June 18, 2026 • 43 mins
NASCAR! This thoroughly American racing organization is huge in the United States -- and has a lot of international gearhead fans, as well. However, as Ben, Noel and Max discover in today's episode, this multibillion-dollar industry has a fascinating, ridiculous, and criminal past. That's right, fellow historians: NASCAR only exists because of Prohibition. As some of Appalachia's greatest booze smugglers realized people would pay just to watch their motoring skills at work, a network of criminal syndicates evolved into a full-on, massively popular sport.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show, fellow Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so
much for tuning in. Room, Room, Room. Let's hear it
for our super producer, mister Max Williams b Beef how
kowk Max.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
The Pit, the Human Pit Crew Williams.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
Max, the Bootleg Williams Moonshine Williams.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Okay, Yeah, I hope these things are going to figure
into our story.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
Ben, guess that absolutely never happening. Time I've been bullying.
You'reed old Brown.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
We got some big NASCAR energy. I think we're all
still fired up from that cage fight at the White House.
Yes we no no.
Speaker 3 (01:04):
Cheering for rain.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
Which cage fight are you guys talking about? You know,
the whole past few years have been a cage fighter,
That's true.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
This is the one in the claw in the octagon
right generated some very surreal photographs. Let's just say, like
the White House framed by an octagon ring with motocross
people leaping in criss cross directions and jets flying overhead.
It's the most delightfully idiocracy thing I've ever seen. Delightfully
is the wrong choice of words. But we are not
(01:35):
a political podcast, but we are gonna down the line
get to talk about some ridiculous history about the time
we're living in currently.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
Yes, that is true. As long as this show continues,
we we have Yeah, we like many Americans, have a
lot of opinions, and I'd like to think a lot
of self awareness about the things that make this country
so lovable, so endearing, and so ridiculous. One of the
(02:02):
Internet's new favorite things right now is the World Cup
takes place in the US. Is seeing Europeans in particular
encounter American culture. There's a German guy I'm absolutely in
love with because he went to laffle house.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
That's what it was. It was a waffle house and
maybe an I hoop as well.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
He's running, he's running the numbers on all the stuff
he read about or saw short clips of online. We've
also got some great Brits who are having the time
of their lives in Atlanta, so welcome.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
Love to see it. I saw some other fun ones
where it was like, oh, BUCkies has been coming up
a lot, what is this majesty? That is BUCkies? This
is this is a gas station to it some eagle
eyed and Bucky enthusiast comments. Commentaries responded, it's more than
a gas station. Yeah, it's a way of life.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
It's an experience. It's a bit of a secular hajj.
You're in the here in the southeastern United States.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
All hail Booky.
Speaker 1 (03:02):
Also shout out to everybody, as I'm thinking, especially of you,
my far flung European and Asiatic friends. Yeah, the free
refills are a thing I told you anyway, walked. As
are the giant cups, As are the giant cups, the
(03:23):
big gulps. There's another thoroughly American thing called Nascar. That's
what this episode is about. If we put on our
car stuff hats, and thanks to our double Dragon of
(03:45):
Research Associate Association here are pal Zach and our own
Max Williams, we are diving into Nascar. It occupies this
weird space in the American consciousness because it's seen is
as classic as a hot dog, for instance, or apple pie.
(04:08):
But but there are people who will tell you it
is the best sport, and there are people will tell
you it is not a sport at all.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
Well, Ben, I mean this obviously harkens back to for
me anyway, the days of car stuff with our buddy
Scott Benjamin. I do believe that y'all talked about like
some big races like the Lemons and some of those classic,
you know, tour type car races that were maybe seen
as a little more European than what NASCAR has become.
(04:39):
But it had to have been in some ways like
spiritual successor right.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
Yeah, the history, and I appreciate that shout out the
history of racing is phenomenal because essentially, and you don't
have to be a gearhead to know this, but essentially, folks,
as soon as the motor vehicle was invented, and as
soon as more more than one rich person or crazy
Tony Stark level inventor goodbye one people started racing cars
(05:08):
and NASCAR descends exactly as you said, from that. It's
it's a huge deal. If you go back to just
last year, twenty twenty five, you'll see that the National
Association for Stock Car Auto Racing had a revenue of
one point seven billion dollars in twenty twenty four. This
(05:29):
happens across twenty seven North American cities. NASCAR, we could argue,
became a sport via convenience, and this is something we're
all familiar with. If we tuned into car stuff, Nascar
has some murky origins. We're talking to shout out ASoP rock.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
Here.
Speaker 1 (05:52):
We're talking fastcars, danger, fire and knives. We're also talking bootlegging,
smuggling booze during Prohibition.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
One hundred percent, which certainly would have required some crafty
vehicle modifications, right.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
Absolutely, And that's the cloud at list level, recurring soul
of Nascar if we go to.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
Yes, so interesting. I never would have thought. I've been
a little bit invested in the idea of car modifications
through this other podcast project that I'm working on about
human trafficking in Germany across the Berlin Wall during the
Cold War, and it involved a lot of real creative
uses of mini coopers and hollowing out certain electrical components,
(06:38):
compartments and things like that to make room for humans.
So certainly similar concepts here.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
Absolutely, yeah. And it's a concept that we the idea
of fighting a sort of Garia war of loopholes and
innovations versus a larger system. It happens in NASCAR today.
If you want to learn more about this and similar races,
check out an awesome new podcast we have out on
(07:07):
iHeart now called no Grip, which focuses on F one
or Formula one racing. We have to give a big,
big thanks to our recurring vicarious guest, Christopher Klein, who
wrote an awesome article for History called how Prohibition led
to the Creation of NASCAR. And so what we need
(07:31):
to realize is there is an historical we can trace Nascar. Right.
You can't trace every sport or every invention to its
origin point. But if you see folks like Junior Johnson,
who is who not I know.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
And not to be confused with Big Johnson.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
And not not to be confused with Junior Johnson, Junior,
they are Junior Johnson, Junior the third. So it's a
it's a weird name. It's it's very it's very much
like a major major major in Catch twenty two by
Joseph Heller. But we know that this guy Junior Johnson,
(08:10):
and it is his real name. He kept returning home
even after five victories on the NASCAR circuit. He kept
returning home in the nineteen fifties in North Carolina to
work on his real job, his family business, which was
not a mechanics garage, It was moonshining, which work in
(08:32):
the still yeah, making alcoholic beverages, some of which are
not going to kill you or make you go blind.
Speaker 3 (08:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
Right. They've been doing this since the good old days
of the Whiskey Rebellion.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
And just so with your upcoming with your upcoming long
form podcasts, which are very excited about. I've heard a
little bit of the music and I'd love to hear more. Noel,
can we reveal the name of the show?
Speaker 2 (09:04):
Oh? Yeah, it's called Final Blow and it actually is.
It going to come out early twenty twenty seven, So
we're still chipping away at it, but it's a really
cool project and working on the music and also hosting.
So thanks thanks for mentioning it. Ben.
Speaker 1 (09:17):
I think this is our first on air reveal of
a show that we're all quite excited about, So thank
you for that, Nol, of course, and we know that
the reason I'm saying this is similar to the Berlin
Wall situations of smuggling is that Junior Johnson and people
like him, dating back to the Whiskey Rebellion, they were
(09:41):
smuggling hooch in their cars, in their vehicles and whatever
those vehicles at the time were. They had three things
in mind. One they got to carry all this illegal merch,
which is basically what it is, cargo. And then two
they've gone for band. They've got to be faster than
(10:02):
the law, and they have to be more nimble than
the law, especially when you're in the hollers and the mountains.
So this guy would pack so many cases of what
Christopher Klein loosely refers to his hooch inside his house
when he was growing up, that he had to climb
(10:22):
over stacks of illegal booze and moonshine just to go
to bed every night because his household bedroom was a
storage area for their weird, their weird anti government booze trade.
His family farm got raided. They arrested his dad, you know.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
Yeah, yeah, that sure did. They confiscated the whiskey, put
his dad in cuffs, and it seemed like a real
inauspicious ending to quite a lucrative legacy.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
And Johnson grew from this. He would grow to become
a NASCAR Hall of Famer, which is a huge achievement.
Speaker 2 (11:05):
Pivot.
Speaker 1 (11:05):
Yeah, he became a team owner for NASCAR. And this
is a true story. It's a bit ridiculous. He discovered
his talent as a driver because he was running moonshine
as a teen he was smuggling it as a teenager,
and he says, quote, moonshining was part of my growing up,
(11:29):
but it was also part of my training in auto racing.
