Latest / BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show / From Moonshine to Motorsports: Buz McKim’s Spirited Journey Through NASCAR’s Illicit Origins

Transcript

From Moonshine to Motorsports: Buz McKim’s Spirited Journey Through NASCAR’s Illicit Origins · BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show

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Break Fix's History of Motorsports Series is brought to you in part
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by the International Motor Racing Research Center, as well as the
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Society of Automotive Historians, the Watkins Glen Area Chamber of
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Commerce, and the Argo Singer family
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Moonshine and its connection to the American auto industry by Buzz McKim.
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Buzz McKim, formerly historian at the NASCAR Hall of Fame in Charlotte, North
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Carolina is a distinguished figure in the motorsports world and a much sought
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after speaker at Motorsports gatherings.
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Mr. McKim served as director of Archives for the International Speedway
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Corporation and is coordinator of strategical services for nascar.
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He is the author of the NASCAR Vault, an Official History
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featuring Rare Collectibles from Motor Sports Images and Archives.
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Mr. MCs presentation explores the origins of modified stock car racing
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in the illegal distribution of untaxed adult beverages or moonshine.
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He recounts the development of NASCAR in 1949 and its evolution in the
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1950s from a truly stock competition to a manufacturer supported testing
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ground for the advances in engineering and design of American automobiles.
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Mr. Mc Kim's talk describes the irony of how the automotive engineering
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modifications inspired by wild country boys led to all around
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improvements in automotive technology.
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It's our very good fortune to have as our keynote speaker this year.
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The renowned NASCAR historian and original wild country boy Buzz McKim Buzz is
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well known throughout the racing world.
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Uh, his radio show is a staple for Motorsports fans.
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He's a much sought after speaker.
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He's appreciated for his, uh, insightful and original
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sparkling charming presentations.
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And as indicated in the program, buzz was director of Archives for the
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International Speedway Corporation.
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Coordinator of statistics for NASCAR and author of the
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seminal work, the NASCAR Vault.
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Let's welcome Buzz.
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We're sure pleased to hit that.
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He made it to be here with us.
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Buzz.
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Alright, thank you.
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Wow.
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I sure appreciate that.
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Thank you so much Duke.
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And I, uh, I thank the members of Symposium for allowing me to do
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my thing here, and I'm honored to be associated with the name Arge.
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This is, uh, the moonshine and its connection to the
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American automotive industry.
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First of all, you got moonshine.
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Now it's a homemade untaxed adult beverage.
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It's illegal and brewed mainly at night.
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Hence the name Moonshine trippers, those who transported the moonshine,
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the whiskey, tripper, and revenues spelled with two O'S revenue.
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Federal revenue agents who chased the trippers.
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The act of distilling homemade whiskey came primarily from the fiercely
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independent scotch Irish citizens across the nation, but primarily for this
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paper, it's the Carolinas and Georgia.
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The business of illegal whiskey in America reached its peak in the 1920s and thirties
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due to the fact that transportation and distribution of liquor was easily
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attained thanks to the automobile.
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It caused nightly jousting between the whiskey trippers and the
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revenuers with two O's in a cat and mouse game of Catch Me if you can.
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In order to keep one step ahead of the law, the whiskey men had to develop
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equipment and modify their cars in order to outrun the federal men.
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This coincided with the birth of what we know now as stock car racing,
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and now several tripper had their own way of transporting their wares.
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Junior Johnson, who's perhaps the king of all moonshiners, believed that running
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full bore down a gravel and dirt road was the foremost way to move the hooch.
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He, uh, often said that he never drove a car on the track as fast
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as he drove on a moonshine run.
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He said that if you lost a race on the track, it was no big deal, but if you
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lost to the revenues, you was going to jail in the, uh, southern vernacular.
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Johnson was never caught on the road, but he got his need for speed as a young boy.
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He said I was plowing the field barefoot behind a mule, and I must
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have been about 13 at the time.
