Moonshine Runners and the Birth of NASCAR

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See app for details. This is Lee Habib and this is Our American Stories, the show where America is the star and the American people. And to search for the Our American Stories podcast, go to the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Long before NASCAR's rampant commercialism lurks a distant history of dark secrets that have been carefully hidden from view until now. Here to tell the true story behind NASCAR's hardscrabble moonshine-fueled origins is Neil Thompson, author of Driving with the Devil, Southern Moonshine, Detroit Wheels, and the Birth of NASCAR.

Let's take a listen. The idea for the story of Driving with the Devil started pretty soon after the attacks of 9-11. My wife and I were living in Baltimore at that time. I was working for the Baltimore Sun newspaper. We were ready for a change.

We were ready to move somewhere else and have a different kind of lifestyle. And at that same time, I found myself thinking a lot about a new book idea. I had just published my first book biography of the astronaut Alan Shepard and found myself drawn to NASCAR.

But not NASCAR per se. Really what I wanted to explore was where did this come from? Where did this fascination with cars spinning around an oval at 200 miles an hour? Where did this start? Where did it really start?

I began digging into sort of the origins of the sport itself. That led me to learn a little bit about Bill France, whose family at that time owned the entire sport, which was a shock to me. But every version of the origin story of NASCAR that I came across started with Bill France in about 1948-1949. But many of these histories, articles, and books started that year and didn't go back prior to that and explain, how did it get to that point?

It didn't just come into existence from nothing that year, and it didn't come into existence surely because of this one man, Bill France. So what I really wanted to do was go back, go deep, and find out who were the other characters who played a role in creating this sport before it was even known as NASCAR. And so my wife and I, after 9-11, about a year afterwards, decided, let's move south.

Let's go live in the south where this story takes place. So we moved to North Carolina, to Asheville, North Carolina, and I spent the next couple of years driving throughout the south to Florida and Atlanta, northern Georgia and across North Carolina to track down the true pioneers of NASCAR, some of whom were still alive at that time, thankfully. My research led me, thankfully, to one of the overlooked pioneers of the entire sport, a guy named Raymond Parks, who was living in Atlanta at that time.

He was in his late 80s, early 90s, still showing up for work every day at the liquor store that he owned in North Atlanta, still dressed in his suit and tie with a dapper hat. And I was pointed toward Raymond as the guy who was really the overlooked hero of the early days of NASCAR, someone who never fully got the credit he deserved for playing a vital role in bringing that sport to life. When I first got to know him, though, he didn't want to talk about it, largely because the origins of the sport, at least as far as he was concerned, were directly tied to the moonshining business. Raymond was a successful moonshiner. He actually started moonshining at age 14, got to know another north Georgia moonshiner who offered him a job.

Raymond grew up poor on a farm in north Georgia outside Dawsonville. His dad was a drunk. There were 16 kids in the household and Raymond, who was one of the eldest, one day just walked off the farm at age 14 and started working as a moonshiner's apprentice, spent a little time in jail after that, but learned the ropes and over time became an incredibly successful moonshiner himself. Running moonshine, making moonshine, later he was so successful that he hired his cousins to do the driving for him.

And that whole enterprise of making and delivering moonshine is what eventually led to stock car racing. When I first met Raymond, though, he didn't want to talk about all that. He felt like that was part of the past. He was, you know, kind of a modest, quiet guy, at least at the age when I met him. So I just kept showing up at his office saying, okay, you don't want to talk about it. That's fine.

I'll come back next week and we'll just chat about other things. Little by little, I kind of earned his confidence and little by little, he started opening up to me and started sharing with me the story of his role in creating NASCAR. And it was just a remarkable story of dirt poor North Georgia kids trying to find a better life for themselves. You know, so many of them grew up poor and their prospects were to continue working on their family farm or maybe get a job at the local mill for a few dollars more. But a lot of these kids wanted more. They wanted adventure.

They wanted escape. Once they got introduced to cars and moonshining, they wanted speed and money and a different version of success and moonshining and then stock car racing gave them that they gave them something that they hadn't previously had access to. And Raymond is a perfect example of that. But I'll never forget being in his office one day when he reluctantly pulls out a couple of old photo albums and starts leafing through them. And I got shivers up my shivers up my spine because he starts showing me photos that really told the story of early stock car racing in the early days of NASCAR and told the story of Raymond Parks his role in creating that sport.

