RIP Junior Johnson - one of the NASCAR originals

[\GoBillsInDallas/]

https://www.charlotteobserver.com/sports/nascar-auto-racing/thatsracin/article238603098.html

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/junior-johnson-winner-of-50-nascar-races-dies-at-88/2019/12/20/d15a1004-2383-11ea-86f3-3b5019d451db_story.html

 

https://classic.esquire.com/article/1965/3/1/junior-johnson

 

One summer day in 1949, Junior Johnson was plowing a cornfield barefoot behind a mule on his family’s farm in Ingle Hollow, N.C., when his brother pulled up in one of the family’s moonshining cars. He said a local racetrack needed cars to fill out the field for a race. Mr. Johnson, pushing 16 at the time, tied the mule to a fence, found some shoes, drove to North Wilkesboro Speedway and entered the race. He finished second, launching one of the most colorful and celebrated careers in American motorsports history.

 

Mr. Johnson was 14 when he started hauling liquor for his father’s moonshining operation. Wrote Wolfe: “It was Junior Johnson specifically, however, who was famous for the ‘bootleg turn’ or ‘about-face,’ in which, if the Alcohol Tax agents had a roadblock up for you or were too close behind, you threw the car up into second gear, cocked the wheel, stepped on the accelerator and made the car’s rear end skid around in a complete 180-degree arc, a complete about-face, and tore on back up the road exactly the way you came from. God! The Alcohol Tax agents used to burn over Junior Johnson.”

 

He would return to his engine shop at night after everybody left to make alterations. He was worried that when his employees left to work for a competing team, they would take his ideas with them. “In today’s world, you would call that a control freak,” Kelley said. “But he was smart enough to know that if he didn’t control it, it was to his detriment.” Mr. Johnson exploited loopholes in the NASCAR rule book, finding gray areas where others, NASCAR officials in particular, saw black and white. Whether he was cheating or “creating,” as he put it, depended on whether you were his fan.

 

In 1935, federal agents raided the Johnson home in what is often reported as “the largest inland seizure of illegal whiskey ever made in America.”

 

“We slept on some of the cases,” Mr. Johnson told Sports Illustrated, adding that his father “wouldn’t put it outside where somebody could steal it. He had the upstairs plumb full of whiskey. All except the kitchen and the dining room was full of whiskey. [The police] came in and toted it out in the yard and busted it up.

 

[Beast]

Wasn't he on Hee-Haw?

[OldTimeAFLGuy]

1 hour ago, \GoBillsInDallas/ said:

https://www.charlotteobserver.com/sports/nascar-auto-racing/thatsracin/article238603098.html

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/junior-johnson-winner-of-50-nascar-races-dies-at-88/2019/12/20/d15a1004-2383-11ea-86f3-3b5019d451db_story.html

 

https://classic.esquire.com/article/1965/3/1/junior-johnson

 

One summer day in 1949, Junior Johnson was plowing a cornfield barefoot behind a mule on his family’s farm in Ingle Hollow, N.C., when his brother pulled up in one of the family’s moonshining cars. He said a local racetrack needed cars to fill out the field for a race. Mr. Johnson, pushing 16 at the time, tied the mule to a fence, found some shoes, drove to North Wilkesboro Speedway and entered the race. He finished second, launching one of the most colorful and celebrated careers in American motorsports history.

 

Mr. Johnson was 14 when he started hauling liquor for his father’s moonshining operation. Wrote Wolfe: “It was Junior Johnson specifically, however, who was famous for the ‘bootleg turn’ or ‘about-face,’ in which, if the Alcohol Tax agents had a roadblock up for you or were too close behind, you threw the car up into second gear, cocked the wheel, stepped on the accelerator and made the car’s rear end skid around in a complete 180-degree arc, a complete about-face, and tore on back up the road exactly the way you came from. God! The Alcohol Tax agents used to burn over Junior Johnson.”

 

He would return to his engine shop at night after everybody left to make alterations. He was worried that when his employees left to work for a competing team, they would take his ideas with them. “In today’s world, you would call that a control freak,” Kelley said. “But he was smart enough to know that if he didn’t control it, it was to his detriment.” Mr. Johnson exploited loopholes in the NASCAR rule book, finding gray areas where others, NASCAR officials in particular, saw black and white. Whether he was cheating or “creating,” as he put it, depended on whether you were his fan.

 

In 1935, federal agents raided the Johnson home in what is often reported as “the largest inland seizure of illegal whiskey ever made in America.”

 

“We slept on some of the cases,” Mr. Johnson told Sports Illustrated, adding that his father “wouldn’t put it outside where somebody could steal it. He had the upstairs plumb full of whiskey. All except the kitchen and the dining room was full of whiskey. [The police] came in and toted it out in the yard and busted it up.

 

 

...RIP Junior......he helped sew the roots as to what NASCAR used to be all about......now he can go commiserate with France Sr about the mess France Jr has created.....

[bbb]

Junior Johnson running through the woods of Caroline!  

[T&C]

My Godfather, RIP... drove for NASCAR in the early years at the Buffalo Civic Stadium.