Classic Car Showcase: Junior Johnson - Legend of Moonshine ...

Although stock car racing is now a popular national sport its tradition is rooted in the southeastern United States where cars, after the Second World War, represented liberty for a largely land-bound society. And building and driving fast cars relates to another southern tradition: making moonshine whisky and daring drivers who transferred their booze-running skills and cars to the stock car tracks springing up all over the South.

The good ol' boys developed tremendous law evading abilities with their souped-up liquor-laden 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 "the bootleg capital of America."

Junior's father Robert Johnson was one of the biggest copper still operators in the area. The older men did the distilling while the younger ones transported the moonshine down to the cities. Junior started hauling at age 14.

Junior was born in 1931, a big strapping fellow with good reflexes and a fearless demeanour. He built a reputation as a fast 'shine runner who always seemed able to elude the agents.

He is credited with inventing the "bootleg turn" in which a whisky hauler jammed his car into second gear, gave the steering wheel a mighty tug to the left and spun the car 180 degrees. If successful it stayed on the road charging off in the opposite direction.

Johnson's evasions and the agents' embarrassment became legendary. His reputation grew beyond Wilkes County, and his daring exploits were enshrined by Tom Wolfe in his article, "The Last American Hero Is Junior Johnson. Yes!," in the March, 1965 Esquire.

Wolfe related a famous incident: "Finally, one night they had Junior trapped on the road up toward the bridge around Millersville, there's no way out of there, they had the barricades up and they could hear this souped-up car roaring around the bend, and here it comes - but suddenly they can hear a siren and see a red light flashing in the grille, so they think it's another agent, and boy, they run out like ants and pull those barrels and boards and sawhorses out of the way, and then Ggghhzzzzzzzhhhhhhggggggzzzzzzzeeeeeong! - gawdam! there he goes again, it was him Junior Johnson! with a gawdam agent's si-reen and a red light in his grille!" Of such stories are legends built.

Johnson began driving on Wilkesboro's dirt track in 1949, "power sliding" the turns to come out pointed in the right direction. By bringing whisky driving techniques to the track 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 arrested Junior near the still. He "pulled" two years in the 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 to pursue moonshining. He was just helping his daddy as any good ol' boy would.

When he returned, Detroit was getting into National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing in a big way. Tracks were longer, faster and paved, and at Daytona International Speedway in Daytona Beach, Florida, which opened in 1959, Junior made his mark.

In 1960, racing a Chevrolet, Junior was losing up to 16 km/h (10 mph) to the hot Pontiacs. On a whim he nosed his Chevy up near the bumper of a fast Pontiac. To Johnson's surprise he stayed with the Pontiac and went faster than ever.

Junior had discovered "drafting," the aerodynamic phenomenon that makes two nose-to-tail cars run faster than either could alone. Junior drafted through the 500, hitching rides wherever he could. He won the race and added to his legend, a Chevy privateer beating the factory cars. He was a giant killer, a hero of every underdog in the South.

Junior raced until 1965, collecting 50 NASCAR wins, not a record but he established 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 run his 300 acre beef cattle farm near North Wilksboro.

In a historic twists of fate, Junior is back in the whisky business, this time legally as part owner of Piedmont Distillers who make Moonshine Moon, 80 proof (not 100-proof like the old days) corn liquor. It?s real moonshine like the stuff he used to haul, and of course it?s in North Carolina.

So Junior is long out of illegal whisky, although perhaps with some nostalgia for those old "'shine runnin'" days outrunning the "revenuers" through the cuts and hollows of North Carolina's Brushy Mountains.

Source: http://thechronicleherald.ca/wheelsnews/119996-classic-car-showcase-junior-johnson-legend-of-moonshine-running-and-stock-car-raci

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