History of stock car racing, moonshine, muscle cars

1960 John F Kennedy was about to move into the White House Elvis was in the army and 12,000 fans packed the new super speedway at Daytona Beach Florida stock-car racing was becoming a big-time sport with 500 horses under each hood it was like football on four wheels the attraction was that people could watch the cars they drove every day Ford's Chevy's and Plymouth's out on the track going 150 miles per hour it was on the back roads of the rural South that drivers like jr. Johnson buck Baker and Buddy Schumann learned their trade racing on the wrong side of the law that looked like a car sure does step on it for decades they've been hauling moonshine and trying to steer clear of government agents like Joe Carter who'd been sent in to stop them well I considered it a lot of fun but it was also also a lot of danger some of the kids up there you ever curve in the county and how much speed they could take it out in a certain weather condition most of the drivers were teenagers and go down a 16 foot wide road and do a complete 180 by spinning the car if you could do that you were a good moonshine driver the 1958 movie Thunder Road became a cult favorite depicting bootlegging as a romantic action-packed business the truth was a lot less glamorous bootlegging was dangerous but the money earned by a successful run could make the difference between eating and going hungry hi to everybody was poor back in those days they just wasn't any money that's why there were so many families that had bootleggers in their families they were starving to death and you were living on the corn bread beans and that's all you got good afford in Tim flocks family a backward still kept food on the table for a family of nine a couple of times my two brothers would take me up in the North Georgia Mountains to see how moonshine liquor was made but it was a real hard job in a real hard way to make a living making corn whiskey without getting caught was the first trick getting it to market was the next the key to success was a car that would not attract attention you could put it between one hundred hundred eighty gallons on the third and nine forward when they had everything stripped out except a bucket seated on the outside a bootleggers car looked like any other but inside were hundreds of mason jars filled with white lightning it's almost unbelievable how much they could put in on a car and you can do that in ordinary car because of drag the ground but they put in sometimes spend $1,000 just putting extra supports and air lifts and cool little Springs on it back and they'd be what like this going up in the mountains and putting it put a little liquor on they come back down the most important part of a bootleggers car was under the hood popped up engines could carry the load and then some the federal agents Nonna's revenuers were stuck with government-issue economy cars they would much of a contest gods passed you up in hundred fifty miles an hour she can't make a tea it spike have a hopeless situation a revenuers best hope was to get his hands on a bootleggers car the best car I ever drove was one weed seeds from this will exclude calls had to full barrel operators and a lot of hoses going back and forth across the engine it was fastest thing I ever seen that car wouldn't run good till they got over a hundred miles an hour arguments broke out over who had the fastest car on the weekends instead of outrunning the law bootleggers trying to outrun each other they cut a place out in the open field and started racing on Sundays no grandstands no ticket sales and they started betting on man I know I got the best car my car outrun your car this was actually the begin a stock car racing down south it wasn't long before bootleggers were joined at the track by farm boys and factory hands from all over the south suddenly there was a new place to go after church on Sunday you got to remember to south back in the 40s and 50s the South was really a dull place they're trying to eat the living out and with tobacco fields and fight the boll weevils in the cotton fields and the only place you could see any color at all was if you went down to the candy store or if you went to a movie or you went to a stock car race as a kid selling soda in the stands of the old Charlotte Speedway humpy wheeler knew he was hooked as soon as I got a universe South Carolina the first thing I did was go Lisa quarter-mile dirt red clay Speedway and it was a gunfight at OK Corral every Friday night a guy that was real hungry but do anything to win one of those races in the early years they would take him get beside you in a turn and wouldn't turn and you'd have to keep going straight in knocked out a race Tim flock fought his way through the rough-and-tumble world of stock car racing better than most winning 40 grand national races I'd say eight out of ten races there'd be some kind of fight or some kind of argument I used to pay the drivers off I had a 55 Chevrolet and I would have the cash in the front seat I'd be sitting there and we'd have the cash between myself and my brother he had her long nose revolver sitting up there in the dashboard that everybody could see you know the drivers would come up with window we'd roll the window down about that much and guy was they get $500 winning the race we stick it out through that window and if we didn't like what they were doing out there we just cranked the car up and took off they looked at you if you're running the racetrack back in those days like you were just really needed to almost be in jail when people realized that I had married a race driver or you I mean it was a look of you poor thing people I think more or less put us in the category of carnivals we had a tough time in those days getting any publicity because we were kind of a black sport and we weren't sticking ball and the sports editor he might he liked golf for college football and racing if we got two paragraphs we were lucky so we had to come up with crazy stuff crazy ideas one publicity stunt was to put a woman behind the wheel her name was Louise Smith 30 years old from Greenville South Carolina Louise's driving had earned her a reputation with a local sheriff but she'd never been to a racetrack in her life they wanted some lady to drive and they said well we only got one crazy woman here they'll drive well Louise Smith had to be one of the toughest women in the world because she jumped into this thing when it was just about as rough and tough as you could get Louise ran her first race with only the sketchiest understanding of the rules I didn't even know what the checkered flag me the man that owned the car said if you see a red flag stomach and I never did seen a red flag I've seen all the cars go out in the infield and I wondered where they were going may still out there running so they had to give me the red flag get me off the speedway I was on one after still running she went out there the drivers did not like it and then like a woman out there on the racetrack oh yeah I've been knocked bad food sometime I'd get kind of a worn red but they didn't bother me too much I got four I was pretty good back I said I was the best on the track just stay out of my way that I got close enough love them cut him clear if you hit him dish ride again by the mid-60s stock car racing had become big business with corporate sponsors and hundred thousand dollar persons Detroit's big three knew the value of having their cars win at Charlotte Daytona or Darlington we went Henry Ford was an enthusiast of all kinds of racing so we decided once I could sell him on something I could do anything we got as high in one year spending thirty five million dollars budgeted for racing I mean think of that in dollars thirty years ago with that being today 100 million plus and we decided that we wanted to win every race man had ever put together from the 24 hours Aleman to the Indianapolis Speedway to the stock car races on Sunday to the drag races we want everything we used to say race on Sunday shell on Monday and in the South that was true not only did fans love the look of a winner they wanted a car that went as fast as the one at the track you Detroit was happy to feed the fever offering high-performance cars with macho names like Eliminator Cobra and Barracuda and they turned them loose on a young public that had only one question how fast will it go you can order up a racing car and with this body styling with this engine I want a four-speed transmission I want these wheels and tires and not only could you buy it it was under warranty so you go out and blow it up and then they have to replace all the parts that you destroyed they were called muscle cars and they sold like gangbusters until insurance rates and emissions regulations killed them off I mean can you imagine today being able to buy up to remodel our car infernus so you could in Pacific Missouri Richard Winkler

Channel: AhJotahTube

Views: 537,703

Rating: 4.8139844 out of 5

Keywords: Moonshine, stock car racing, female racecar drivers, automobile, racing

Id: G6rhSUF_Cjo

Length: 14min 8sec (848 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 06 2011