I’m halted, Big Six. I’m halted.”
Why wouldn’t a distillery name one of its fine bourbon after Big Six to honor his exploits? It would be the perfect mix of fact and fiction, and Big Six Bourbon would be the real deal.
California-produced Big Six Bourbon Barrel Aged wines are named for Mickey “Big Six” Doyle, said to be Kentucky’s fastest 1920s bootlegger. Doyle, not to be confused with a Boardwalk Empire character, drove a lightning-fast 6-cylinder car. Unlike Henderson, Doyle may be totally fiction and certainly had no connections to Ruth, Rupp, Diddle or Hagan.
In a 1978 interview saved by the Center for Bibliographical Studies and Research, Big Six had “eyes the color of wet turquoise.”
If ever a bourbon were named in his honor, he’d have been OK with it. His stories have been packed, unpacked and packed again. A good Kentucky bourbon in a turquoise bottle would keep the name “Big Six” around for decades to come.