He said this much later in nineteen nineties speaking to
the Saint Louis Post dispatch.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
Indeed he did, and he went on saying, being in
that business, you had to have a very fast car
and you had to be able to outrun the revenuers.
The revenuers that's a new one on me, or you know,
I got it. It's just a fun one. Or highway
patrol or sheriff or whoever tried to pursue you, to
(11:59):
try and apprehend you. This was the beginning of the
prohibition era. The driver's transporting this moonshine from rural areas
like the Hollers we're talking about, or illegally importing alcohol
from Canada. This is like drug running. It's the same
kind of situations. They had to resort to some pretty
clever and resourceful tactics to change their vehicles and modify
(12:23):
their vehicles in order to elude the authorities on these
winding back roads with these switchbacks and hairpin turns. And
if it hadn't been for the whiskey, he said, Nascar
would not have been formed. And that's a fact.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
When he said that quotable, he was talking to the
British broadcasting folks. And also it's kind of like how
you know, whiskey is terrible for people, but it's also
the reason we have James Choice. It is the reason
we have NASCAR. So stock car racing has its roots
in Appalachia, where producing and selling homemade whiskey essentially it
(13:05):
helped people escape crippling poverty up there with hunting Gensen
later on. This especially came to the four during the
Great Depression, which hit an already impoverished area of the
US particularly hard. I actually I am related to people
who have done who have had moonshine stills historically, and
(13:30):
now the heat's the heats a little off them. I
think we have bigger fish to fry and things to
worry about here. But were these people who were making this.
They weren't just a bunch of like problematic fun frat bros.
They were doing this as a means of income to survive.
(13:52):
So it reminds us again of how prohibition ultimately became
a huge, huge revenue stream for organized crime and expanded
their portfolio. Those folks like the Campone mafia esque types,
they made a ton of money institutionalizing this illegal trade. However,
(14:17):
the people who live in these oft ignored parts of
the United States, they're not becoming millionaires off this. They're
not becoming millionaires off illegal booze. They're being able to
do things like keep the house and feed their kids.
Speaker 2 (14:34):
Totally, and they're also not particularly stoked about giving up
any of their revenue to Uncle Sam right.
Speaker 1 (14:42):
Right exactly, even post prohibition. So if we go to
folks like NASCAR Hall of Famer Curtis Turner, he points out,
those were hard times back in the hills, mean the
hollers and you know the rural areas. Everybody check out
American Hollow by one of the Kennedy kids. It's a
phenomenal documentary. It's hard to find now. They said, you
(15:05):
did things you shouldn't do to get by this guy.
Turner is interesting for us because, according to NASCAR dot Com,
he got into the bootlegging game when he was get
this guy's nine years old, so it's child labor as well.
We're not saying it's perfect.
Speaker 2 (15:23):
No, no, not not perfect to say the least. So
one thing that is super important to consider when talking
about the idea of a stock car, which again you
can really dig into some more information about that by
listening to the back catalog of car stuff. I can't
(15:45):
recommend enough. It's the idea that the car is supposed
to look like a standard stock vehicle. However, under the
hood there's different stuff going on. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:59):
Yeah, And we have to point out, for anny, as
to ridiculous historians who are clocking our mention of Prohibition,
Appalachian moonshining continued after Prohibition because, like Noel, you were saying,
people wanted to evade these very punishing vice taxes from
(16:19):
the federal level, and there were a lot of counties
that continued prohibition on a local municipal level. We also
want to give a shout out to a guy named
Neil Thompson, the author of Driving with the Devil, Southern
Moonshine Detroit Wheels in the Booth of Nascar, which weirdly
sounds like it's a mixtape about Nascar. You nailed it.
(16:43):
Stock car means it needs to look like a factory
issue car. The Prohibition Museum says they would keep the
standard exterior right, it would look ordinary on the outside,
but they modified the heck out of the engine for
(17:03):
greater speed. They got rid of the floorboards, they got
rid of the passenger seat, the back seat, and they
did the dead weight right right, and they replaced it
all with cases of moonshine, and then they had to
put in extra springs to handle the weight. They would
try to. They were very good at finding all the
(17:25):
back roads, and part of their success was that there
was no great surveillance state, not to the level we
have now, so if you could get the dirt road,
you could get past the cops.
Speaker 2 (17:36):
Well, it's like that. We always joke about how so
many plots of nineties movies would have been completely rendered
null and void if there had been cell phones, the
Seinfeld problem, the Seinfel problem. That is also the case
with a lot of historical shenanigans that would have been
completely impossible to pull off today with the flock cameras
(17:56):
of it all, or even you know, just CCTV and
just the you know, it's a lot harder to get
away with this kind of stuff. In the lo Fi
thrifty fashion that we're talking.
Speaker 1 (18:05):
About exactly and well said. I mean, think about it
this way, fellow ridiculous historians. We know that a lot
of the world's most successful cartel leaders, most successful cocaine, fentanyl,
or heroin dealers, are not themselves consumers of that product.
(18:27):
That's actually if you get involved in a criminal empire,
that makes you a really good hire because the guy
who did the most for bootlegging, accidentally is the legendarily
problematic Henry Ford of Ford fame. He was a devout teetotler,
which means he doesn't drink, but his Ford V eight
(18:51):
was the engine that drove moonshining ever since it debuted
in nineteen thirty two.
Speaker 2 (18:57):
Yeah, and just to buck contract to what you're saying about,
but peddlers not dipping into their own stuff. It is
the origin of the term never get high on your
own supply, or speaking negatively of someone saying they're getting
high on their own supply also kind of a stand
in for just being a little full of yourself, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
Yeah. Also, everybody's got their own journey. They're the main
character in their own story, So you know, treat all
those situations diplomatically and don't snitch.
Speaker 2 (19:25):
No, there's another expression. Snitches, you know, get shanked in prison.
Now that's not how it goes, but you get the idea. Bootleggers, though,
had experimented with various models of car over time, but
they were never quite fast enough. And this is according
to Thompson. But Ford, to your point, been accidentally, for
better or worse, created the perfect moonshine vehicle, the Ford
(19:50):
V eight. This was, you know, still known and revered
to this day. There was an engine that came out
that could match what they needed out of a car.
It was fast enough to stay one step ahead of
the law, he said, rugged enough for the mountain rows,
and had a big enough trunk and back seat to
squeeze in all the moonshine they could handle.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
Yeah, especially if you took out that shotgun seat in
that backseat that vaccat area. So we know that very
very smart mechanics also figured out how to soup up
the Ford V eight so they could get a few
extra miles per every hour of speed, and that makes
a huge difference in car chases, especially if they are
(20:32):
prolonged chases. So to further elude these revenue agents and
the police, they tricked their They tricked their rides out
with all sorts of looking for the right comparison inspector,
gadget ooh a better one, James Bond level spy movie
(20:52):
meets acme Looney Tunes devices. So you could push a
button and you could release a bunch of oil. The
cars behind you would slide on it. Or you could
release tax that would puncture the tires of the tax man.
Tax tac ks versus tax man, tax man. And then
(21:14):
they even add smoke screens. I don't know how effective
those would be. I don't know how effective a smoke
screen from a car, a driving car is in real life.
Speaker 2 (21:23):
Well smoke, I will say, though, Ben, we are talking
about real scary winding back rows, switchbacks and switchback. So
maybe you know there is a particular deployable item in
Mario Kart that is a squid who will spray your
enemies with ink and uh and make it where they
can't see where they're going. And that's one of my
(21:44):
least favorite ones. That'll cause me to wreck or you know,
right off the road if in a dangerous enough what's.
Speaker 1 (21:50):
Your favorite one? What's your opinion on the Blueeshell?
Speaker 2 (21:53):
The blueeshell is the great equalizer. Will we all hate
getting it? There is something about it that is a
very cool leveler of play in terms of what makes
Mario Kart about exciting.
Speaker 1 (22:05):
Okay, yeah, and I love all the new things you
can get in the latest Mario Kart.
Speaker 2 (22:11):
There's some fun new ones. Some of them are a
little underwhelming, but I do like that you can go
in and decide which items you use or don't use,
or which are available, and it is real fun to do.
Like a match where only blueshells are available. It's total
glutton for punishment type behavior, but it makes things absolutely
chaos and it's a lot of fun.