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The North Wilkesboro Speedway was opening and my brother Fred came by.
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And asked him if I wanted to go to the races, and I told him
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yes, but we had to stop by the house first to get me some shoes.
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Now you just don't get much more country than plowing a field
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behind a mule in your bare feet.
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That's the quintessential southern, uh, that's for sure.
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So he said I was hooked that day.
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In 1957, junior Johnson was caught setting a fire under his father still,
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and spent nearly a year in federal prison at Chillicothe, Ohio in the mid 1980s.
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His conviction was overturned by President Ronald Reagan, and he was given a pardon.
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For the rest of Johnson's life.
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He called the document his most prized possession and displayed it
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in a place of honor in his home.
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And it was illuminated by a 24 hour light that he was pretty proud of that.
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Pardon?
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In fact, he loaned it to us for the NASCAR Hall of Fame and he said,
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don't let anything happen to that.
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He said, that's my number one prize possession.
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And he said, okay.
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Uh, in fact, we were looking to see if he could build us a model of a moonshine.
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Still, we had a little area in the pre NASCAR section of the Hall of Fame.
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And we thought we'd put a shelf there and a little model of a moonshine steel.
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So we called Junior to see if he'd be interested and he said,
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well, I'll build you a real one.
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So we said, man, we can't beat a deal like that.
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So we went ahead and went back to the architect and cleared out an area
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to fit the dimensions of the steel.
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And just a few months later he shows up with a big trailer
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full of parts and pieces and he said, I got your still for you.
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We said, well, junior, we're still about a year away from setting that area up.
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He said, well, we'll just put in storage.
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So it came time to put it together and me and my associate who was uh.
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A Yankee two college ated Yankee.
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We figured how tough could it possibly be?
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I mean, these hillbillies would do this all day long, you know?
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So after about a half hour, we realized we didn't have a clue.
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So we called Junior asking for little advice and he said, well,
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you know, I knew that you city boys were never gonna get it right.
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He said, I'll just do it myself.
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So he shows up about a half hour later with a pair of bib overalls
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on, and he had the biggest pair of channel locks I'd ever seen.
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And he had a wrench that looked like you could build the Golden Gate bridge.
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And so he goes ahead and he lays the pieces out.
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And he starts cranking away on these wrenches.
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And about half hour later we had us a moonshine still and he said
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it's just like the one that his father used back in the thirties.
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And he said, it will work, but we've not been able to, uh, convince
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the fire marshal would be a great science project for the kids.
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We thought, yeah, here kids, lemme show you how to make some moonshine.
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But anyway, junior was great.
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He was just a wonderful person and a real fan of the hall and
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he was very, very kind to us.
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Johnson experienced some unusual situations while on his runs.
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Once he was on a, a run one night.
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Revenues were hot on his tail.
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He noticed he was almost outta gas.
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So he went ahead and he shot down this side road and lost the, uh, the revenues.
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And then he saw tractors sitting out in the middle of the field.
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So he went ahead and stopped and checked it out.
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Sure enough, it was full of gas, so he got out his Georgia credit
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card or the siphon hose and he went ahead and siphoned the gas out.
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And uh, he took a $5 bill and laid it on the seat of the
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tractor and put a rock on it.
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And a few days later, he was back in the same area and he saw the farmer.
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So he stopped by and told him what happened, and the farmer said, yeah,
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I wonder what that was all about.
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He said, hell, you gave me too much money, and the guy gave me $2 back.
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That was fantastic.
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Junior's heritage involved illegal liquor with the largest moonshine
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hall in this nation's history.
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Coming at the Johnson homestead back when Junior was a young boy, his
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father spent a third of his life in jail due to the manufacturer of booze.
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Now, junior tells a story that he was about seven and his brother
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Fred was about five, and one of the federal agents come by the house and
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they said, boys, where's your daddy?
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And Junior said, I think he's up on the hill there somewhere.
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He said, well, you want me to, you wanna take me up there so I can talk to him?