So he's showing me pictures of old races, terrible car wrecks, photos of the corpse of his cousin Lloyd C who was killed in a moonshining accident, photos of red vote, the foul mouth mechanic who worked on Raymond Parks's cars, both his moonshine cars and later his stock cars and his race cars. These photos were just a thrilling sort of recapturing of that moment in time when NASCAR didn't even exist. It was just sort of this humble sport where these moonshiner kids were having fun on the weekends racing each other out of cow pastures and little by little those raggedy races evolved into what we later came to know of as stock car racing and then NASCAR.

And you've been listening to author Neil Thompson tell the story of his own story about what prompted him to write this book which was well with so many writers just a question. How did NASCAR really start? How did the sport start before there was ever NASCAR and this legend named Bill France?

It all started with moonshiner kids racing each other out in cow pastures. When we come back more of the story of moonshine runners and the birth of NASCAR here on Our American Stories. Lee Habib here the host of Our American Stories. Every day on this show we're bringing inspiring stories from across this great country. Stories from our big cities and small towns but we truly can't do the show without you. Our stories are free to listen to but they're not free to make. If you love what you hear go to our americanstories.com and click the donate button. Give a little give a lot.

Go to our americanstories.com and give. Following last year's amazing turnout the Black Effect Podcast Network and Nissan are helping HBCU scholars jumpstart their futures by throwing another thrill of possibility summit. The thrill of possibility summit is an opportunity to network with peers and professionals and gain career knowledge from leaders in the industries of science, technology, engineering, art and math also known as STEAM. To kick it off Nissan is giving 50 HBCU scholars who major in STEAM disciplines the opportunity for an all expenses paid trip to Nashville Tennessee. This year's summit location this is a remarkable opportunity to be mentored by some of auto tech and podcasting's brightest minds. Bringing together notable voices of the Black Effect Podcast Network featuring Charlemagne the God, John Hope Bryant and Debbie Brown all brought to you by Nissan. Success is a journey you're in the driver's seat. To learn more about the thrill of possibility summit please visit www.blackeffect.com slash nissan.

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Plus at these prices you're burning rubber not cash. Keep your ride or die alive at eBayMotors.com eligible items only exclusions apply. On Heart of the Game we're talking with some of the most successful families in sports to learn what's really making them tick from staying healthy to fostering strong family bonds. We'll hear from athletes such as Kurt Warner on what lessons are being passed down to a new generation of athletes. There is a level when we play that we feel we're invincible you feel like it's not going to happen to you but then anytime it does whether it's you suffering an injury or teammates suffering a traumatic injury that's what stops you in your tracks and it makes you go okay we're not invincible and it becomes more personal. It's a part of the process to have to work through those things you know and understand the risks that go into it and understand the rewards or the love for the sport.