Speaker 1 (22:31):
And with this, just like in Mario Kart it the
stats of the car do matter. The stats of the
vehicle matter, but more importantly, you have to look at
the acumen of the person driving the vehicle. So these
folks who are not called racers yet they're called runners,
they needed incredibly high level driving skills to maneuver along
(22:59):
things that would swing from paved roads to single lane
to double lane to gravel. They'd be driving after dark
and sometimes they had to have their headlights off. So
just like NASCAR drivers today or I should say Lemon
is a better comparison. They had to memorize the track
because you know, it's not that difficult to memorize a
(23:21):
NASCAR track because you just sort of go left, yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:25):
Exactly left left forever.
Speaker 1 (23:28):
Yeah. They also we see the origins or the precedent
of what we call a pit crew today. They needed
support staff to keep their cars running in top shape.
So if you were a good mechanic in a struggling
town that happened to be along a fortuitous route for
these moonshiners, they would approach you like Cia Cia finding
(23:54):
academic style. They would say, I hear you real good
under the hood. I need something that could run fast.
I need something that weighs less. I know, we both
hate the cops and the revenue man.
Speaker 2 (24:08):
The revenuers, as he said previously, I love that man.
I love that.
Speaker 1 (24:13):
So now we have fastcars, we've got drivers who are
cut above civilian motorists, and we have a small cadre
of phenomenal, if ethically fraught mechanics, not saying all mechanics
are bad. And these fellas were not going to wait
until prohibition ended to make some money, right, and this
(24:38):
we have to also remember this is largely a cash
economy in this area. So if you have the cash
and you don't trust the bank because of what all
the shenanigans of the depression, then you're walking away with
thirty forty percent more than you would have had if
the cops had caught you. So we we have these
(25:01):
we have this awesome, if illegal situation. And of course,
of course we have to remember that we are talking
about very small, often isolated, rural areas, so everybody in
town knows everybody else, and they know who's got the
fastest car. So it should be no surprise that during
(25:23):
the nineteen thirties these excellent teams, not just not just
the guys driving and they were pretty much all guys,
but their entire support staff becomes a little bit famous.
They become locally famous, like when we hang out at
the local our favorite chicken wing spot. So they began
to race what they were calling whiskey cars at the
(25:46):
local fair and at racetracks, and they said, holy crap,
look at this. People are paying us not the smuggle
illegal poison like alcohol. Now they're paying us just to
watch how good we are driving, just to drive fast,
just to drive fast.
Speaker 2 (26:06):
Heck, yeah, sounds like fun. I mean they already have
the skill set. I mean, why not let's go let's
go legit. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (26:13):
And this is yeah, like you said earlier, this is
a pivot because we know that by this point in
the nineteen thirties, a lot of mechanics, car owners, fair
ground promoters, and people who own racetracks, they already had
pretty deep ties in the moonshine business. Right, so now
(26:35):
they have a legal way to make income.
Speaker 2 (26:38):
They got a path towards a a more legitimate business model.
And you know, I mean it's almost like I could
see initially doing this as almost like a like exhibition
driving where you're showing off the car, right and just
like showing like how how fast it can go. And
then before you know it, this idea of well what
if we pitted the best of the best again to
(27:00):
one another, and then had it become a little bit
more like almost dare we say this is controversial a sport.
Speaker 1 (27:06):
Right, right?
Speaker 3 (27:07):
Right?
Speaker 1 (27:08):
And as my mother was always fond of saying, not
everything is for everyone. But people loved this. And one
of the people who loves this is a guy named
Raymond Parks who was historically proven to be the first
guy ever to put together a formal racing team. Parks
(27:30):
ran away from his home in the mountains of Northern
Georgia when he was just fourteen years old, and he
took up an apprenticeship. Unlike our pal John Chapman from earlier,
who learned how to plant apple trees, this guy apprenticed
to a moonshiner who he met in the county jail.
(27:51):
We often note that the United States has a problem
with its incarceration system such that prisons can be sort
of crime university for people. That's what happened here. That's
exactly what happened here. He's working at a still is
Raymond Parks. He's hauling corn whiskey around Atlanta, and he
makes way more money bootlegging than he ever could in
(28:16):
the rural areas of North Georgia.
Speaker 2 (28:20):
This is a classic, you know, bad boys made good
kind of story. You do love to see it, you know.
Speaker 1 (28:27):
Yeah. And he starts investing his money because he's a
smart boy, and he says, you know, I've got to
wash it. My money's got me running to the laundry
like there's something smelly on me. He buys gas stations
he invests in stock car racing. He doesn't have to
(28:48):
go too far to find two talented drivers for his
emergent racing team. His cousins, you see, happened to be
some of the top moonshine runner in all of Northern Georgia.
They are doing those switchbacks. We were talking about their
go at at speed and they're they're like doing eighty
(29:09):
one hundred and eighty degree skirt skirt hairpin turns. They're
still not dead. His cousins Lloyd, Jay and Roy Hall
are running the game.
Speaker 2 (29:18):
Man, I got it. It reminds me back to carstuff again.
I had the pleasure and privilege of going on a
road trip with you and Scott where we participated in
kind of a tour type race. We didn't really try
to compete. We were just trying to, you know, enjoy it,
and we did a little documentary kind of about it
with our buddy Casey Pegrim. But that is the first
time I ever experienced the kind of mountain hairpin switchback
(29:43):
turns and we were taking them. You know, Scott is well,
I was a bit of a hell raiser. I love.
He wanted to let those ponies ride as we would say,
but I didn't feel unsafe, but I can only imagine
tearing around those those types of super treacherous non you
know guard railed turns.
Speaker 1 (30:00):
Yeah, with four GTA cop stars exactly.
Speaker 2 (30:04):
Uh yeah.
Speaker 1 (30:05):
I remember West Virginia in particular, right when I was
we we were we were skirting around with folks who
lived in the area and had no compunction about taking
taking a hairpin in excess of eighty miles an hour.
Speaker 2 (30:22):
And I apologize he was coming around either.
Speaker 1 (30:26):
Yeah, well not apologize, but I appreciate, uh, all three
of you again for listening to me when I was like,
we need to get at speed, cut the music off
until this freaking storm passes. Because we were we were
up there and in there.
Speaker 2 (30:42):
It was weird we had and to that point we
had to be able to hear, you know, who was
coming around. That's a bend because you had no you
had no visual on them.
Speaker 3 (30:50):
I remember something similar when I drove California one, which
I'm like going, you know, to give these sixty drops
all you picked you and then like right behind you
is his car is trying to go like fifty and
it's like, oh lord, they must live here because this
is just hair.
Speaker 1 (31:02):
They don't care. Yeah, they're used to catch an air
on that one hill, right, even in their f one fifties, So.
Speaker 2 (31:10):
We hopefully it did not become the hill they died.
Speaker 1 (31:12):
On, right, And that's a nice reference. Luckily, the cousins
are boy parks Hires. They win the first big stop
car race in nineteen thirty eight at Atlanta's Lakewood Speedway.
(31:32):
There are twenty thousand people watching this in person, and
that was that was Lloyd who won that one. The
other cousin, roy Hole, eventually wins the National stop Car
Championship in nineteen forty one, and then, you know, students
of history, it's nineteen forty one. There's a bit of
(31:54):
a conflict for a time where millions and millions of
people die. This means stock car racing pauses until September
nineteen forty five.
Speaker 2 (32:05):
We're talking about World War two. And to paraphrase the
words of Daniel S. Pierce from his book Real Nascar,
White Lightning and Red Clay and Big Bill France, at
that aforementioned Atlanta Speedway, which is that Lakewood like what
became Lakewood Amphitheater. Is it in the same must be
in the same zones. I don't know about any Lakewood
speedway that still exists to this day, but a ride anymore.
(32:29):
You got it. So a near riot, you know, erupted
when police banned those fellas who you were talking about
for liquor hauling violations. Thirty thousand rabbit fans chanted for Hall,
who had his driver's license revoked after being arrested no
less than sixteen.
Speaker 1 (32:47):
Times, which is not a bad statistic. Actually even making
it to five is crazy.
Speaker 2 (32:53):
I agree. Yeah. The authorities did, however, relent and let
that let that man.
Speaker 1 (32:59):
Race, let those ponies run. But Atlanta did not welcome
these moonshiners back. The city and the forest did not
want to be seen as embracing the criminal element. This
is where enters another stock car driver, a guy named
Bill France, which we just you know, he's in the
title of that book we just quoted. He started to
(33:22):
recruit bootleggers or runners to race in Virginia and in
North and South Carolina. And it's nineteen forty seven, the
very end of the year when France assembles the leading
stock car drivers and all those mechanic boffins we're talking about,
and all those money guys the owners who are like
(33:44):
our EPs. Here. He gets them all together in Daytona Beach, Florida,
and they say, we're going to.
