TNN "The Great Drivers" - Junior Johnson

Jr Johnson was raised in that house and honed his skills as a driver first Holly moonshine liquor on the roads around here then he went on to become one of the most successful and intriguing personalities in the history of the sport join me today as we hear junior Johnson tell his own story on the great driver [Music] the famed writer Tom Wolfe called him the last great American hero and one of the most quoted and celebrated short stories in recent history Junior Johnson fit the definition from the time he blistered the roads of North Carolina on his wild bootlegging runs to his domination of grand national stock car racing in the early 1960s he won 50 major races before retiring in his mid-30s to become the most successful team owner in the sport today has developed a giant racing complex near his birthplace and run to North Carolina and the bucket seat of his car occupied by such superstars as Bobby Allison Cale Yarborough and Darrell Waltrip is the most coveted in a sport jr. an awful lot of people today recognized you as one of the most successful car owners in NASCAR but it may be that some of the younger people don't remember you as a driver you dominated grand national stock car racing in the early 1960s and all of a sudden just bang you are you quit really in the prime of your life as a driver you were in the middle 30s as I recall you ever was there any specific reason why you stopped driving well not really I had a pretty successful background as far as being able to build my own cars and stuff and driving too and I had a lot of knowledge of what it took to to run a racing team and of course I was running my own operation and driving it too I was tied in a Ford Motor Company which gave me the financial aid that I needed to to run an operation and not drive it so considered having races I had been in and how good I'd done at it as a driver and I'd started evaluating the future who I was going and what I was gonna do and it was awful hard for me to quit at the time because I was in the prime of my racing career I was 34 years old and felt like you learned anybody could beat me if my car didn't let me down so I was and you know good shape and driving Department but when I evaluated who I was going and what I was going to be doing down the road and stuff I felt like I made the right decision when I quit meter they went in down in cars and forming my own operation and stuff and it's proved out to back up what I thought what happened that I I could be successful at I could make a lot more money and owning a car so I could drive and I had a lot longer future in it and you know from that aspect did you ever have any second thoughts idea the time or two when my drivers that I was choosing weren't working out like I thought they ought to because they it was pretty hard to stand and watch a guy drive a racecar when you felt like you could beat him and at the time when I first started picking out drivers along in 66 and 67 still had to have credentials where I could beat him they weren't no question about but then I came on with a real successful operation in 68 and 69 with Leroy Yarber I accepted the fact in if there were drivers out there that I could get it could do the job for me and probably as good if not better drivers at that time of my life that I would have been and then when I you know felt comfortable of being a car owner it will be back for Jimmie Johnson the great drivers after this Jr when you grew up just down the road a mile or so from here did you ever in your wildest dreams thought about a racing complex it was gonna be as big and beautiful as this one is right now not really when I first started trying to put together what you see here today it was a sort of a game plan and a future plan for somebody that never ever thought that they would be in racing the rest of the life which I feel like now probably will be but when I bought the property tried to start figuring out what was the best thing for me and my wife Flossie to do to make sure we had a future something that we could do ourselves and make a good living in so at that time Holly farms it was a big poultry business was operating here in will scan and there's just getting going real good so I felt like if I built some chicken houses which me and her could take care of that that would give us a future that we could work at as long as we both chose to so I first built chicken houses to make money with then I I started taking that money and building us a home so I kept on race you know and add in the hot little I could win to what we was already doing and it weren't long till we had our chicken I was paid formally had our home built and it paid for then I was doing real good as a driver then I start kind of getting off into the you know the car ownership of the thing and its growth and growth and growth and there's no way in my wildest imagination I could ever believe it we could have did what we've did you know did here it's almost like you've lived two separate lives the the young wild woolly days of the legendary jr. Johnson the the movie jr. Johnson the bootlegger liquor hauling wild men of the highways and Thunder Road all that stuff and now a different kind of a life but a much more subtle life and much more organized and I'm sure probably in a lot of ways happier life but it must have been tough I mean you forget I think probably when people go through and they write about those things and talk about him they imagine only the good times it must have been a hard time in your life though really wasn't it when you were growing up well I think I think anybody grew up like like I did through the bootlegging