Listen to Heart of the Game every Thursday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And we continue with Our American Stories and Neil Thompson author of Driving with the Devil, Southern Moonshine, Detroit Wheels and The Birth of NASCAR. Let's return to Neil with more of the story. The moonshine that these guys were making and delivering was essentially corn whiskey. It was a version of the whiskey that had come to America from the Irish and Scots-Irish immigrants who came here and then sort of gravitated toward the south and ended up in the hills and hollers of North Carolina and Georgia and other southern states where a lot of these farmers learned that by growing corn and turning that corn into whiskey they could make more by selling the liquid product of that agricultural output rather than just becoming straight up farmers. And so moonshine became an important component of the economy of the south going way back to the 1800s and then on into the early 1900s. There were tax issues you know the U.S. government over time kept making attempts to tax this product and obviously the moonshiners resisted that which is what led to sort of this cat and mouse game that evolved between the moonshiners delivering their you know agricultural product as they viewed it to market or to their customers in the cities for the most part and then the tax agents the revenue agents trying to track them down and arrest them and charge them with tax fraud. So the term moonshine came from the practice of making this whiskey in the dead of night to avoid detection to avoid setting off any alarms by you know revenue agents seeing the smoke rise from these stills that were mainly set up and deep in the woods next to a stream they needed fresh water for these things so by operating in the middle of the night under the moonlight that's where the term moonshine evolved from and then the term bootlegger came from the concept that by one of the ways that these guys would try and hide their their liquor would be in a flask that was hidden inside their boot and in time the term bootlegger evolved just to sort of encompass all of the efforts to make and sell illegal whiskey throughout the south and elsewhere. In time these moonshiners learned that the best means of transporting their product the moonshine jars of moonshine packed tightly into crates was a ford v8 coupe sort of the explosion of the moonshining trade in the early decades of the of the 1900s coincided with the evolution of the automobile so you see the ford v8s becoming more and more sophisticated the moonshiners realized this was the perfect car for delivering moonshine because it had a great suspension it was fast and it was easy to work on so you also see the beginnings of car mechanics who later became race car mechanics figuring out how to take apart ford's engines and put them back together and add modifications and bore out the cylinders and do these other things to make them even faster than they were meant to be and even more sort of solid and reliable than they were designed to be i through raymond parks got to become acquainted with his trusted mechanic red vote who had a garage in downtown atlanta and was sort of a mad scientist when it came to fords in particular other cars as well but mainly fords you know he would try little weird modifications that no one else had thought of with the exhaust and the engine and the ratio of air to fuel he was just a mad genius and learned to make these cars go faster than they were ever meant to go he also on the side sometimes worked for the cops and the revenue agents but didn't put as much effort into their cars as he did the moonshiners and those cars and so little by little these cars the drivers are learning to drive them faster the mechanics are making them go faster and then on weekends a lot of these moonshiners start getting together to race each other see who has the fastest moonshining car some of the early races were incredibly modest they were just at a cow field somewhere or a field farmer's field and one car would go out and sort of tear up an oval in the grass and that would be the racetrack that was it they'd line up they'd race each other and and just for bragging rights they would see who had the fastest car in time these races started to attract crowds i mean there weren't any professional sports in the south at that time it would take years before the first professional sports team the atlanta braves came to atlanta in 1965 so in the 20s 30s and 40s there were college sports but not really the type of sport where you go to an auditorium and watch a game or a stadium and watch a game once these stock car races started getting up and underway and word spread and newspapers started covering these events then they did start to attract crowds you know they put up bleachers next to the oval track they started you know building concessions and and savvy businessmen started to learn how to make a little bit of money off these putting a fence around the whole thing and charging admission fees so what these early races were you know we call nascar stock car racing today but at that time these stock cars really were just off the rack cars that anyone could buy at their local dealer you know that's where the term came from stock they were supposed to be just the stock that came with the car no modifications of course that concept of being quote strictly stock was thrown out the window you know right off the bat because of these modifications that the moonshine mechanics started making to the cars very quickly these quote unquote stock cars became highly modified highly customized cars that bore at least on the outside some resemblance to the cars you'd see on the dealer's lap but on the inside were very different machines altogether so by looking exactly like any other car that you know your parents would drive to a church that sunday these cars were were intended to look normal so that they didn't attract the attention of the revenue agents so that they could fit in once they got to town but again under the hood that engine was way more powerful than any regular stock car that anyone else in the neighborhood had late 1830s into 1940 the sports progressing and raymond parks is now becoming what in future years would be described as the first team owner of stock car racing he kind of pulls together two of his cousins handsome roy hall and quiet lloyd c who are both moonshine drivers for him and they are just wonderful drivers because they've learned how to drive on the back roads of georgia to escape the revenue agents so those two are part of raymond parks's team as is red vote the mechanic so together this this team starts