Speaker 2 (33:50):
Have a meeting.
Speaker 1 (33:51):
It's not like a mafia meeting. We're not doing bootlegging anymore.
It's just the cars. Now, okay, guys, booze is legal,
So now we're focusing on the car. We're going to
standardize some rules. This leads to the formation of the
National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing, which we now
call NASCAR.
Speaker 2 (34:11):
Yep, the bend off, Mike, we just made a great
comparison of like mafioso's like in the Sopranos who run
the pork store, or like you know what is it
called sALS Salvator the a front for doing dirty deeds,
done dirt cheap, but then decided they're just into being butchers.
Speaker 1 (34:27):
You know, like you start a restaurant, the larger money,
and then you say, actually, I really do make a
good parmesan, you know, chicken, I do make a good pakada.
Speaker 2 (34:39):
I'm passionate about a bolonnaise.
Speaker 1 (34:41):
You know. And guys, we can keep the racketeering and
the gambling, but just don't mess up my pacada. Okay,
because we do service at six and my team works
really hard.
Speaker 2 (34:52):
They sure do, they sure do. They're family, that's.
Speaker 1 (34:55):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, a team that Parks put together on
the first two official NASCAR championships. And if we didn't
have Raymond Park's ill gotten moonshine gains, then we probably
wouldn't have NASCAR in its current form today. But the
(35:15):
thing is our guy Bill France, who's on this mission
to legitimize racing based on smuggling. He says, I don't
want to have NASCAR associated with this. I want to
distance our pivot from bootlegging. I want us to, you know,
just be about racing. And eventually this led to internal
(35:40):
tensions in the crew. It contributed to the decision by
Parks to leave NASCAR and sell off all his own
stock cars in nineteen fifty one. So Parks, who had
the illegal Money guy, the illegal money ep of this,
he left and Bill Frank that's took leadership of NASCAR.
(36:03):
They got a ton of corporate sponsorship. And what are
the funniest ones is Mountain Dew.
Speaker 2 (36:11):
Well, you know, I saw that, Ben, and it made
me think, gosh, Mountain Dew. We've talked about that recently.
And then it occurred to me that we had because
it was originally created as a mixer for whiskey and
then kind of became a like post prohibition not stand
in for whiskey, But it made perfect sense for that
to be the sponsor, that was the post prohibition flag
(36:34):
bearer for this sport that started during Prohibition and was
so tied to Tennessee whiskey. Yeah, mountain dew, the wholesome whiskey.
Speaker 1 (36:44):
And not especially loving either of those beverages separately.
Speaker 2 (36:50):
I like a diet mountain dew from time to time.
But yeah, I hear you, Ben, but could you picture
it with alcohol in it? God? No, okay, no, you
don't do it. I rarely been. Does a whiskey with
citrus make a lot of sense, sort of an old
fashion with just a little orange peel or an orange
twist or something like that. But yeah, I don't typically
go for a super citrusy whiskey mixer.
Speaker 1 (37:11):
Can you imagine going into like I have to go
to some fancy places at times? I just I can't
imagine being at Michelin restaurant or at a super duper
fancy hotel bar and having someone say I'll take your
finest whiskey and a Mountain dew code red exactly.
Speaker 2 (37:33):
That is taking it up a notch. It does make
me think of a I think still relatively popular cocktail
at seven and seven, which is like, let's see Seagrums
and seven up.
Speaker 1 (37:44):
Oh okay, what is secrums?
Speaker 2 (37:46):
Seagrums Gin?
Speaker 1 (37:47):
Oh okay, I'm out. That's called Mother's Ruin? Right? Do
we ever do an episode about Gin? How it wrecked
the United King?
Speaker 2 (37:56):
Holy crap, I'm wrong. It's Seagrum's Crown Whiskey.
Speaker 3 (38:00):
I was going to jump in here and be like,
because I was actually.
Speaker 2 (38:03):
A citrus whiskey cocktail that is pretty popular.
Speaker 1 (38:06):
Well it is.
Speaker 3 (38:07):
It's a Canadian whiskey, So Canadian whiskey like a like
a Seagrum seven a Crown Royal Canadian club. Well, actually
we'll actually look, you know, work pretty well with citrus,
but because it's sweeter, yeah, which is even sweeter than
a lot of things will not.
Speaker 1 (38:25):
Okay, all right, Well, I've learned a lot that I
was not, you know, thinking I would learn today, and
that is one of the great appeals of the show
for us and hopefully for you fellow ridiculous historians. We
know that Bill France was a visionary, right, he was prescient.
He said, I can develop NASCAR into a friendly sport
(38:49):
for families. We can make more and more money over time,
and we don't need to break the law to do that.
We can downplay the connection between our current state and
our dodgy origin story.
Speaker 2 (39:05):
Yeah, it is often, at least in fiction, the dream
of fledgling criminals to go to go straight one day,
one last job and then I'm going legit exactly nice
to see when it actually happens it works out.
Speaker 1 (39:20):
Yeah, which is what we what we tell ourselves privately
and as a podcast every time, every time we do
an episode.
Speaker 2 (39:29):
Yeah, we're in this for the long haul, man.
Speaker 1 (39:32):
But the we we do know that they've got to
just car stuff. Requires me to put this in here, Guys,
we do know that NASCAR and racing in general still
has that fight the system punk rock energy because every
year the established regulatory bodies f one NASCAR, you name it.
(39:58):
They will have seri of strict rules and constraints about
how a driver can operate, about the technology under the hood,
about different like very very pedantic things and very specific
explicit things. And so the job of the team if
you're racing NASCAR is still to figure out your way
(40:21):
around these rules, legal loopholes, So you're still you're now
we're no longer smuggling whiskey, I would I would say,
we're smuggling innovation.
Speaker 2 (40:31):
Which is like a glueing hot gluing the coin to
the bottom of your Pinewood Derby car.
Speaker 1 (40:36):
Which yeah, until it's illegal by a regulatory body. So
I love the idea of taking smuggling activities and mentality
and replacing that with not smuggling moonshine, but with smuggling innovation.
And that is one of the coolest things about NASCAR.
I mean, I forgot what else I was going to say,
(40:56):
but you know, we do know that NASCAR has ethanol
in gas tanks. So that's kind of like movie booze
around mabeoint.
Speaker 2 (41:09):
It's a good point.
Speaker 1 (41:10):
We know that sa their roots. There we go in
some way. In twenty seventeen, our buddy Raven Parks gets
inducted into the NASCAR Hall of Fame. Ed NASCAR is finally,
now that they are so established, now that they're a
multi billion dollar business, they're finally a little bit more
comfortable being transparent about their ridiculous origin.
Speaker 2 (41:35):
Story their criminal past checkered flags. Indeed, in twenty seventeen,
Parks was inducted into the NASCAR Hall of Fame, which
does feature an exhibit about the craft of bootlegging along
with a real life, authentic Moonshine still built by our
hero Junior Johnson himself.
Speaker 1 (41:56):
And with that, we hope you enjoyed this episode, folks.
We hope that you drive safely on the road. Remember
GTA five is a video game and should not be
real life. Also, never drive impaired, even if you've got
a little bit of that Dutch sunshine and confidence in you,
(42:20):
which is a phrase we made up, but it makes sense.
Speaker 2 (42:23):
Wow, booze and driving don't mix unless you're talking about
the history of NASCAR.
Speaker 1 (42:27):
There we go, perfect. Big big thanks to our super
producer and co research associate for this episode, mister Max Williams.
Big thanks to Alex Williams who composed this track.
Speaker 2 (42:40):
M Bang a bot that it is, Chris Frasiotis and
Eve Jeffcoats. Huge thanks to them for being here in spirit.
Speaker 1 (42:47):
We might actually oh here in spirit haha, and we
might actually hear from our buddy Eves a little bit later.
In the show as a corresponded. We love it when
Eves out with us on air and she is currently
traveling the world. She's been in India. She's living in
joe Burg, Johannesburg, South Africa right now, so maybe she'll
(43:11):
maybe she'll hit us up with some local history that
she's encountered.
Speaker 2 (43:14):
Mm hmm, badass human indeed, Man, Huge thanks to you, man,
this is fun.
