How many revenuers are so famous for busting up stills and chasing down moonshiners that a fine bourbon whiskey bears his name? Not any! But there should be.

William “Big Six” Henderson struck fear in any man throughout Kentucky who ever thought about making an untaxed whiskey. In his 28-year career as a federal agent, he busted up about 5,000 stills and sent 5,600 moonshiners to jail, according to his personal daily record. He became so famous that some shiners painted “Big Six” on the sides of the barrels they produced. Some even named their children after him. There’s a “Big Six” wine being marketed about a fictitious bootlegger in the 1920s. It’s a made up-story. The real “Big Six” would have had him in handcuffs before sunset.

Lots of children in the 1950s and 1960s played make-believe 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.”

Eastern and southcentral Kentucky didn’t have the business all to themselves. Golden Pond in western Kentucky was known in the 1950s as the “Moonshine Capital of the World,” with as many as 15 stills running a day. The Land Between the Lakes project eventually led to the stills’ demise.

Henderson covered them all, from one end of Kentucky to the other.

A few years ago, the History Channel produced a documentary detailing the history of moonshine. The network highlighted Henderson as the most legendary “still buster” in history, helping to cement his notoriety.

A Kentucky bourbon named “Big Six” would seem to be in order. Who knows how many of the stories are true that tag along with several brands of Kentucky’s finest? A “Big Six” bourbon would be the real deal … well, sort of.

Henderson stood 6-feet-4 and over 250 pounds with a thick shock of white hair later in life. By his own admission, “I could run like a deer … didn’t drink or smoke. Nobody outran me.”

His bigger-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,” he said. “Just illegal. I never abused them. Killed a few, but never abused them.”

Former Bowling Green Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agent Bob Bridgewater recalled Henderson was a great storyteller.

“I went with him to a meeting where he was the speaker. He told about his chasing moonshiner days. Later, when he was asked about the dangers of his job, he told the audience how he had once been shot by a moonshiner’s gun. But what ‘Big Six’ didn’t tell them was he shot himself with the gun he had taken from the moonshiner,” Bridgewater said.

“I told him later, ‘Six, you’re the biggest liar I’ve ever heard. You know that?’ He said. ‘I know that, but they don’t know that.’ ”

Henderson was born in 1903 in the tiny community of St. Johns, a few miles from Elizabethtown in Hardin County. He died in 1987 at the age of 84 and was buried in St. John’s Cemetery.

But what about that nickname “Big Six?”

Many thought it was because of the .44-caliber pistol he was rarely seen without. But during college and law school, to pay for schooling, Henderson pitched in a semi-pro baseball league. It was said he threw a baseball much like Hall of Famer Christy “Big Six” Mathewson.

The nickname stuck.

In fact, it became so embedded in his name that by the time he became a U.S. marshal, “Big Six” was part of his letterhead and signature in all of his official correspondence.

Henderson was always proud of his association with Cliff Hagan, long considered one of the greatest basketball players to ever come out of the state.

“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 had 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 Henderson grew and he even traveled with the lawman to visit Notre Dame in South Bend, Ind.

“Moose Krause was the basketball coach there,” Hagan said. “I also met Frank Leahy, the football coach. He told me I’d make a great tight end, but I told him, ‘No thanks, I’m a basketball player.’ ”

Hagan said the University of Kentucky was the only college he really considered although he did visit several others.

“I visited Eastern, and as a sophomore I went to a Western game. In fact, it was there that I saw a good player they had, Bob Lavoy, shoot a hook shot. I had never seen it before and over the years that became my shot,” Hagan said.

“It was the heyday of UK basketball back then,” he said. “When I got there I decided to wear the number 6. I had worn No. 18 in high school, but ‘Big Six’ was so nice to me I thought 6 would be a good number since he gave me that ball.”

Hagan said he and Henderson often talked about some of the lawman’s raids.

“He told me that when he was on a raid and closing in, some of the moonshiners, if they had a gun, they would be going to prison,” Hagan said.

“ ‘Big Six’ was such a character and sometime he would embarrass his wife, Gladys, with all of the stories he told. He even had a handprinted 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.”