traveling through the south visiting other races and having enormous success as the sport is getting up and running unfortunately though roy hall's a bit of a scamp he's always getting in trouble spends time in jail and then lloyd c who is much quieter and sort of a good kid gets caught up in this bizarre moonshining argument with one of his cousins who shoots and kills him and lloyd c is dead sometime in 1940 and then a year later the entire sport comes grinding to a halt as america gets involved in world war ii a lot of the characters in my book and in the story of the evolution of nascar spent time serving in world war ii raymond parks served at the battle of the bulge but when these guys come back home most of them to the south and start to pick up the pieces of stock car racing and they came back very hungry to get back on the racetrack and take the sport to the next level at this time we get introduced to some of the new characters on the scene one of whom is named red byron there were two two reds in this book red vote and red byron so red byron served in a b-24 airplane mainly serving up on the elution islands off the alaskan coast his plane gets shot down among many that were that were shot down at that time and they'd sort of crash land and red byron ends up with just a ruined left leg shrapnel the doctors actually wanted to amputate his leg and he said no don't touch it i'm a race car driver i need that leg and you've been listening to neil thompson tell a heck of a story moonshine was basically corn whiskey he said and let's face it the farmers could make more money selling a liquefied version of their crop than the actual crop and moonshining explodes because well automobile production explodes in this country too and leave it to men and their toys soon well guys are modifying these cars to well outrun federales revenue agents and frankly to just outrun themselves and have fun pretty soon they're competing in cow pastures and the next thing you know people are showing up because well the south had no professional sports this became the sport of the south world war ii comes so many of these guys put on a different suit and go and fight for their country only to come back hungrier for the action and for the sport they created when we come back more of this remarkable story moonshine runners and the birth of nascar here on our american stories following last year's amazing turnout the black effect podcast network and nissan are helping hvcu scholars jump start their futures by throwing another thrill of possibility summit the thrill of possibility summit is an opportunity to network with peers and professionals and gain career knowledge from leaders in the industries of science technology engineering art and math also known as steam to kick it off nissan is giving 50 hvcu scholars who major in steam disciplines the opportunity for an all expenses paid trip to nashville tennessee this year's summit location this is a remarkable opportunity to be mentored by some of auto tech and podcasting's brightest minds bringing together notable voices of the black effect podcast network featuring charlamagne the god john hope bryant and devi brown all brought to you by nissan success is a journey you're in the driver's seat to learn more about the thrill of possibility summit please visit www.blackeffect.com slash nissan hello there this is malcolm glaubel host of revisionist history ebay motors is here for the ride you saw the potential through some elbow grease fresh installs and a whole lot of love you transformed 100 000 miles and a body full of rust into a drive entirely its own look to your left look to your right no one's got a ride like this there's nothing else that sounds like feels like or looks like the set of wheels in your garage with over 122 million parts for your number one ride or die you can make sure your ride stays running smoothly so there's no limit to how far you can take it brake kits turbochargers engines exhaust kits roof racks led headlights bumpers whatever your baby needs ebay motors has it and with ebay guaranteed fit it's guaranteed to fit your ride the first time every time for your money back plus at these prices you're burning rubber not cash keep your ride or die alive at ebaymotors.com eligible items only exclusions apply on heart of the game we're talking with some of the most successful families in sports to learn what's really making them tick from staying healthy to fostering strong family bonds we'll hear from athletes such as kurt warner on what lessons are being passed down to a new generation of athletes there is a level when we play that we feel we're invincible you feel like it's not going to happen to you but then anytime it does whether it's you suffering an injury or teammates suffering a traumatic injury that's what stops you in your tracks and it makes you go okay we're not invincible and it becomes more personal it's a part of the process to have to work through those things you know and understand the risks that go into it and understand the rewards or the love for the sport listen to heart of the game every thursday on the iheart radio app apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts so and we continue with our american stories and neil thompson author of driving with the devil southern moonshine detroit wheels and the birth of nascar let's continue with the story so red byron because he had this damaged leg discovered early on once he was back on the track that he couldn't drive the way he was used to driving because his left leg didn't have strength and he just couldn't maneuver the clutch pedal the way he needed to to be competitive so he talked to red vote about it and they came up with a fix which was for red vote to weld two pins onto the clutch pedal so that red byron whose leg was often in a brace could lift up his left leg and put the boot of his left leg into this space between these two pins on the clutch pedal and then when he needed to change gears instead of putting pressure on that leg which didn't have much strength to it he would pivot the bottom half of his body which will allow him to depress and release the clutch pedal and change gears i don't think red vote or raymond parks thought it would work but in time red byron got used to it and realized you know this works i can do it and he started to win race after race after race as we get into 1948 and stock car racing is really up and running and nascar is a formal organization now red byron becomes the first champion of that first year of nascar some people look at 1949 as the more official first year of nascar because that year they implemented new standards for these strictly stock stock cars