Speaker 1 (43:20):
Yeah, hey man, huge, thanks to you. Huge thanks Nascar Beat,
Beep Go Left, Big thanks to aj Bahamas Jacobs, and
big thanks to you fellow ridiculous historians.
Speaker 2 (43:29):
We'll see you next time, folks. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show, fellow Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so
much for tuning in. Room, Room, Room. Let's hear it
for our super producer, mister Max Williams b Beef how
kowk Max.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
The Pit, the Human Pit Crew Williams.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
Max, the Bootleg Williams Moonshine Williams.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Okay, Yeah, I hope these things are going to figure
into our story.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
Ben, guess that absolutely never happening. Time I've been bullying.
You'reed old Brown.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
We got some big NASCAR energy. I think we're all
still fired up from that cage fight at the White House.
Yes we no no.
Speaker 3 (01:04):
Cheering for rain.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
Which cage fight are you guys talking about? You know,
the whole past few years have been a cage fighter,
That's true.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
This is the one in the claw in the octagon
right generated some very surreal photographs. Let's just say, like
the White House framed by an octagon ring with motocross
people leaping in criss cross directions and jets flying overhead.
It's the most delightfully idiocracy thing I've ever seen. Delightfully
is the wrong choice of words. But we are not
(01:35):
a political podcast, but we are gonna down the line
get to talk about some ridiculous history about the time
we're living in currently.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
Yes, that is true. As long as this show continues,
we we have Yeah, we like many Americans, have a
lot of opinions, and I'd like to think a lot
of self awareness about the things that make this country
so lovable, so endearing, and so ridiculous. One of the
(02:02):
Internet's new favorite things right now is the World Cup
takes place in the US. Is seeing Europeans in particular
encounter American culture. There's a German guy I'm absolutely in
love with because he went to laffle house.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
That's what it was. It was a waffle house and
maybe an I hoop as well.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
He's running, he's running the numbers on all the stuff
he read about or saw short clips of online. We've
also got some great Brits who are having the time
of their lives in Atlanta, so welcome.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
Love to see it. I saw some other fun ones
where it was like, oh, BUCkies has been coming up
a lot, what is this majesty? That is BUCkies? This
is this is a gas station to it some eagle
eyed and Bucky enthusiast comments. Commentaries responded, it's more than
a gas station. Yeah, it's a way of life.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
It's an experience. It's a bit of a secular hajj.
You're in the here in the southeastern United States.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
All hail Booky.
Speaker 1 (03:02):
Also shout out to everybody, as I'm thinking, especially of you,
my far flung European and Asiatic friends. Yeah, the free
refills are a thing I told you anyway, walked. As
are the giant cups, As are the giant cups, the
(03:23):
big gulps. There's another thoroughly American thing called Nascar. That's
what this episode is about. If we put on our
car stuff hats, and thanks to our double Dragon of
(03:45):
Research Associate Association here are pal Zach and our own
Max Williams, we are diving into Nascar. It occupies this
weird space in the American consciousness because it's seen is
as classic as a hot dog, for instance, or apple pie.
(04:08):
But but there are people who will tell you it
is the best sport, and there are people will tell
you it is not a sport at all.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
Well, Ben, I mean this obviously harkens back to for
me anyway, the days of car stuff with our buddy
Scott Benjamin. I do believe that y'all talked about like
some big races like the Lemons and some of those classic,
you know, tour type car races that were maybe seen
as a little more European than what NASCAR has become.
(04:39):
But it had to have been in some ways like
spiritual successor right.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
Yeah, the history, and I appreciate that shout out the
history of racing is phenomenal because essentially, and you don't
have to be a gearhead to know this, but essentially, folks,
as soon as the motor vehicle was invented, and as
soon as more more than one rich person or crazy
Tony Stark level inventor goodbye one people started racing cars
(05:08):
and NASCAR descends exactly as you said, from that. It's
it's a huge deal. If you go back to just
last year, twenty twenty five, you'll see that the National
Association for Stock Car Auto Racing had a revenue of
one point seven billion dollars in twenty twenty four. This
(05:29):
happens across twenty seven North American cities. NASCAR, we could argue,
became a sport via convenience, and this is something we're
all familiar with. If we tuned into car stuff, Nascar
has some murky origins. We're talking to shout out ASoP rock.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
Here.
Speaker 1 (05:52):
We're talking fastcars, danger, fire and knives. We're also talking bootlegging,
smuggling booze during Prohibition.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
One hundred percent, which certainly would have required some crafty
vehicle modifications, right.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
Absolutely, And that's the cloud at list level, recurring soul
of Nascar if we go to.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
Yes, so interesting. I never would have thought. I've been
a little bit invested in the idea of car modifications
through this other podcast project that I'm working on about
human trafficking in Germany across the Berlin Wall during the
Cold War, and it involved a lot of real creative
uses of mini coopers and hollowing out certain electrical components,
(06:38):
compartments and things like that to make room for humans.
So certainly similar concepts here.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
Absolutely, yeah. And it's a concept that we the idea
of fighting a sort of Garia war of loopholes and
innovations versus a larger system. It happens in NASCAR today.
If you want to learn more about this and similar races,
check out an awesome new podcast we have out on
(07:07):
iHeart now called no Grip, which focuses on F one
or Formula one racing. We have to give a big,
big thanks to our recurring vicarious guest, Christopher Klein, who
wrote an awesome article for History called how Prohibition led
to the Creation of NASCAR. And so what we need
(07:31):
to realize is there is an historical we can trace Nascar. Right.
You can't trace every sport or every invention to its
origin point. But if you see folks like Junior Johnson,
who is who not I know.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
And not to be confused with Big Johnson.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
And not not to be confused with Junior Johnson, Junior,
they are Junior Johnson, Junior the third. So it's a
it's a weird name. It's it's very it's very much
like a major major major in Catch twenty two by
Joseph Heller. But we know that this guy Junior Johnson,
(08:10):
and it is his real name. He kept returning home
even after five victories on the NASCAR circuit. He kept
returning home in the nineteen fifties in North Carolina to
work on his real job, his family business, which was
not a mechanics garage, It was moonshining, which work in
(08:32):
the still yeah, making alcoholic beverages, some of which are
not going to kill you or make you go blind.
Speaker 3 (08:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
Right. They've been doing this since the good old days
of the Whiskey Rebellion.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
And just so with your upcoming with your upcoming long
form podcasts, which are very excited about. I've heard a
little bit of the music and I'd love to hear more. Noel,
can we reveal the name of the show?
Speaker 2 (09:04):
Oh? Yeah, it's called Final Blow and it actually is.
It going to come out early twenty twenty seven, So
we're still chipping away at it, but it's a really
cool project and working on the music and also hosting.
So thanks thanks for mentioning it. Ben.
Speaker 1 (09:17):
I think this is our first on air reveal of
a show that we're all quite excited about, So thank
you for that, Nol, of course, and we know that
the reason I'm saying this is similar to the Berlin
Wall situations of smuggling is that Junior Johnson and people
like him, dating back to the Whiskey Rebellion, they were
(09:41):
smuggling hooch in their cars, in their vehicles and whatever
those vehicles at the time were. They had three things
in mind. One they got to carry all this illegal merch,
which is basically what it is, cargo. And then two
they've gone for band. They've got to be faster than
(10:02):
the law, and they have to be more nimble than
the law, especially when you're in the hollers and the mountains.
So this guy would pack so many cases of what
Christopher Klein loosely refers to his hooch inside his house
when he was growing up, that he had to climb
(10:22):
over stacks of illegal booze and moonshine just to go
to bed every night because his household bedroom was a
storage area for their weird, their weird anti government booze trade.
His family farm got raided. They arrested his dad, you know.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
Yeah, yeah, that sure did. They confiscated the whiskey, put
his dad in cuffs, and it seemed like a real
inauspicious ending to quite a lucrative legacy.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
And Johnson grew from this. He would grow to become
a NASCAR Hall of Famer, which is a huge achievement.
Speaker 2 (11:05):
Pivot.
Speaker 1 (11:05):
Yeah, he became a team owner for NASCAR. And this
is a true story. It's a bit ridiculous. He discovered
his talent as a driver because he was running moonshine
as a teen he was smuggling it as a teenager,
and he says, quote, moonshining was part of my growing up,
(11:29):
but it was also part of my training in auto racing.
He said this much later in nineteen nineties speaking to
the Saint Louis Post dispatch.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
Indeed he did, and he went on saying, being in
that business, you had to have a very fast car
and you had to be able to outrun the revenuers.