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He said, no, sir. He says no.
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He said, I'll tell you what.
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He said, I'll give you boys each a dollar a piece if you take me
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up there and I can talk to 'em.
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Junior said, we want the money up front.
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He said, why is that?
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He said, if we take you up there, you probably ain't coming back.
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It's a 7-year-old kid.
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He's great.
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So another whiskey tripper that believed in going flat out was
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a young cheric looking Lloyd C. He believed in going flat out.
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It was said that he could cause a model A to climb a pine tree.
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He was uptown behind the wheel.
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He, uh, was coming through Dawsonville, Georgia one night and he was pulled over,
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not for H moonshine, but for speeding.
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And the cop told him to find would be 10 bucks.
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So Lloyd gave him 20.
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And he said, I'll be coming through here in a few hours.
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You think you can look the other way when I come by?
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And he was known as the greatest driver of his day, and none other than
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nascar founder and teammate of seas.
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Bill Fran Senior said he was the best driver he ever saw.
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Sea was shot to death at the age of 21 by a cousin over a load of
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sugar meant for moonshine product.
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Between 19 38, 19 41, Lloyd won most of the major races at places like
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Atlanta's, Lakewood, Speedway, known as the Indianapolis of the South, as well as
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many events on the sans of Daytona Beach.
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Now his cousin was a fellow named Roy Hall and he was the direct opposite of
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Lloyd C. He was Hollywood handsome, and he was the ultimate flashy dresser and the
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bravest driver among the brave and unlike his cousin, hall, had no regard for the
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law or the wellbeing of those around him.
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He drove with reckless abandon while C was calculated and almost
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scientific in his driving style.
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Paul spent much of his life in prison, but his car owner, Raymond Parks, had
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a lot of pull in the Atlanta area.
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And frequently was able to get hall out of jail on a weekend
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pass in order to go race.
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That's what you call heaven pull.
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Once Hall arrived in Daytona Beach for the races and found there were no rooms
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available in town, so he decided that he'd start drag racing up and down Main Street.
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So the cops caught him, hauled him into jail, and his plan was for free lodging.
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It worked real well until he started complaining about no bedsheets upon
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which the police chief turned hall back onto the cold hard streets of Daytona.
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So his plan didn't work.
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He got arrested for drag racing, but uh, he wasn't able to stay in the jail,
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so we had to go find another place to stay and like C Hall took up for C left
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off, but winning all the major races up and down the Eastern US and his career
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was cut short due to a head injury.
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Suffered in the late 1940s, studious looking.
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Raymond Parks came outta North Georgia Mountains at the age of 14 when he
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ran away from his abusive father.
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Moved in with an uncle in Atlanta who owned a gas station, and by the time
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Raymond was 21, he had bought his uncle out, took over his moonshine
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business and was a millionaire.
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He was brilliant.
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He's now flush with cash.
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He turned to stock car racing with drivers C and Hall.
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They were related to Raymond.
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Somehow the team quickly became the most successful, the thirties and
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during parks tripping days, he had another way of transporting his whiskey.
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The other guys were breakneck, you know, out there just running wide open.
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Raymond would come outta the mountains early in the morning and stop by a
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preselected bridge where he hit a bucket, rags and items for cleaning his car,
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which would've been dirty from traveling the red dirt roads of North Georgia.
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After washing the car, he would change into a three piece suit, put on his fedora
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and his pinched nose glasses, and blend in with the morning traffic into Atlanta.
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He looked more like a doctor than a felon, but he was never caught on the road In
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the 1930s for his moonshine efforts.
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Parks like Junior Johnson, spent a year in Chillicothe.
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Enoch Stanley, this is a trip.
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Yeah, there's a lot of news about North Wilkesboro Speedway reopening, and Enoch
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was the guy who built North Wilkesboro.
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He was a NASCAR pioneer, and he probably had the most unique way of transportation.
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He used a school bus.
