and get the same radio. Hâit was an awful hard thing for them to radio them down. Theyâd just listen in on the radio and see where theyâre setting up the roadblocks and go a different way.â
And such different ways. The good old boys knew back roads, dirt roads, up peopleâs back lanes and every which way, and an agent would have to live in the North Carolina hills a lifetime to get to know them. There wasnât hardly a stretch of road on any of the routes where a good old boy couldnât duck off the road and into the backcountry if he had to. They had wild detours around practically every town and every intersection in the region. And for tight spotsâthe legendary devices, the âbootleg slide,â the siren and the red light ⦠.
It was just a matter of keeping up with the competition. You always have to have the latest equipment. It was a business thing, like any other business, you have to stay on topââThey was some guys who was more dependable, they done a better jobââand it may have been business to Junior, but it wasnât business to a generation of good old boys growing up all over the South. The Wilkes County bootleg cars started picking up popular names in a kind of folk hero worshipâ
âThe Black Ghost,â âThe Grey Ghost,â which were two of Juniorâs, âOld Mother Goose,â âThe Midnight Traveler,â âOld Faithful.â
And then one day in 1955 some agents snuck over the ridges and caught Junior Johnson at his daddyâs still. Junior Johnson, the man couldnât any body catch!
The arrest caught Junior just as he was ready to really take off in his career as a stock car driver. Junior says he hadnât been in the whiskey business in any shape or form, hadnât run a load of whiskey for two or three years, when he was arrested. He says he didnât need to fool around with running whiskey after he got into stock car racing, he was making enough money at that. He was just out there at the still helping his daddy with some of the heavy labor, there wasnât a good old boy in Ingle Hollow who wouldnât help his daddy lug those big old cords of ash wood, it doesnât give off much smoke, out in the woods. Junior was sentenced to two years in the Federal reformatory in Chillicothe, Ohio.
âIf the law felt I should have gone to jail, thatâs fine and dandy,â Junior tells me. âBut I donât think the true facts of the case justified the sentence I got. I never had been arrested in my life. I think they was punishing me for the past. People get a kick out of it because the officers canât catch somebody, and this angers them. Soon as I started getting publicity for racing, they started making it real hot for my family. I was out of the whiskey business, and they knew that, but they was just waiting to catch me on something. I got out after serving ten months and three days of the sentence, but hâit was two or three years I was set back, about half of fifty-six and every bit of fifty-seven. Hâit takes a year to really get back into hâit after something like that. I think I lost the prime of my racing career. I feel that if I had been given the chance I feel I was due, rather than the sentence I got, my life would have got a real boost.â
But, if anything, the arrest only made the Junior Johnson legend hotter.
And all the while Detroit kept edging the speeds up, from 150 m.p.h. in 1960 to 155 to 165 to 175 to 180 flat out on the longest straightaway, and the good old boys of Southern stock car racing stuck right with it. Any speed Detroit would give them they would take right with them into the curve, hard-charging even though they began to feel strange things such as the rubber starting to pull right off the tire casing. And God! Good old boys from all over the South roared together after the StanchionâSpeed! Guts!âpouring into
And such different ways. The good old boys knew back roads, dirt roads, up peopleâs back lanes and every which way, and an agent would have to live in the North Carolina hills a lifetime to get to know them. There wasnât hardly a stretch of road on any of the routes where a good old boy couldnât duck off the road and into the backcountry if he had to. They had wild detours around practically every town and every intersection in the region. And for tight spotsâthe legendary devices, the âbootleg slide,â the siren and the red light ⦠.
It was just a matter of keeping up with the competition. You always have to have the latest equipment. It was a business thing, like any other business, you have to stay on topââThey was some guys who was more dependable, they done a better jobââand it may have been business to Junior, but it wasnât business to a generation of good old boys growing up all over the South. The Wilkes County bootleg cars started picking up popular names in a kind of folk hero worshipâ
âThe Black Ghost,â âThe Grey Ghost,â which were two of Juniorâs, âOld Mother Goose,â âThe Midnight Traveler,â âOld Faithful.â
And then one day in 1955 some agents snuck over the ridges and caught Junior Johnson at his daddyâs still. Junior Johnson, the man couldnât any body catch!
The arrest caught Junior just as he was ready to really take off in his career as a stock car driver. Junior says he hadnât been in the whiskey business in any shape or form, hadnât run a load of whiskey for two or three years, when he was arrested. He says he didnât need to fool around with running whiskey after he got into stock car racing, he was making enough money at that. He was just out there at the still helping his daddy with some of the heavy labor, there wasnât a good old boy in Ingle Hollow who wouldnât help his daddy lug those big old cords of ash wood, it doesnât give off much smoke, out in the woods. Junior was sentenced to two years in the Federal reformatory in Chillicothe, Ohio.
âIf the law felt I should have gone to jail, thatâs fine and dandy,â Junior tells me. âBut I donât think the true facts of the case justified the sentence I got. I never had been arrested in my life. I think they was punishing me for the past. People get a kick out of it because the officers canât catch somebody, and this angers them. Soon as I started getting publicity for racing, they started making it real hot for my family. I was out of the whiskey business, and they knew that, but they was just waiting to catch me on something. I got out after serving ten months and three days of the sentence, but hâit was two or three years I was set back, about half of fifty-six and every bit of fifty-seven. Hâit takes a year to really get back into hâit after something like that. I think I lost the prime of my racing career. I feel that if I had been given the chance I feel I was due, rather than the sentence I got, my life would have got a real boost.â
But, if anything, the arrest only made the Junior Johnson legend hotter.
And all the while Detroit kept edging the speeds up, from 150 m.p.h. in 1960 to 155 to 165 to 175 to 180 flat out on the longest straightaway, and the good old boys of Southern stock car racing stuck right with it. Any speed Detroit would give them they would take right with them into the curve, hard-charging even though they began to feel strange things such as the rubber starting to pull right off the tire casing. And God! Good old boys from all over the South roared together after the StanchionâSpeed! Guts!âpouring into
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