The revenuers that's a new one on me, or you know,
I got it. It's just a fun one. Or highway
patrol or sheriff or whoever tried to pursue you, to
(11:59):
try and apprehend you. This was the beginning of the
prohibition era. The driver's transporting this moonshine from rural areas
like the Hollers we're talking about, or illegally importing alcohol
from Canada. This is like drug running. It's the same
kind of situations. They had to resort to some pretty
clever and resourceful tactics to change their vehicles and modify
(12:23):
their vehicles in order to elude the authorities on these
winding back roads with these switchbacks and hairpin turns. And
if it hadn't been for the whiskey, he said, Nascar
would not have been formed. And that's a fact.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
When he said that quotable, he was talking to the
British broadcasting folks. And also it's kind of like how
you know, whiskey is terrible for people, but it's also
the reason we have James Choice. It is the reason
we have NASCAR. So stock car racing has its roots
in Appalachia, where producing and selling homemade whiskey essentially it
(13:05):
helped people escape crippling poverty up there with hunting Gensen
later on. This especially came to the four during the
Great Depression, which hit an already impoverished area of the
US particularly hard. I actually I am related to people
who have done who have had moonshine stills historically, and
(13:30):
now the heat's the heats a little off them. I
think we have bigger fish to fry and things to
worry about here. But were these people who were making this.
They weren't just a bunch of like problematic fun frat bros.
They were doing this as a means of income to survive.
(13:52):
So it reminds us again of how prohibition ultimately became
a huge, huge revenue stream for organized crime and expanded
their portfolio. Those folks like the Campone mafia esque types,
they made a ton of money institutionalizing this illegal trade. However,
(14:17):
the people who live in these oft ignored parts of
the United States, they're not becoming millionaires off this. They're
not becoming millionaires off illegal booze. They're being able to
do things like keep the house and feed their kids.
Speaker 2 (14:34):
Totally, and they're also not particularly stoked about giving up
any of their revenue to Uncle Sam right.
Speaker 1 (14:42):
Right exactly, even post prohibition. So if we go to
folks like NASCAR Hall of Famer Curtis Turner, he points out,
those were hard times back in the hills, mean the
hollers and you know the rural areas. Everybody check out
American Hollow by one of the Kennedy kids. It's a
phenomenal documentary. It's hard to find now. They said, you
(15:05):
did things you shouldn't do to get by this guy.
Turner is interesting for us because, according to NASCAR dot Com,
he got into the bootlegging game when he was get
this guy's nine years old, so it's child labor as well.
We're not saying it's perfect.
Speaker 2 (15:23):
No, no, not not perfect to say the least. So
one thing that is super important to consider when talking
about the idea of a stock car, which again you
can really dig into some more information about that by
listening to the back catalog of car stuff. I can't
(15:45):
recommend enough. It's the idea that the car is supposed
to look like a standard stock vehicle. However, under the
hood there's different stuff going on. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:59):
Yeah, And we have to point out, for anny, as
to ridiculous historians who are clocking our mention of Prohibition,
Appalachian moonshining continued after Prohibition because, like Noel, you were saying,
people wanted to evade these very punishing vice taxes from
(16:19):
the federal level, and there were a lot of counties
that continued prohibition on a local municipal level. We also
want to give a shout out to a guy named
Neil Thompson, the author of Driving with the Devil, Southern
Moonshine Detroit Wheels in the Booth of Nascar, which weirdly
sounds like it's a mixtape about Nascar. You nailed it.
(16:43):
Stock car means it needs to look like a factory
issue car. The Prohibition Museum says they would keep the
standard exterior right, it would look ordinary on the outside,
but they modified the heck out of the engine for
(17:03):
greater speed. They got rid of the floorboards, they got
rid of the passenger seat, the back seat, and they
did the dead weight right right, and they replaced it
all with cases of moonshine, and then they had to
put in extra springs to handle the weight. They would
try to. They were very good at finding all the
(17:25):
back roads, and part of their success was that there
was no great surveillance state, not to the level we
have now, so if you could get the dirt road,
you could get past the cops.
Speaker 2 (17:36):
Well, it's like that. We always joke about how so
many plots of nineties movies would have been completely rendered
null and void if there had been cell phones, the
Seinfeld problem, the Seinfel problem. That is also the case
with a lot of historical shenanigans that would have been
completely impossible to pull off today with the flock cameras
(17:56):
of it all, or even you know, just CCTV and
just the you know, it's a lot harder to get
away with this kind of stuff. In the lo Fi
thrifty fashion that we're talking.
Speaker 1 (18:05):
About exactly and well said. I mean, think about it
this way, fellow ridiculous historians. We know that a lot
of the world's most successful cartel leaders, most successful cocaine, fentanyl,
or heroin dealers, are not themselves consumers of that product.
(18:27):
That's actually if you get involved in a criminal empire,
that makes you a really good hire because the guy
who did the most for bootlegging, accidentally is the legendarily
problematic Henry Ford of Ford fame. He was a devout teetotler,
which means he doesn't drink, but his Ford V eight
(18:51):
was the engine that drove moonshining ever since it debuted
in nineteen thirty two.
Speaker 2 (18:57):
Yeah, and just to buck contract to what you're saying about,
but peddlers not dipping into their own stuff. It is
the origin of the term never get high on your
own supply, or speaking negatively of someone saying they're getting
high on their own supply also kind of a stand
in for just being a little full of yourself, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
Yeah. Also, everybody's got their own journey. They're the main
character in their own story, So you know, treat all
those situations diplomatically and don't snitch.
Speaker 2 (19:25):
No, there's another expression. Snitches, you know, get shanked in prison.
Now that's not how it goes, but you get the idea. Bootleggers, though,
had experimented with various models of car over time, but
they were never quite fast enough. And this is according
to Thompson. But Ford, to your point, been accidentally, for
better or worse, created the perfect moonshine vehicle, the Ford
(19:50):
V eight. This was, you know, still known and revered
to this day. There was an engine that came out
that could match what they needed out of a car.
It was fast enough to stay one step ahead of
the law, he said, rugged enough for the mountain rows,
and had a big enough trunk and back seat to
squeeze in all the moonshine they could handle.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
Yeah, especially if you took out that shotgun seat in
that backseat that vaccat area. So we know that very
very smart mechanics also figured out how to soup up
the Ford V eight so they could get a few
extra miles per every hour of speed, and that makes
a huge difference in car chases, especially if they are
(20:32):
prolonged chases. So to further elude these revenue agents and
the police, they tricked their They tricked their rides out
with all sorts of looking for the right comparison inspector,
gadget ooh a better one, James Bond level spy movie
(20:52):
meets acme Looney Tunes devices. So you could push a
button and you could release a bunch of oil. The
cars behind you would slide on it. Or you could
release tax that would puncture the tires of the tax man.
Tax tac ks versus tax man, tax man. And then
(21:14):
they even add smoke screens. I don't know how effective
those would be. I don't know how effective a smoke
screen from a car, a driving car is in real life.
Speaker 2 (21:23):
Well smoke, I will say, though, Ben, we are talking
about real scary winding back rows, switchbacks and switchback. So
maybe you know there is a particular deployable item in
Mario Kart that is a squid who will spray your
enemies with ink and uh and make it where they
can't see where they're going. And that's one of my
(21:44):
least favorite ones. That'll cause me to wreck or you know,
right off the road if in a dangerous enough what's.
Speaker 1 (21:50):
Your favorite one? What's your opinion on the Blueeshell?
Speaker 2 (21:53):
The blueeshell is the great equalizer. Will we all hate
getting it? There is something about it that is a
very cool leveler of play in terms of what makes
Mario Kart about exciting.
Speaker 1 (22:05):
Okay, yeah, and I love all the new things you
can get in the latest Mario Kart.
Speaker 2 (22:11):
There's some fun new ones. Some of them are a
little underwhelming, but I do like that you can go
in and decide which items you use or don't use,
or which are available, and it is real fun to do.
Like a match where only blueshells are available. It's total
glutton for punishment type behavior, but it makes things absolutely
chaos and it's a lot of fun.
Speaker 1 (22:31):
And with this, just like in Mario Kart it the
stats of the car do matter. The stats of the
vehicle matter, but more importantly, you have to look at
the acumen of the person driving the vehicle. So these
folks who are not called racers yet they're called runners,
they needed incredibly high level driving skills to maneuver along
(22:59):
things that would swing from paved roads to single lane
to double lane to gravel. They'd be driving after dark
and sometimes they had to have their headlights off. So
just like NASCAR drivers today or I should say Lemon
is a better comparison. They had to memorize the track
because you know, it's not that difficult to memorize a
(23:21):
NASCAR track because you just sort of go left, yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:25):
Exactly left left forever.