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For haul and alcohol, the alcohol was loaded into special compartments
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in the floor of the bus on the North Carolina side of a local mountain.
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And on the Tennessee side, there was a fairground with a large cattle barn,
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which had massive doors at either end of the building, and a predetermined time
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was set up for the dumping of the load.
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And as the bus came onto the fairground, the one door was opened
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and the bus entered the building.
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The door was closed, the contents were unloaded, and the door to the
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other side of the building was open.
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The whole operation only took a few minutes and the bus was on
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its way back to North Carolina.
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That's pretty slick.
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Who would've ever thought of Holland Moonshine and a school bus?
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I thought that was pretty neat.
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And it's been said that there were even a few early NASCAR stars
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addressed like undertakers and transported their load in a hearse.
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Their run would start in South Georgia and usually end up somewhere
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around central Florida area.
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And the storage are endless.
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A large still was found under the Georgia race.
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In late 1960s, the middle Georgia Raceway in Macon, Georgia, a major
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NASCAR venue in the fifties and sixties was a site of the ingenious
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moonshine manufacturing operation.
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According to prolific NASCAR historian, Greg Fielden, quote, the federal and
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state officers located a huge moonshine, steel chuck neatly under the 0.534.
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It was a half mile track is what it was.
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Yeah, under the facility.
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Peach County Sheriff Reggie Mulli called it one of the most
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well-built still operations ever.
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Officials said that the still was located under the speedway
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to get these dimensions.
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Alright.
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The guy was in it for more than a hobby.
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The only dimension through the ticket booth at the north end of the track.
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Mulli said that the agents climb down to 35 foot ladder.
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Uh, so you're ground level.
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You go through the ticket office, you go down 35 feet from a trap door there.
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They found a 125 foot tunnel where the still was located.
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So they had to dig back another 125 feet.
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This is one of the most clearly run moonshine operations I've
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ever seen, said one federal agent.
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Following an investigation, it was discovered that the steel was
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capable of producing 200 gallons of actual whiskey every five days.
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At the end of the tunnel was a 2000 gallon cooker, a 1200 gallon box
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fermenter, and a 750 gallon gas tank.
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And the operators had even installed yellow lights to
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keep the bugs outta the mash.
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So I guess that's not a good thing if you get bugs in your mash.
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So they put the yellow lights up there to keep everything copacetic.
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Authorities put the still outta business a couple weeks before the race, which
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was held on November 12th, 1967.
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Most of the 6,800 spectators who attended the race were unaware that still was
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ever located at their hometown track.
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Track President h Lamar Brown Jr. Was charged with possession of apparatus
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for the distillery of illegal liquor.
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What do you think?
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I'd say they got, they got him dead to rights, right?
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Well, the case came to trial on December 12th, 1968 with Brown
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being found not guilty after a two hour deliberation by the jury.
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You think he had friends on the bench?
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Geez.
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25 feet.
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35 feet.
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125 feet.
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Geez.
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Among the changes made to the tripper cars were several to the engine,
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multiple carburetors, aluminum cylinder heads, high lift, camshafts, special
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valves, and lightweight flywheels.
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For some of them, the cars of choice were 1938 to 1944 coop.
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They were well balanced, had hydraulic brakes and were relatively inexpensive
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and had a large trunk area for carrying.
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Parts were also very easy to acquire, so it was the perfect car for running
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moonshine back in those days, most of the chases were held on dirt and gravel
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roads, and very few paved roads existed in the back country in those days.
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And the suspensions of the cars needed to be modified.
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Heavy duty shocks, oversized brakes.
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Modified springs reinforced wheels, multiply tires were incorporated
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into the whiskey tripping cars.
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The federal cars were stocked for the most part, with no high performance
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engine parts or suspension parts, and there was no budget to add the
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needed parts to their cars anyway.
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As former NASCAR Hall of Fame curator, Dan Simone often pointed out many
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of NASCAR's earliest stars were road racers, whether they realized it or not.