days and stuff it was one of the hardest toughest lives you could pop hospital it really it was dangerous from a standpoint of Holland moonshine on the highways he had to run at high rates of speed all the time it was not only dangerous for years dangerous for other people it was on the highway but it was a way of life and he accepted that is your way of making money making a living and getting ahead in life you didn't think at the time it was against any kind of law as far as nature is concerned you didn't think he was doing harm to some other person that's tough and you accepted it is that and most people didn't believe it there wasn't really anything wrong with fooling with moonshine but once I got off into racing then I realized I can make a living without that I I tried very very hard to to get away from the moonshine life and get into something that that I felt like was better for me and better for my wife Flossie too well we could enjoy life you know basically after fear that one night I was going to be killed on the highway with a load of moonshine or picked up and put in jail over there that type of thing so although in my younger days it was a thrill to me I you know I really enjoyed the thrill of outrunning the revenues and being contest by of every time when out on the highway and this type of thing it was just the way of life you competed basically like you do on the racetrack today you take off down the highway with a load of moonshine and you almost just defined the Lord to try to catch you you might say but I'm sure it was a young miss in the wildness it I enjoyed anything it later in life I think it was probably wrong and all but you can't back up in this day inside children when did you was there any given day or any given time that you can remember when you knew that you were really good behind the wheel that you were better than a lot of the other guys that you were either on the highways where they're racing against did you was there a moment that she said hey I'm really good at this I can I could do well at this sport well the first few times I ever run a stock car I knew that the guys that was running stock cars did not have what I thought I had because on the highway I had a lot of good friends it was good you know drivers and they was as good as you could possibly run into I think they never did some of them didn't get into the racing but I think I've met many many drivers in the bootlegging business was better drivers and I've ever seen on the racetrack Curtis Turner was the only guy that it I thought was a contest to me as a driver I know there was a lot of people had faster cars and stuff and I did but if I had a slower car I always was able to make up the lost time by being able to our driver Curtis came from the same kind of school basically I did he live you know back in the mountains up around Martinsville and Roanoke Virginia up in there and he hauled moonshine itself as a growing up so he saw her picked up same techniques it I did but I don't think is anybody when I had the car and equipment that I thought could have died but Curtis was one man that of course he was a legend and a giant of a man he was a man know that you felt you'd really have to have to run hard to be well I enjoyed running against Curtis and one time back in 6061 I headed to Pawnee exit Holly farms was supported for me and Curtis was a big drawing card so several racetracks would make deals to get him to come in drive cars and stuff and they made a deal a few times for him to drive one of the cars that course I was driving and I basically enjoyed running with Curtis I would give him whichever car he wanted because I wanted to satisfy my own mind that I could handle him in any given situation so I chose on every case and then he drove to let him drive both cars pick him a car because I want him to feel like he weren't being shortchanged and I wanted to beat him with what he thought was the best and I didn't have a lot of trouble beating Curtis one-on-one with the same kind of equipment like I said I did have problems with guys that had faster cars then I had and I had to try to make up a difference by out driving them that was the only time I ever felt like I had to overextend myself as far as driving a car Jenny you employ how many men at the full racing strength at in and when you go racing at the beginning of this season or in this season how many men do you actually have on staff well last year we had 28 gas and toss us not counting secretaries and bookkeepers and stuff like that but the coming year will be around 40 people when we take on Neil's operation it don't take as many people to do both cars as it does to do one cuz you you gotta maintain a staff of machinists and that type of stuff and fabricators which then people can utilize both teams and it allows you not to have to hire all over ten or 12 people to do another whole racing thing your operation is in many ways more complete than some of the other teams and then you do an awful lot you do your own engine building and you do an awful lot of fabrication of parts that some other racing teams don't do is that right we do we try to make as many pieces of that operation as we can possibly make and the more we make the more successful he get also so we're looking at basically down the road making as many parts as we can possibly making in the past I have sold a lot of parts and I've sold a lot of knowledge I'm looking at very strongly curtailing that kind of deal because I find myself day in and day out trying to outrun various things that I have made or created and that's not been good for me other than I was in a financial stage to where I had to sell to