His connection to WKU was special, too.

“It was about 1928 when I first met Coach Ed Diddle, ‘Big Six’ recalled in an oral history. I played against Western for L&N PanAmerican.”

For decades, Henderson’s association with the school grew as he became the official timekeeper for WKU basketball games.

Henderson thought so much of coach Ed Diddle that on Jan. 6, 1962, in recognition of WKU’s 1,000th game, he personally went out in the Bowling Green community and raised 1,000 silver dollars to present to the coach at the game.

Tom Curley has been part of the high school state tournament statistics crew for 45 years and served as clock operator for the old Kentucky Colonels basketball team. He also worked at several games at Diddle Arena while attending WKU in the 1960s.

“I was the first person in Louisville to ever run a shot clock at a Colonels game,” Curley said. “For whatever reason in that first game all of us (the stat crew) had to wear a tux.”

Curley will never forget the first time he met Henderson at the state tournament.

“I was scared to death. He was so intimidating. 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 remembers how Henderson liked to engage the crowd, especially those sitting behind him.

“Later in his career, it seemed like he kept turned more to the crowd than what was going on in the game,” Curley said. “Sometime as much as a minute would run off the clock when a player was shooting free throws because he was talking and not paying attention.”

Dr. Neal Garrison of Louisville grew up in Bowling Green in the 1950s and 1960s at a time when Henderson lived there and was official timekeeper at WKU games. His dad, Dick, was Henderson’s assistant and took over for him when he retired.

“He was actually my godfather … very close to my family,” Garrison said. “He was close to lots of influential people, especially when it came to athletics, and he liked being a man of influence, too. He befriended a lot of athletes.

“ ‘Big Six’ was close to Diddle and (Adolph) Rupp and helped them recruit. But he was also real close to Moose Krause, the AD at Notre Dame. That was one of the reasons (Louisville native) Paul Hornung went to Notre Dame.”

With Henderson’s encouragement, Garrison also attended Notre Dame.

When Henderson died in 1987, Garrison attended his funeral in Louisville and then followed the family to St. John’s Cemetery for burial in Hardin County.

Henderson was such a storyteller that he once participated in a National Storytelling Festival in Tennessee.

As an ATF agent and later a U.S. marshal, Henderson’s stories became legendary, taking 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 Custer,” Henderson was quoted.

Custer was stationed in Elizabethtown for two years, and according to Henderson, Custer tried to persuade his dad to re-enlist in the Union Army, but he refused. Six months later, Custer was killed at Little Big Horn.

Historically, the time frame Henderson talked about didn’t match with his story, but that’s not to say he wasn’t just confused on the dates.

Another story Henderson told in a 1978 interview involved his association with Babe Ruth.

“I was there when Babe hit his called shot,” he said. “I guess it was the biggest thrill in my life.”

It was the third game of the 1932 World Series at 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,” Henderson said. “Course that’s why I was so fond of Babe.”

Henderson would have been 29 years old at the time, and the interview fails to explain how Ruth and Henderson became acquainted. At the time, Henderson had been playing semi-pro baseball in the region and worked for L&N Railroad. Major league teams traveled by train in that era, so there’s a chance their connection could have happened as the Yankees went from New York to Chicago. Henderson could have also crossed paths with Ruth on one of the Yankees’ barnstorming games while passing through Louisville.

Throughout his career, Henderson collected several hundred prized bourbon decanters, many given to him by legal distillers. Some were said to be one-of-a-kind.

Has Henderson’s life reached “folk hero” status? There were probably several moonshiners in Butler, Barren, Logan, Warren, Allen, Monroe and Edmonson counties, just to name a few, who would never call “Big Six” a hero. But they knew of his reputation and all of those tales. Combined with what others said and what he said about himself, stories, embellished or not, have kept alive the exploits and legend.

If ever a bourbon was named in his honor, he would probably be OK with it. It was the un-taxed variety he had a problem with.

Get up, get out and get going!

– Gary West’s column runs monthly in the Daily News. He can be reached by emailing west1488@twc.com.