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They all had to learn how to turn right for the back.
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Roads of Appalachia were never exclusively counterclockwise.
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Unfortunately, NASCAR's first road race in 1954 occurred when
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most of the stars had retired and were winding down their careers.
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But it's tempted to wonder how they would've fared at the inaugural
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Watkins Glen Street race in 1948 if they were put in high performance car.
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'cause they probably could have outrun most of the quote unquote,
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stock car drivers of their day in the 1930s and forties, read votes.
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Shockingly not in the NASCAR Hall of fame, yet the first superstar mechanic
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of NASCAR in the man who gave NASCAR its name had a shop in Atlanta where he
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worked on whiskey cars and federal cars.
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He was asked.
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Whose car he did a better job and votes said The whiskey boys paid in
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cash and the government paid 90 days.
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You figure it out.
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Besides, I couldn't make any money off of anybody in jail, so he supplemented
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his income by building and maintaining Raymond Park's fleet of stock cars.
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When NASCAR was formed in 1947, the first series that competed
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was known as the modified 'cause.
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They were highly modified.
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These cars were very similar to the whiskey trippers cars with their
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big engines and heavy suspension.
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The series we know now today as the Cup Series began in 1949 as the strictly stock
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division with the featured cars being totally stocked right off the showroom,
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no changes were allowed whatsoever.
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Bill France, the founder of nascar, wanted fans to totally associate
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with the cars on the tracks.
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And the first race in the new division was run on a three-quarter
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mile dirt track in Charlotte, North Carolina on June 19th, 1949.
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Ironically, the winner, Glen Dunaway, was disqualified for adding helper
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springs to the rear of the car.
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His mount had been used as a whiskey tripper car.
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This was the first time Bill France had used his iron fist to run his show.
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The wind was given to a runner up Kansan, Jim Roper, who totally.
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Disassembled his car for inspection and all looked legal, but Roper was
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left with a big pile of parts and the locals were not happy that this
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outta Towner had won a big race.
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And it was a classic case of Gotcha.
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So, uh, Roper's car owner was a close friend of local Lincoln dealer who
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owned Roper car to get back home on the winning car was eventually reassembled.
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They didn't like the outta town or taking all their money home.
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So they, uh, they had him disassemble his whole car and they say, oh, you're okay.
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Within a few years it became apparent that changes needed
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to be made as cars were faster.
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And the tracks were longer in length.
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NASCAR looked to the modifies for suggestions on how to fix this situation.
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Any part used in, uh, the Cup Series, then known as the strictly
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stock division, was to have factory part number attached to it.
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The first example of this was the rear axle of the Hudson Hornet.
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These axles were likely to break with the rear wheel being caught under the low
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wheel opening on the rear quarter section.
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The car would flip, causing injury to the driver, and in some cases death.
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Hudson developed a new, stronger axle as part of its severe usage
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package, and NASCAR allowed it to be substituted in place of the stock item.
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It was not a performance item, but rather a safety item.
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Manufacturers realized through the exploits of the early trippers how heavy
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duty parts and components were viable to the total performance of their products.
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So they were already starting to look at the modified, and
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this is in the early fifties.
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Carl King Kafer car owner of the mid 1960s.
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Was a brilliant engineer and his team was associated with the Chrysler
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Corporation and dominated NASCAR competition in 1955 and 1956.
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In order to get around the NASCAR rule about parts Indian manufacturing parts
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number, he kafer would design a part that he felt he needed for greater performance.
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He would then give Chrysler the part which they would then bestow an official number
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and include it in their parts catalog.
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Pretty sharp way of getting around those pesky rules, you know.
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So he would say, here, you can just have this part, but I want one for my race car.
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And if they had a parts number on it, NASCAR couldn't say anything about it.
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The opening of the uh, mile and a quarter asphalt, Darlington Raceway in 1950 speeds
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escalated, causing concern for safety.