Speaker 1 (23:28):
Yeah. They also we see the origins or the precedent
of what we call a pit crew today. They needed
support staff to keep their cars running in top shape.
So if you were a good mechanic in a struggling
town that happened to be along a fortuitous route for
these moonshiners, they would approach you like Cia Cia finding
(23:54):
academic style. They would say, I hear you real good
under the hood. I need something that could run fast.
I need something that weighs less. I know, we both
hate the cops and the revenue man.
Speaker 2 (24:08):
The revenuers, as he said previously, I love that man.
I love that.
Speaker 1 (24:13):
So now we have fastcars, we've got drivers who are
cut above civilian motorists, and we have a small cadre
of phenomenal, if ethically fraught mechanics, not saying all mechanics
are bad. And these fellas were not going to wait
until prohibition ended to make some money, right, and this
(24:38):
we have to also remember this is largely a cash
economy in this area. So if you have the cash
and you don't trust the bank because of what all
the shenanigans of the depression, then you're walking away with
thirty forty percent more than you would have had if
the cops had caught you. So we we have these
(25:01):
we have this awesome, if illegal situation. And of course,
of course we have to remember that we are talking
about very small, often isolated, rural areas, so everybody in
town knows everybody else, and they know who's got the
fastest car. So it should be no surprise that during
(25:23):
the nineteen thirties these excellent teams, not just not just
the guys driving and they were pretty much all guys,
but their entire support staff becomes a little bit famous.
They become locally famous, like when we hang out at
the local our favorite chicken wing spot. So they began
to race what they were calling whiskey cars at the
(25:46):
local fair and at racetracks, and they said, holy crap,
look at this. People are paying us not the smuggle
illegal poison like alcohol. Now they're paying us just to
watch how good we are driving, just to drive fast,
just to drive fast.
Speaker 2 (26:06):
Heck, yeah, sounds like fun. I mean they already have
the skill set. I mean, why not let's go let's
go legit. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (26:13):
And this is yeah, like you said earlier, this is
a pivot because we know that by this point in
the nineteen thirties, a lot of mechanics, car owners, fair
ground promoters, and people who own racetracks, they already had
pretty deep ties in the moonshine business. Right, so now
(26:35):
they have a legal way to make income.
Speaker 2 (26:38):
They got a path towards a a more legitimate business model.
And you know, I mean it's almost like I could
see initially doing this as almost like a like exhibition
driving where you're showing off the car, right and just
like showing like how how fast it can go. And
then before you know it, this idea of well what
if we pitted the best of the best again to
(27:00):
one another, and then had it become a little bit
more like almost dare we say this is controversial a sport.
Speaker 1 (27:06):
Right, right?
Speaker 3 (27:07):
Right?
Speaker 1 (27:08):
And as my mother was always fond of saying, not
everything is for everyone. But people loved this. And one
of the people who loves this is a guy named
Raymond Parks who was historically proven to be the first
guy ever to put together a formal racing team. Parks
(27:30):
ran away from his home in the mountains of Northern
Georgia when he was just fourteen years old, and he
took up an apprenticeship. Unlike our pal John Chapman from earlier,
who learned how to plant apple trees, this guy apprenticed
to a moonshiner who he met in the county jail.
(27:51):
We often note that the United States has a problem
with its incarceration system such that prisons can be sort
of crime university for people. That's what happened here. That's
exactly what happened here. He's working at a still is
Raymond Parks. He's hauling corn whiskey around Atlanta, and he
makes way more money bootlegging than he ever could in
(28:16):
the rural areas of North Georgia.
Speaker 2 (28:20):
This is a classic, you know, bad boys made good
kind of story. You do love to see it, you know.
Speaker 1 (28:27):
Yeah. And he starts investing his money because he's a
smart boy, and he says, you know, I've got to
wash it. My money's got me running to the laundry
like there's something smelly on me. He buys gas stations
he invests in stock car racing. He doesn't have to
(28:48):
go too far to find two talented drivers for his
emergent racing team. His cousins, you see, happened to be
some of the top moonshine runner in all of Northern Georgia.
They are doing those switchbacks. We were talking about their
go at at speed and they're they're like doing eighty
(29:09):
one hundred and eighty degree skirt skirt hairpin turns. They're
still not dead. His cousins Lloyd, Jay and Roy Hall
are running the game.
Speaker 2 (29:18):
Man, I got it. It reminds me back to carstuff again.
I had the pleasure and privilege of going on a
road trip with you and Scott where we participated in
kind of a tour type race. We didn't really try
to compete. We were just trying to, you know, enjoy it,
and we did a little documentary kind of about it
with our buddy Casey Pegrim. But that is the first
time I ever experienced the kind of mountain hairpin switchback
(29:43):
turns and we were taking them. You know, Scott is well,
I was a bit of a hell raiser. I love.
He wanted to let those ponies ride as we would say,
but I didn't feel unsafe, but I can only imagine
tearing around those those types of super treacherous non you
know guard railed turns.
Speaker 1 (30:00):
Yeah, with four GTA cop stars exactly.
Speaker 2 (30:04):
Uh yeah.
Speaker 1 (30:05):
I remember West Virginia in particular, right when I was
we we were we were skirting around with folks who
lived in the area and had no compunction about taking
taking a hairpin in excess of eighty miles an hour.
Speaker 2 (30:22):
And I apologize he was coming around either.
Speaker 1 (30:26):
Yeah, well not apologize, but I appreciate, uh, all three
of you again for listening to me when I was like,
we need to get at speed, cut the music off
until this freaking storm passes. Because we were we were
up there and in there.
Speaker 2 (30:42):
It was weird we had and to that point we
had to be able to hear, you know, who was
coming around. That's a bend because you had no you
had no visual on them.
Speaker 3 (30:50):
I remember something similar when I drove California one, which
I'm like going, you know, to give these sixty drops
all you picked you and then like right behind you
is his car is trying to go like fifty and
it's like, oh lord, they must live here because this
is just hair.
Speaker 1 (31:02):
They don't care. Yeah, they're used to catch an air
on that one hill, right, even in their f one fifties, So.
Speaker 2 (31:10):
We hopefully it did not become the hill they died.
Speaker 1 (31:12):
On, right, And that's a nice reference. Luckily, the cousins
are boy parks Hires. They win the first big stop
car race in nineteen thirty eight at Atlanta's Lakewood Speedway.
(31:32):
There are twenty thousand people watching this in person, and
that was that was Lloyd who won that one. The
other cousin, roy Hole, eventually wins the National stop Car
Championship in nineteen forty one, and then, you know, students
of history, it's nineteen forty one. There's a bit of
(31:54):
a conflict for a time where millions and millions of
people die. This means stock car racing pauses until September
nineteen forty five.
Speaker 2 (32:05):
We're talking about World War two. And to paraphrase the
words of Daniel S. Pierce from his book Real Nascar,
White Lightning and Red Clay and Big Bill France, at
that aforementioned Atlanta Speedway, which is that Lakewood like what
became Lakewood Amphitheater. Is it in the same must be
in the same zones. I don't know about any Lakewood
speedway that still exists to this day, but a ride anymore.
(32:29):
You got it. So a near riot, you know, erupted
when police banned those fellas who you were talking about
for liquor hauling violations. Thirty thousand rabbit fans chanted for Hall,
who had his driver's license revoked after being arrested no
less than sixteen.
Speaker 1 (32:47):
Times, which is not a bad statistic. Actually even making
it to five is crazy.
Speaker 2 (32:53):
I agree. Yeah. The authorities did, however, relent and let
that let that man.
Speaker 1 (32:59):
Race, let those ponies run. But Atlanta did not welcome
these moonshiners back. The city and the forest did not
want to be seen as embracing the criminal element. This
is where enters another stock car driver, a guy named
Bill France, which we just you know, he's in the
title of that book we just quoted. He started to
(33:22):
recruit bootleggers or runners to race in Virginia and in
North and South Carolina. And it's nineteen forty seven, the
very end of the year when France assembles the leading
stock car drivers and all those mechanic boffins we're talking about,
and all those money guys the owners who are like
(33:44):
our EPs. Here. He gets them all together in Daytona Beach, Florida,
and they say, we're going to.
