Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, October 8, 1993 TAG: 9310080092
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BOB ZELLER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: GREENSBORO, N.C. LENGTH: Long
NASCAR's first full decade, the 1950s, was a colorful era when tough-looking men in greasy T-shirts manhandled chubby, top-heavy race cars, belting themselves in with a rope.
Moonshining went hand in hand with stock-car racing. Profound changes in NASCAR racing make that time seem like distant history, but it is still recent enough that many of the pioneers are alive today.
And Junior Johnson, more than any other living legend, reflects the essence of the sport's roots, because he was both a moonshiner and a racer.
He first drove a car when he was 8. By the time he was 11, he had taken a car speedometer beyond 120 mph. "I was haulin' booze quite a bit when I was 12," he says. "We didn't need a driver's license. We wasn't going to stop no how. We'd just jump out and run."
"By the time he was 14, Junior could outrun any officer that I know of," said retired federal Alcohol Tax Unit Agent Joe Carter, who caught Junior - on foot - in 1956.
But it was a dangerous game. And both Junior and his brother Fred were involved in fatal automobile accidents in the 1950s.
"The car was scared of him," said retired moonshiner Thurmond Brown of Wilkes County, a lifelong friend of Johnson's. "He manhandled it. He whupped that thing. And he passed on the top of hills and curves and every damn where. He'd pass on the right hand side of the road, and the air would be full of dirt and grass. And it scared the man he passed to death, and scared me settin' there with him, too.
"One time, Junior come back through [Winston-Salem, N.C.] about 3 o'clock in the mornin' after haulin' a load and unloading it. And, hell, he was just drivin' sideways. And I said, `Junior, you're gonna have the law on you.' "
"And it made him about half mad, I believe. And he looked over and said, `If we can't outrun 'em empty, what the hell were we doin' down here loaded?' "
"I knowed we could outrun 'em - loaded or empty. See, I was dreadin' that ride. Sittin' over there on the other side, it was hard on me."
Johnson was no different as a stock-car racer.
He was the kind of driver who could lap the field, blow a tire, lose four laps, make up two of them and claw his way back to third, like he did at Martinsville Speedway in May 1955.
"If I weren't in front, I was tryin' to get in front," Johnson says.
"He was a great race driver and a fierce competitor, but he might have been a little too fierce for the type of equipment we had back then," said retired driver Ned Jarrett. "He was going to go to the front if the car held together. He didn't seem to care whether it broke or not."
Johnson did not finish 161 of his 310 races - a failure rate of almost 52 percent.
Richard Petty's career failure rate, in contrast, was 29 percent.
But Petty, for all of his stellar driving efforts, never won a race after flipping his car in practice.
Johnson did.
Twice.
"The fans loved to watch Junior run," said stock-car racing historian Bob Latford. "He ran like Dale Earnhardt. Basically, he'd win or blow."
"I've seen them hang up there on the woodboard fence, trying to see Junior come through that dirt in those turns," says Brown. "Them people didn't have the money to get in, and they would just have their heads hung over the top of the fence, and Junior would have done had their face throwed full of mud. And their fingers had turned white where they'd held their weight on that fence."
Still, Johnson was all but unknown outside of central North Carolina when he and his brother Fred began preparing a modified 1937 Ford for the 1953 Darlington 200 - the second annual Independence Day modified/sportsman classic at Darlington Raceway, then a spectacular new superspeedway for stock-car racing.
The two unknown mountain boys from Wilkes County were all but ignored when they showed up to race.
"It's like you take a mule to the Kentucky Derby. That's about what it amounted to," Johnson says. "We were against a thousand-to-one odds. We didn't really know what we was doing. All the experience we had was in the bootleggin' business."
But with 16 laps to go, Johnson took the lead and went on to capture one of the most improbable victories in the history of the young sport.
"All the big wigs of racing was there, and I was just a kid. And we won," Johnson says. "Beat 'em at their own game."
This victory came two months before Johnson entered his first Grand National (now known as Winston Cup) race - the 1953 Southern 500. He crashed in that race, but went on to win 50 others, including the 1960 Daytona 500. None, however, thrilled him like the modified victory at Darlington.
"I think that was the most satisfying race I ever won," he says.
As an active Winston Cup car owner, Johnson's place in racing history is still a work in progress. But his fans know where he ranks.
"Two or three years ago," says Martinsville Speedway public relations director Dick Thompson, "Junior walked into the office, and I looked up at him and said, `There's the hardest charger ever.'
"And he just laughed and said, `Nah, Dale is.'
"And a little while later, Earnhardt came past the door and I said, `Yeah, there's the hardest charger in NASCAR.'
"And he just looked at me and said: `Nah, Junior was.' "
Keywords:
PROFILE AUTO RACING
by CNB