but red byron wins that year as well so the first two years of nascar's existence were won by this crippled war veteran with a bad leg that was essentially strapped into his clutch pedal could barely walk but could win race after race and become champion two years in a row the cast of characters at this time is just super colorful and bizarre you know guys with names like goober and soapy and speedy and one eye but red byron was different from that he was a little bit nerdy he was thoughtful he was a big reader he was quieter he wasn't a big party or drinker like some of the other guys were he didn't get into fights like many of them did but behind the wheel he was again fearless and an incredible an incredible competitor as the sport continues to find its footing again after world war ii you get into a number of races through 1946 but 1947 is when it really starts to pick up speed again the end of 1947 is when a group of racers raymond parks red vote red byron and then bill france who was based in daytona beach they all get together down in daytona beach sort of called there by bill france to have a meeting to figure out how are we gonna organize this sport now that we're back up and running what are the rules what's the point system who's gonna oversee these different races and kind of make things a little bit more consistent and cohesive to compete with other organizations that were trying to oversee different types of racing at that time like the triple a so there's this famous meeting that occurs in december of 1947 and a lot of these drivers m raymond parks the moonshine runner turned businessman they come up with a system of rules and create an actual sport national association for stock car auto racing the name came from red vote the mechanic who never fully got credit for the role he played and figuring out the what the rules were and coming up with that name and the acronym but at the end of that meeting december of 1947 it was actually two days at the end of the second day of the meeting bill france had himself named president of nascar a lot of the other guys said yeah go ahead bill you go ahead and run it we're not interested we just want to race and make money and go fast bill france was a little bit more business-minded and also a little bit power hungry and essentially had himself named the president of nascar and over the next couple of years would end up becoming the full owner of the entire sport which subsequently would be owned by his family for many decades moving forward and i think a lot of the early drivers and others who were involved in the sport including raymond parks because i talked to him about it felt betrayed by france they were all in it together but france kind of took over and ran with it and pushed them all aside and when the sport started to become even more popular than any of them could have imagined and started to make some real money none of the early pioneers and actual founders of the sport saw any of that money or got any benefit from the role they played one dynamic that was part of stock car racing from the very beginning was trying to get racers to follow any kind of rules you know one way to get a hillbilly to do something is to tell him not to do it and that sort of unspoken rule applied to a lot of the limits that nascar tried to place on what drivers could and couldn't do you know if they told them to drive with a seat belt they would drive without a seat belt if they told them you know go easy on the other guy's car they would slam into the other guy's car it really was a wild and often lawless period of time for stock car racing and this is something that bill france over time tried to clean up and get racers to tow the line and to follow the rules but because so many of the early racers were moonshiners and were sort of these rebellious southern boys bill france had a really hard time keeping them in line and i think over time that became sort of a tension in the sport and part of the dynamic part of what fans loved which was you know rebellious drivers breaking the rules and then on the other hand you have the official nascar folks led by bill france trying to tighten things up and make things cleaner and more formalized and more family-friendly and i think that tension continued for decades to come and and now probably that rebellious aspect of the sport is mostly gone moving ahead to more recent times nascar's fan base doubled in the 1990s and continued to grow at 10 or more percent per year for a period of time it was the fastest growing sport in america rising to number two and so much of the sport became about marketing revenues averaged three billion dollars a year and were on the rise nascar tv ratings are double those of baseball basketball and hockey half of nascar's viewers are women today and nascar events the races themselves are just wildly popular bacchanals you know just attendance of you know one to two hundred thousand at some of these races massive people showing up for these races and staying there for five days in a row well beyond before and after you know a few hours of the big left turn during race day prime time viewership on not just espn but network sports and the drivers of today are millionaires you know they're living in mansions and throughout the south they're celebrities they're superstars they date supermodels walk up and down any supermarket and you see nascar logos and ads emblazoned on just about every package you can find so it's just exploded which to me is remarkable that it started from such humble roots with just these poor southern boys trying to have some fun and a terrific job on the production by greg hangler and a special thanks to neil thompson author of driving with the devil southern moonshine detroit wheels and the birth of nascar and boy we meet some real characters bread byron comes to mind injured in flight combat in the illusion islands in world war ii and nearly crippled he still manages to win the unofficial and first official nascar championship and that meeting in 1947 two days in daytona beach is where nascar gets formed they were trying to solve a problem getting the drivers to follow the rules no simple task when you're dealing with a bunch of wild rebellious southern boy bill france managed to do that to some he's a hero to others well sort of a goat either way nascar has permanently changed now one of the top grossing sports in the country and it routinely beats in the ratings baseball and football who could have ever imagined the story of nascar moonshine and so much more in a way the story of america here on our american stories introducing uber teen 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