From moonshining to NASCAR glory
Although stock-car racing is now a widespread popular sport, its origins and traditions are firmly rooted in the southeastern United States where cars, especially after the Second World War, represented liberty for a largely land-bound society.
Building and driving fast cars is related to another southern tradition: making moonshine whisky. The booze had to be delivered, a job that fell to daring young men driving souped-up booze-laden cars down to the cities. Their skills easily transferred to the new stock-car tracks springing up all over the South.
The good ol’ boys developed tremendous law-evading skills with their fast machines. One of the most celebrated was Robert Glenn (Junior) Johnson, whose roots were in the best moonshining tradition.
The Johnson family lived near Wilkesboro, North Carolina. Writer Vance Packard once called Wilkes County “the bootleg capital of America.”
Junior’s father, Robert Johnson, was one of the biggest copper-still operators in the area. The older men distilled the whisky and the younger ones transported it. Junior started hauling at 14.
Junior was born in 1931, and became a big strapping fellow with good reflexes and a fearless demeanour. He built a reputation as a fast ’shine runner who was always able to elude the agents.
He is credited with inventing the “bootleg turn” whereby the whisky hauler jammed his car into second gear, gave the steering wheel a mighty tug and spun the car 180 degrees. If he stayed on the road, he charged off in the opposite direction.
Johnson’s evasions and the agents’ embarrassment became legendary, and his reputation grew beyond Wilkes County.
Johnson began driving on Wilkesboro’s dirt track in 1949, “power sliding” turns to come out pointing in the right direction. With his whisky driving techniques, Junior soon held records all over the area.
Junior’s racing career was really blossoming in 1956 when he was caught. The agents stole through the hollows and over the hills and arrested him near the still. He “pulled” two years in federal reformatory in Chillicothe, Ohio, although he served only 11 months.
Ironically, Junior had been doing well enough in stock car racing that he didn’t need moonshining. He was just helping his daddy, as any good ol’ boy would.
When he returned, Detroit was getting into NASCAR in a big way. Tracks were longer, faster and paved, and at the new Daytona International Speedway that opened in 1959, Junior made his mark.
In 1960, Junior was racing a Chevrolet and losing up to 15 km/h to the hot Pontiacs. On a whim, he nosed his Chevy up to a Pontiac’s rear bumper, and to his surprise, he stayed with it and went faster than ever.
Junior had discovered “drafting,” the aerodynamic phenomenon where two nose-to-tail cars run faster than either could alone. Junior drafted through the 500 wherever he could. He won the race and added to his legend, a Chevy privateer beating the factory cars. Junior Johnson, the giant killer, was a hero of every underdog in the South.
Junior raced until 1965, collecting 50 NASCAR wins and such a reputation that in 1998 Sports Illustrated named him the greatest NASCAR driver of all time. He became a successful NASCAR team owner, then sold the team in 1995 to spend more time with his new young family and 300-acre beef-cattle farm near North Wilksboro.
In a twist of fate, Junior is back in the whisky business, this time legally, as part owner of Piedmont Distillers in Madison, North Carolina. They make Midnight Moon moonshine using the old Johnson family recipe, but it’s 80-proof corn liquor, not 100 proof like the old days.
Junior is long out of illegal whisky, although perhaps with some nostalgia for those old “shine haulin’ ” days outrunning the “revenuers” through the cuts and hollows of the Brushy Mountains of North Carolina.