I bet this was interesting and a lot of fun.
Cats and mice play catch-up
Moonshiners, revenuers find common ground - if not common roads
Posted: Friday, Oct. 14, 2011
By Tom Sorensen, Charlotte Observer
PURLEAR The third annual Moonshiners and Revenuers reunion, which is not open to the public, is easy to find. When you get to the end of civilization, take a left.
Then take a right. Drive in drizzle down twisty western Wilkes Country roads that don't appear on most maps. Somewhere, a banjo plays. When you reach a little hill, take your final right.
The guard waits for the password.
"Return to Thunder Road," I say.
"You can park over there," the guard says.
If you need a password to get in, you know you came to the right place.
The land beyond the guard is stunning, all hills, creeks, vistas and green grass. Also stunning is the pristine green 1948 Mercury with whitewall tires that could have sprouted from the hill on which it sits.
On the stage are Matt Dylan & The Most Wanted, who with feeling and sweet guitars play every moonshine song every written, and there must be 100. Hay bales are arranged nine deep in front of them.
A few minutes before 6 p.m. the revenuers, the men who chased the moonshiners, climb onto the stage. You can tell who they are by their uniforms.
Then come the flathead Fords, six of them. Out step the men who made Wilkes County legendary for running moonshine. The first out appropriately is Junior Johnson, one of the greatest drivers and minds racing will ever see.
Johnson and five other moonshiners sit in white rocking chairs on one side of the stage, the revenuers in six chairs on the other. The chairs will be auctioned, and the money will benefit Jack Roush Charities.
Roush is here. So, of course, is the host, the gracious Terri Parsons, wife of the late Benny Parsons, the racer everybody liked.
Joining them is Humpy Wheeler, the former Charlotte Motor Speedway president. He made the trip from Charlotte in his modified 1939 Ford coupe. Wheeler says the mountains were ideal for setting up stills and producing illegal alcohol. The problem was getting it to consumers in the flatlands.
"The old Fords of the 1937-40 vintage proved the trick," says Wheeler. "The bootleggers wanted to attract no attention because there were few cars on the road at night.
"Trucks and tankers would have been picked off immediately because the U.S. Treasury Department had taken big notice of the bootleg trade and established offices in places like Wilkesboro. The agents were tough, smart men, well trained with very fast cars."
Although they drove fast, the words of the moonshiners and revenuers come slowly on this evening. Most are in their 80s. Johnson is 80. They're mountain folks. They don't brag.
The rain washed away most of my notes so except for Johnson I can't tell you who said what. No matter. They created history some of us merely dream of. They speak with one voice.
One moonshiner speaks about Charles Manson. They did time together in Virginia.
"Played horseshoes with him, played ball with him. As good a fellow as any of us were right then. A little later, he changed."
If the moonshiners were caught north of Charlotte, they went to federal prison in Chillicothe, Ohio. South of Charlotte, they went to Atlanta. They preferred Chillicothe.
Why Ohio?
"Cause there's always somebody from Wilkes County up there."
Two moonshiners split up. A veteran revenuer followed one and a rookie followed the other. Make sure you get him, the veteran said.
Later, they rendezvoused. The veteran got his man. "Where's yours?"
"I got him," the rookie said.
"What you mean you got him?"
"I got his hat," said the rookie. "And his name's in it. See? John B. Stetson."
A lawman had a retirement party. At the end of the evening he was presented gifts. One fellow approached with a paper bag crinkled from years of use.
"Remember about 30 years ago you set up the road block on 421, and that boy come down from the mountains in that '39 Ford and busted right through it and you threw a flashlight at him?" the man with the bag asked.
The lawman remembered. The fellow handed him the bag.
"I want to give you the flashlight back," he said.
A moonshiner was sentenced to a year and a day.
"Well, I can do that standing on my head," he told the judge.
"I'll give you another year so you can get back on your feet," the judge said.
A student was hitchhiking home to Charlotte from Appalachian State one nasty night and Johnson picked him up. The student told his friend Tom Higgins, the legendary former Observer motorsports writer, that Johnson made it all the way to Charlotte without driving on a paved road.
Higgins accused his friend of drinking Johnson's hooch.
Johnson says the kid wasn't lying.
"You just cross the highway and you learn roads and you unload and you learn another new way to go into Charlotte," says Johnson. "You cross one highway and then another and if you practiced you could do it."
Johnson did time in Chillicothe, but he was never caught on the road. If you can run hooch, think you can run a race? Wheeler estimates 20 percent of the racers from the mid-40s to the mid-50s in the Carolinas, Georgia and Virginia came from the hills.
Says Wheeler: "To deny the influence of moonshiners in NASCAR is to say we Southerners weren't influenced by grits, catfish, red clay, cotton mills, country music, smoked ham, barbecue, the banjo or the country store."
The tales are vivid, but the Moonshiners and revenuers are fading. This reunion might be the last.
I hope not. But if it is I'd like to honor them for their contribution to racing, storytelling and hangovers.
If on this black and rainy night there's a dirt road that will take me home, I promise I'll find it.
Copyright 2011 . All rights reserved. Sorensen: 704-358-5119; tsorensen@charlotteobserver.com
Read more: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2011/10/14/2690277/cats-and-mice-play-catch-up.html#storylink=misearch#ixzz1aky27Yys
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"Any Day is Good for Stock Car Racing"
updated by @dave-fulton: 12/05/16 04:02:07PM
