The Story Behind Old Ben's Road

August 12, 2026

Old Ben was a real man, and he became something of a local legend. During Prohibition, he ran moonshine through the backroads, and the law was not exactly in the dark about it. Judges and lawmen knew what Ben was doing, and some of the same people who were supposed to be enforcing the law were buying from him.

That's where the line "And the law knew his taillights like an old guilty friend" came from. They knew who was behind the wheel, they knew what he was carrying, and a lot of the time that was as far as it went. Ben knew the roads, the ditches, the turns, and the places you could disappear for a while if somebody decided to follow you. He did it long enough, and well enough, that his reputation became about more than moonshine.

A road was eventually named after him, and it still carries his name. That was one of the things that made me want to write the song in the first place. People drive that road now without necessarily knowing anything about the man behind the name.

Moonshine was only part of what people remembered about Ben. He could be charming, but he also had a temper, which is where "He could smile like Sunday / he could rage like rain" came from. There were darker stories around him too, and his reputation for being dangerous did not come from nowhere. I never wanted the song to become a list of crimes or an attempt to account for every story attached to his name, so some of that is left exactly where it belongs in the song: "Some say men went missing / some said hush, let it be."

There was also talk about Native blood connected to Ben, along with plenty of denial surrounding it. At the time, that kind of ancestry could be something people whispered about or used against someone. That is where the second verse comes from. I'm not trying to settle anyone's genealogy with the song. I'm writing about the things people said, the way they spoke about him, and the prejudice that was part of those stories.

Near the end of Ben's life, the stories change again. He was said to have turned toward God and called on grace before he died. I don't know exactly what happened in those final moments, and the song doesn't pretend to know either. That became: "I don't know what mercy answered / I don't know what Heaven heard / But Jesus walks strange roads without explaining a word."

That part may be the most interesting to me. Here was a man who ran moonshine during Prohibition, knew the law and was known by it, carried a reputation that made people step carefully, and left behind enough stories that people were still repeating them long after he was gone. Somewhere at the end of all of that was a man asking for grace.

I don't know what answer he got. I do know the road is still there, and it still has his name on it.

Denise