This Land Is My Land
The story of a property-line feud between two families in North Georgia:
“The main bridge between the families was the fast friendship of Jewell Crane’s father and Lewis Dempsey’s father. The old men agreed that neighbors should talk and cooperate. Thus, when it came time in the early 1980s to fence off the southern part of Lot 784 to contain Dempsey’s cattle, all four men walked over the area as the posts were planted and the hog wire run.
“The first real friction between the two families had nothing to do with land. One day Dempsey spotted his father drinking a jar of whiskey. And since it was white mash in Lumpkin County, Dempsey didn’t have to ask where it had come from. Never much of a drinker himself, and worried that the alcohol would react with medication his father was taking for lung cancer, Dempsey threatened to turn Crane in if it ever happened again. Dempsey recalls that about two weeks later, he heard that Crane had gotten hassled by police for moonshining. Dempsey sought out his neighbor to assure Crane that he had not reported him (a denial Dempsey maintains to this day). But for weeks thereafter, when Dempsey met Crane on the road or drove past his house, the bootlegger refused to wave.”