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California and Johnny Mattz, who won that first race at Darlington,
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beat all those southern boys.
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He was the slowest car in qualifying, but he made no changes.
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Of tires, while other competitors used anywhere from 30 to 40 tires for the race.
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Some of the teams even quote unquote, borrowed tires from
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spectators cars in the parking lots.
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By the mid 1950s, a four point roll cage was implemented for protection around
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the driver and heavy duty spindles, which were originally developed by the
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trippers, were picked up by the factories.
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In this case, Ford Motor Company, which used heavy duty
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spindles on their Lincolns.
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It was one of the first examples of the factory using modified
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parts of their own design.
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These parts came about when Ford sent a team of Lincolns
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to the 1954 Mexican road race.
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In the mid 1950s, Ford and Chevrolet unveiled their overhead
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VA engines, which greatly jumped the speeds on the longer tracks.
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With the increase in speeds, NASCAR had to ease the engine and suspension
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restrictions for what became known as the Grand National Division.
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As heavy duty shocks, anti-sway bars, and improved brakes became common,
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they were incorporated into the manufacturer of the American automobile.
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Manufacturers had been using NASCAR as a research and development
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platform for several years.
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Many of NASCAR's greatest innovators came from the tripper days.
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Junior Johnson was one of the craftiest car builders, and some of his mysteries
19:20
had never been found or explained.
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Ray Fox, just like his name was Sly in the NASCAR forest.
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He was years ahead of his time and when it came to innovation.
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His background was in the whiskey business in New Hampshire.
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The great smokey eunuch was by far the slickest of all innovators.
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He usually read between the lines and the NASCAR rule book.
19:38
Now, once he built a Chevelle that was declared illegal in 1968 at
19:42
Daytona upset, he drove his car back to the shop some five miles away.
19:46
And the one small detail was fact that the car had no fuel cell in it.
19:49
According to the rules, there was no restriction on how
19:51
large the fuel line had to be.
19:53
Uh, Euch installed a two inch line and he stated, I could have
19:56
driven the son of a bitch to Jacksonville, which was 90 miles away.
20:01
Euch worked closely in the 1960s with John DeLorean when Eunuch and
20:04
Fireball Roberts and their Pontiacs were tearing up the NASCAR circuit.
20:07
DeLorean was the father of the Pontiac muscle car.
20:10
So to recap this paper number one, 1930s forties, whiskey trippers were
20:15
modifying their cars to gain more performance to outrun federal agents.
20:18
Number two, late forties, fifties, NASCAR's first race cars were known as
20:22
modifies using many of the parts and ideas incorporated into the whiskey cars.
20:27
Number three, early, mid 1950s.
20:29
NASCAR's top series was not allowed to use these parts for several years
20:33
as the cars had to be strictly stock number four, mid 1950s and sixties, as
20:37
the American automobile manufacturers began to produce higher powered products,
20:41
the need for reliable high performance and suspension parts became necessary.
20:45
So through the early days of tripping.
20:47
In the years of NASCAR development, today's automobile have improved
20:51
suspension parts and brakes, stronger and lighter metals, advanced tire
20:55
technology, better aerodynamics, increased gas mileage, seat belts
20:59
and shoulder harnesses, and a rudimentary roll cage on many models.
21:03
And even today, the manufacturers turn to NASCAR for their RD program.
21:07
And it all started out with the moonshine trippers.
21:09
There we are about that.
21:11
Thank you very much.
21:16
I appreciate that.
21:18
Anybody got any questions?
21:19
The Moonshiners Hall of Fame is part of the Georgia Racing Museum.
21:24
Dawsonville?
21:25
Yes, sir. Are you familiar with the administration?
21:27
I mean, is that a legit hall of fame?
21:29
Do they have a committee?
21:30
Do you know how that works?
21:31
Oh yeah.
21:32
They're a good bunch of people for sure.