be able to lies making of certain part because they're very expenses when you when you're making experimental stuff it it costs you like three times what it normally would cost you if somebody else is making you just want to happen bout it so I think now with the two-car operation we have with the sponsors we have the way racing is kept increasing financially wise it will be able to utilize our facilities and make the various parts and pieces that we need that should give us an advantage down the road Jenny when you're around when you're home and you're not on the road racing how many hours a day will you put in with a race race team and how much I know you love to hunt and you love to be around the house how do you split your life up when you're in a normal week here well in the past I did do a lot more hunting and I have been doing lately the kind of hunting I do is at nighttime I have a bunch of dogs and me and a friend of mine used to hunt like three or four nights a week when I was at home I haven't been able to do that rat later because the requirement time of racing anymore to make sure that everything's you know exact like in order to be entertaining you the race track is required a lot more my time so that takes away from what I like to do but I don't you know I don't feel bad about cuz we have been successful it has paid off and I accept the fact that you have to give up something to gain something so it's been a pretty good deal all around for me is it as fun as it used to be I mean when you were a tighter smaller operation and things were a little less hectic and not as much money at stake well a fun part about racing is running like 15 or 18 races you can run a race too and say well guys let's just take off for a week or two and go do some of the things you like to do the way we are an hour here a 1249 a job 365 days a year and you're going from home an average of five days a week that's not as much fun as being able to just load up and go to the beach or go to the mountains and do what you'd like to do so you got to accept the fact that you they're gonna go for the championship or let's go to win certain amount of races the the businesses is just boom heading it a lot more is it more is it bigger than say you would expect it to have been say five years ago probably a hundred times bigger than eight market amazing it'd have been five years back I didn't think racing would grow to what it is today the last three years of growth of racing it's been unbelievable to me because you always feel like it's some time another everything's gonna peak out but I think racing really from what I've seen the last three years is just now getting started I think it's going to reach a plateau baseball football and that type of stuff and if it does there's no end to how it's gonna grow to get there well I'm seeing you're building all over the hills all over here you're gonna have a little Industrial Park here in the next couple of years well we think we think that's what it's gonna do it's gonna grow to the extent you got to have your own little factories and stuff of that nature and that's what we're planning for I think in the next three four years if we continue to do what we're thinking Racing's going to do we're going to spend you know millions of dollars building facilities to take care what we think Racing's headed towards boy that's an exciting prospect and we'll be back with more from jr. Johnson after this sure the lot of people look at you and say boy what a dream life it just couldn't have laid out more perfectly for you and everything seems to be breaking your way but in retrospect is there anything if you could step back and do it over again is there anything you would change I don't think so a lot of people says well you might like to have not done the part in your life about the bootlegging so I think I've been very very fortunate I've had three careers in my life and most people does accomplish one I had a career in the moonshine business I declared a race driver and I've had a good career as a car owner I don't think any any more of them I would go back and redo some of them I don't agree with but I enjoyed all three careers and I accept them for what they are and I'm very happy with so life is life is good and and as you say that growth factor in the mid maybe the future is is even holds more excitement in the past in a lot of ways I think it does I think who we're headed in racing is gonna be on the leave or both - a lot of people in the next ten years well I I it's hard to imagine how far it's come since those I mean you started out I ran almost exclusively dirt tracks didn't you when you started a race half miles and miles we didn't know of anything like a big you know racetrack at the time I started out daren't and was the biggest one and they'd run like a hundred and 50 miles nobody ever dreamed that you'd run five six hundred mile and be able to make a car stand up and run that long so it's the advancement of the racetracks the people that supports it the fans and stuff is this growth by the leaks by owns you know it's just go into jr. we can't thank you enough repairing with us today and sharing your thoughts about the sport you're one of the Giants in the business and it's a corny thing to say a legend in his own time but we're sure happy to have you with us and and we're very grateful that you spent the time with us I'm Brock Yates with jr. Johnson one of the great drivers [Music]

Channel: Calhoun98

Views: 16,516

Rating: 4.9591837 out of 5

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Id: Zutzuc7Qduc

Length: 21min 18sec (1278 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 21 2019