Benjamin GroffMedia© | benandsteve.com | ©2026 July 07, 2026
Part II: The Road to Stella
This story is historical fiction inspired by a brief newspaper account of an actual arrest near Stella, Oklahoma, during Prohibition.
When federal agents hauled J. W. Sims from the abandoned farm outside Stella, the newspapers made it sound simple.
Another moonshiner arrested.
Another still destroyed.
Another victory for Prohibition.
But life in rural Oklahoma was rarely that simple.
J. W. Sims had grown up in a world where whiskey was not considered a crime.
His father kept a jug in the barn.
His grandfather made peach brandy every fall.
Neighbors shared recipes as freely as they shared seeds for planting.
Then came 1920.
Congress passed the Eighteenth Amendment.
The government said alcohol was illegal.
The people of Oklahoma mostly shrugged.
Some obeyed.
Others simply moved their operations farther into the woods.
The farm near Stella had once belonged to a widow who moved to Shawnee after her husband died.
The house sat empty.
The barn sagged.
The well still produced cold water.
To a bootlegger, it was perfect.
The still itself was nothing fancy.
A copper boiler.
A warm condenser cooled by creek water.
A few barrels of corn mash.
The smell, however, was impossible to hide.
Sweet.
Sour.
Yeasty.
The scent drifted through the trees for a quarter mile.
Sims joked that if the federal agents could not find the still, they could simply follow their noses.
Harold McGilvery didn’t laugh.
Harold worried constantly.
“Somebody’s gonna talk,” he said.
“They always do.”
Business was good.
A gallon jug sold for three dollars.
Five dollars if the buyer lived in Shawnee.
Twice that if somebody wanted it shipped to Oklahoma City.
There were farmers who bought.
Oil field roughnecks bought.
Traveling salesmen bought.
Even churchgoers bought.
Especially churchgoers.
Sims found it amusing that some of his best customers lectured him on morality while handing over cash.
The first arrest came in the spring.
Not Sims.
Not Harold.
A man in Seminole County.
Then another outside Ada.
Then three more near Prague.
Federal agents had begun raiding stills throughout central Oklahoma.
The newspapers called them “revenooers.”
Most folks had other names for them.
Harold became nervous.
He wanted to quit.
Sims was less concerned.
“They can’t arrest everybody,” he said.
It was a statement history would prove incorrect.
One morning, before sunrise, dogs began barking.
Harold looked toward the road.
A pair of automobiles approached.
Dark sedans.
No county markings.
No warning.
Just dust and headlights.
“Federal men,” Harold whispered.
The two men ran.
Harold disappeared into the trees.
Sims slipped behind the barn.
For a moment, he thought he might escape.
Then came the shout.
“Federal officers!”
And the unmistakable sound of a shotgun shell being racked.
Sims raised his hands.
The newspapers would later report the facts in only a few sentences.
Federal officers raided an illicit distillery near Stella.
Harold McGilvery was arrested first.
J. W. Sims was arrested later in connection with the operation.
That was all.
No mention of the cold morning air.
No mention of the copper still cooling in the grass.
No mention of the dreams that ended beside an abandoned farmhouse.
What happened to J. W. Sims after that?
The records grow quiet.
Perhaps he paid a fine.
Perhaps he served a short sentence.
Perhaps he returned to farming.
Or perhaps he found another hidden hollow and another copper kettle.
Many did.
Because Prohibition was a peculiar war.
The government won the raids.
The bootleggers won customers.
And ordinary men like J. W. Sims lived somewhere in between.
One foot in the law.
One foot outside it.
Trying to make a living in Oklahoma during one of the strangest chapters in American history.
A note from the writer, One of the descendants of the Sims family drove my rural route school bus. Years later, as a teenager working summers cleaning floors at the school, he would tell me stories about J. W. Sims. It has taken me many years to gather the pieces of those stories and compare them with the historical record. Some parts proved true. Others were undoubtedly embellished over time. Every bit of it, however, was fascinating. The man who shared those stories with me passed away several years ago. On a recent trip back to my hometown, I visited with his relatives and asked for their blessing to tell the tales their father, uncle, and family member had entrusted to me. What you've read is not just history? It is memory, folklore, and the enduring power of stories passed from one generation to the next. Benjamin H. Groff II
GroffMedia© | benandsteve.com | ©2026