21:34
It's the unofficial official Georgia Racing Hall of Fame, and I think,
21:38
uh, the city took it over, if I'm not mistaken, and they used it for their city
21:41
offices, but it's a really neat deal.
21:44
They got great cars there, good administration and.
21:49
Are you familiar with the administration of that Hall of Fame?
21:51
No.
21:52
No, I'm not.
21:53
Of course, NASCAR denied all of this for many years.
21:56
Yes, they did.
21:57
They did everything they could to suppress the idea that these guys
22:00
were a bunch of, uh, rumrunners.
22:01
But I'm wondering if anybody has any sense of how much of
22:04
this business still goes on.
22:06
I would doubt that any of the, uh, professional drivers
22:08
or teams are involved.
22:10
But is Moonshining still a, a major industry?
22:14
Georgia and well the south.
22:16
Would you have any knowledge of that data?
22:18
Yeah, I think there's still a little bit going on.
22:20
There was a guy named Dean Combs who was the several time
22:22
goodies Dash series champion.
22:24
And it wasn't too many years ago where he was nailed for moonshining
22:27
within the last 10 years.
22:29
So there's still some of those rugged individualists out there, you know?
22:34
Yes, sir. Well, I, I think I add to that, um, in my dealings with
22:39
moonshiners, a lot of them have gone now to growing marijuana.
22:43
Oh yeah.
22:43
And they're using the same.
22:45
Security techniques.
22:46
Mm-hmm.
22:47
To protect their crops that the bootleggers did to protect their stills.
22:52
Yeah.
22:52
And they're even getting into some more advanced things.
22:55
I know one fellow told me that his family employed trip wires Oh.
22:59
Around the perimeter of their property, so that it was an added layer of protection.
23:04
Interesting.
23:04
But I just have kind of a comment.
23:06
You're talking about Junior Johnson.
23:07
I had the good fortune in 1992 to spend a a day at Junior's shop,
23:12
and I didn't realize I was, I was gonna spend a day with the team.
23:15
I ended up spending most of the day with Junior, oh boy.
23:18
Uh, came in the office wearing overalls and a t-shirt and I just said, hello.
23:23
And he said, well, if you're gonna talk with me, he said, come help me.
23:26
And he had two quarts of strawberries that he had just picked.
23:28
Mm. So we went in the bathroom at the offices at his shop
23:32
and we washed strawberries and we talked and he said that.
23:36
Most of the phone calls that he ever received came at this time he was
23:41
running Fords, was from engineers in Dearborn at the Ford Motor Company.
23:46
Mm-hmm.
23:47
When they had a problem with something they were trying to
23:49
develop, if they couldn't figure it out, they would call him.
23:53
Oh yeah.
23:53
And say, can you have your people work on this?
23:56
Mm-hmm.
23:57
So the guys in the shop would, they were actually doing some like r and d work and
24:01
design work for the Ford Motor Company.
24:03
Yeah.
24:03
So, yeah, junior was brilliant.
24:05
And very little school education, you know, very little formal
24:08
education, but he was just brilliant.
24:10
He was a smart guy.
24:11
Yes, sir. Buzz, we've all seen the movies of the moonshine
24:14
chases and all that sort of thing.
24:16
Did they ever actually have things to dump oil on the road behind them or, yeah.
24:21
Smoke or things like that?
24:23
Or is that all Hollywood?
24:25
Yeah, no, there, there was some truth to that.
24:27
They had some moon generators, like when they did Thunder Road.
24:30
They had some local moonshiners up there as technical assistance, and they showed
24:34
'em all the little tricks that they had.
24:35
Some of the, uh, moonshiners got killed too.
24:38
Some of the federal agents too.
24:39
Interesting.
24:39
The, the agents and the trippers were usually away from the cat and mouse game.
24:44
They were good friends.
24:46
They would spend Christmas at each other's house, you know, they knew the
24:49
kids' names and all this kind of stuff.
24:51
And it was a like a little fraternity.
24:53
You know the one story I read, you know, it was in a life magazine
24:57
back in the early sixties.