Speaker 2 (33:50):
Have a meeting.
Speaker 1 (33:51):
It's not like a mafia meeting. We're not doing bootlegging anymore.
It's just the cars. Now, okay, guys, booze is legal,
So now we're focusing on the car. We're going to
standardize some rules. This leads to the formation of the
National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing, which we now
call NASCAR.
Speaker 2 (34:11):
Yep, the bend off, Mike, we just made a great
comparison of like mafioso's like in the Sopranos who run
the pork store, or like you know what is it
called sALS Salvator the a front for doing dirty deeds,
done dirt cheap, but then decided they're just into being butchers.
Speaker 1 (34:27):
You know, like you start a restaurant, the larger money,
and then you say, actually, I really do make a
good parmesan, you know, chicken, I do make a good pakada.
Speaker 2 (34:39):
I'm passionate about a bolonnaise.
Speaker 1 (34:41):
You know. And guys, we can keep the racketeering and
the gambling, but just don't mess up my pacada. Okay,
because we do service at six and my team works
really hard.
Speaker 2 (34:52):
They sure do, they sure do. They're family, that's.
Speaker 1 (34:55):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, a team that Parks put together on
the first two official NASCAR championships. And if we didn't
have Raymond Park's ill gotten moonshine gains, then we probably
wouldn't have NASCAR in its current form today. But the
(35:15):
thing is our guy Bill France, who's on this mission
to legitimize racing based on smuggling. He says, I don't
want to have NASCAR associated with this. I want to
distance our pivot from bootlegging. I want us to, you know,
just be about racing. And eventually this led to internal
(35:40):
tensions in the crew. It contributed to the decision by
Parks to leave NASCAR and sell off all his own
stock cars in nineteen fifty one. So Parks, who had
the illegal Money guy, the illegal money ep of this,
he left and Bill Frank that's took leadership of NASCAR.
(36:03):
They got a ton of corporate sponsorship. And what are
the funniest ones is Mountain Dew.
Speaker 2 (36:11):
Well, you know, I saw that, Ben, and it made
me think, gosh, Mountain Dew. We've talked about that recently.
And then it occurred to me that we had because
it was originally created as a mixer for whiskey and
then kind of became a like post prohibition not stand
in for whiskey, But it made perfect sense for that
to be the sponsor, that was the post prohibition flag
(36:34):
bearer for this sport that started during Prohibition and was
so tied to Tennessee whiskey. Yeah, mountain dew, the wholesome whiskey.
Speaker 1 (36:44):
And not especially loving either of those beverages separately.
Speaker 2 (36:50):
I like a diet mountain dew from time to time.
But yeah, I hear you, Ben, but could you picture
it with alcohol in it? God? No, okay, no, you
don't do it. I rarely been. Does a whiskey with
citrus make a lot of sense, sort of an old
fashion with just a little orange peel or an orange
twist or something like that. But yeah, I don't typically
go for a super citrusy whiskey mixer.
Speaker 1 (37:11):
Can you imagine going into like I have to go
to some fancy places at times? I just I can't
imagine being at Michelin restaurant or at a super duper
fancy hotel bar and having someone say I'll take your
finest whiskey and a Mountain dew code red exactly.
Speaker 2 (37:33):
That is taking it up a notch. It does make
me think of a I think still relatively popular cocktail
at seven and seven, which is like, let's see Seagrums
and seven up.
Speaker 1 (37:44):
Oh okay, what is secrums?
Speaker 2 (37:46):
Seagrums Gin?
Speaker 1 (37:47):
Oh okay, I'm out. That's called Mother's Ruin? Right? Do
we ever do an episode about Gin? How it wrecked
the United King?
Speaker 2 (37:56):
Holy crap, I'm wrong. It's Seagrum's Crown Whiskey.
Speaker 3 (38:00):
I was going to jump in here and be like,
because I was actually.
Speaker 2 (38:03):
A citrus whiskey cocktail that is pretty popular.
Speaker 1 (38:06):
Well it is.
Speaker 3 (38:07):
It's a Canadian whiskey, So Canadian whiskey like a like
a Seagrum seven a Crown Royal Canadian club. Well, actually
we'll actually look, you know, work pretty well with citrus,
but because it's sweeter, yeah, which is even sweeter than
a lot of things will not.
Speaker 1 (38:25):
Okay, all right, Well, I've learned a lot that I
was not, you know, thinking I would learn today, and
that is one of the great appeals of the show
for us and hopefully for you fellow ridiculous historians. We
know that Bill France was a visionary, right, he was prescient.
He said, I can develop NASCAR into a friendly sport
(38:49):
for families. We can make more and more money over time,
and we don't need to break the law to do that.
We can downplay the connection between our current state and
our dodgy origin story.
Speaker 2 (39:05):
Yeah, it is often, at least in fiction, the dream
of fledgling criminals to go to go straight one day,
one last job and then I'm going legit exactly nice
to see when it actually happens it works out.
Speaker 1 (39:20):
Yeah, which is what we what we tell ourselves privately
and as a podcast every time, every time we do
an episode.
Speaker 2 (39:29):
Yeah, we're in this for the long haul, man.
Speaker 1 (39:32):
But the we we do know that they've got to
just car stuff. Requires me to put this in here, Guys,
we do know that NASCAR and racing in general still
has that fight the system punk rock energy because every
year the established regulatory bodies f one NASCAR, you name it.
(39:58):
They will have seri of strict rules and constraints about
how a driver can operate, about the technology under the hood,
about different like very very pedantic things and very specific
explicit things. And so the job of the team if
you're racing NASCAR is still to figure out your way
(40:21):
around these rules, legal loopholes, So you're still you're now
we're no longer smuggling whiskey, I would I would say,
we're smuggling innovation.
Speaker 2 (40:31):
Which is like a glueing hot gluing the coin to
the bottom of your Pinewood Derby car.
Speaker 1 (40:36):
Which yeah, until it's illegal by a regulatory body. So
I love the idea of taking smuggling activities and mentality
and replacing that with not smuggling moonshine, but with smuggling innovation.
And that is one of the coolest things about NASCAR.
I mean, I forgot what else I was going to say,
(40:56):
but you know, we do know that NASCAR has ethanol
in gas tanks. So that's kind of like movie booze
around mabeoint.
Speaker 2 (41:09):
It's a good point.
Speaker 1 (41:10):
We know that sa their roots. There we go in
some way. In twenty seventeen, our buddy Raven Parks gets
inducted into the NASCAR Hall of Fame. Ed NASCAR is finally,
now that they are so established, now that they're a
multi billion dollar business, they're finally a little bit more
comfortable being transparent about their ridiculous origin.
Speaker 2 (41:35):
Story their criminal past checkered flags. Indeed, in twenty seventeen,
Parks was inducted into the NASCAR Hall of Fame, which
does feature an exhibit about the craft of bootlegging along
with a real life, authentic Moonshine still built by our
hero Junior Johnson himself.
Speaker 1 (41:56):
And with that, we hope you enjoyed this episode, folks.
We hope that you drive safely on the road. Remember
GTA five is a video game and should not be
real life. Also, never drive impaired, even if you've got
a little bit of that Dutch sunshine and confidence in you,
(42:20):
which is a phrase we made up, but it makes sense.
Speaker 2 (42:23):
Wow, booze and driving don't mix unless you're talking about
the history of NASCAR.
Speaker 1 (42:27):
There we go, perfect. Big big thanks to our super
producer and co research associate for this episode, mister Max Williams.
Big thanks to Alex Williams who composed this track.
Speaker 2 (42:40):
M Bang a bot that it is, Chris Frasiotis and
Eve Jeffcoats. Huge thanks to them for being here in spirit.
Speaker 1 (42:47):
We might actually oh here in spirit haha, and we
might actually hear from our buddy Eves a little bit later.
In the show as a corresponded. We love it when
Eves out with us on air and she is currently
traveling the world. She's been in India. She's living in
joe Burg, Johannesburg, South Africa right now, so maybe she'll
(43:11):
maybe she'll hit us up with some local history that
she's encountered.
Speaker 2 (43:14):
Mm hmm, badass human indeed, Man, Huge thanks to you, man,
this is fun.
Speaker 1 (43:20):
Yeah, hey man, huge, thanks to you. Huge thanks Nascar Beat,
Beep Go Left, Big thanks to aj Bahamas Jacobs, and
big thanks to you fellow ridiculous historians.
Speaker 2 (43:29):
We'll see you next time, folks. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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