24:59
It said that they laid in, wait for this one guy they knew was coming
25:04
and they shot out his radiator.
25:06
Well, the only problem was the car just kept right on going because he'd
25:10
installed the radiator in the backseat.
25:12
Oh yeah, yeah.
25:14
There you go.
25:15
There was a guy that came to North Wilkesboro, North Carolina.
25:18
And he's looking for moonshine.
25:20
I, I guess it's probably not too hard to find.
25:22
He's looking around and he sees somebody that looks like might know what's going
25:25
on and he said, uh, I'd, I'd like to find me some moonshine around here.
25:29
And the guy said, well, you see that building over there on the corner?
25:32
He said, yeah.
25:32
He said, well, that's the post office.
25:34
He said, that's probably the only place in town you won't find moonshine.
25:39
Yes, I have it on good authority from unnamed relatives that during the
25:44
depression there was a couple of fairly high quality distillers in Elmira area.
25:49
Oh, you could get good grain alcohol at a, at a reasonable price.
25:53
Oh no.
25:53
We darnt.
25:54
I have two.
25:57
Really for one of the facilities.
25:59
No kidding.
26:00
Yeah.
26:00
My mother and her siblings, they lived down in Swyers, Pennsylvania.
26:05
Mm-hmm.
26:05
And to get out of the coal region in the summertime, two of my uncles
26:09
would get kind of farmed out to whoever it was outside of Elmira.
26:13
Mm-hmm.
26:13
And their job was to sit out by the front of the road, and
26:17
essentially they were like.
26:18
Security guards, I'll be done or something.
26:20
But they had something to do with this operation.
26:22
Isn't that something?
26:23
Unfortunately, all everyone's gone now.
26:24
I can't track down the specifics, but Yeah.
26:27
Yeah.
26:27
But they were right outside of Elmira, so.
26:29
Oh, that's cool.
26:29
Yeah, I guess there's no, no place around that.
26:32
But there wasn't moonshine.
26:33
I will be talking about Vicki Wood here a little bit.
26:35
And, uh, she was a lady race driver.
26:37
She set the fastest time through the measured mile on the beach
26:39
at Daytona in, uh, a new Pontiac.
26:41
And she was amazing.
26:42
Lived to be over a hundred years old and her father and her five brothers were
26:46
involved in moonshine up in Michigan.
26:48
And she was a lookout.
26:49
She'd get up in the, uh, attic when she was a little girl and she'd watch out for
26:52
the cops, but I don't think there's any area that wasn't touched by moonshine.
26:55
It seems like the better stories come out of the south though.
26:57
Yeah.
26:59
Or the, maybe the people are crazier in the south.
27:01
I don't really know.
27:01
Buzz.
27:02
Can you fill us in on what was the overall response to when the
27:07
hall of fame was getting going?
27:08
Right.
27:08
And you were starting to do, you know, the origins of the sport, right?
27:11
Was there any kind of pushback from any of the, like CVRA or any the towns fathers
27:18
and leadership that kind of frowned upon?
27:20
We want to downplay that part of it.
27:22
No, not really.
27:22
In fact, Winston Kelly, who was my boss, he's still the director there.
27:25
They really wanted him for the job.
27:27
And he went to NASCAR and said This moonshine thing we're gonna
27:30
have to put to rest right now.
27:31
He said if we try to sweep it under the rug, we as a facility
27:35
will never have any credibility.
27:37
So he said, you know, make your mind up now because if you're not gonna go along
27:40
with it, I'm not gonna take the job.
27:41
And that's where we got a hold of junior and we got the still.
27:43
And you know, it's a big part of, uh, what NASCAR's history is, and I think
27:47
if anything, to see where it is today.
27:49
Coming outta those bare roots, I think it makes the story even more interesting.
27:53
Oh, this has been a joy.
27:54
I thank you so very much everybody.
27:55
Thank you Buzz.
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