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ESPN Daily

How Men, Moonshine, and the Need for Speed Birthed NASCAR

ESPN Daily

ESPN

Sports

4.63.9K Ratings

🗓️ 23 May 2024

⏱️ 28 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

We know that the roots of NASCAR can be traced back to the American South in states like North Carolina, Virginia, Georgia, and Tennessee. But what you might not realize is that particular motorsport was conceived through the hills of those very same states by bootleggers running moonshine while racing for bragging rights. So when a sinkhole was recently discovered under the famous North Wilkesboro Speedway in North Carolina, there was no surprise to find more than just mud and dirt down there. Ryan McGee joins us to explain how one of the sport's oldest tracks might just have been the site of one of America’s oldest vices. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

Brian, before you tell me the first time you ever drank moonshine, I need to know what kind of Sean Connery, Indiana Jones notes do you have about Wilkesboro because you were breaking out quotes from 1999, videos from 2010, my God, your archive system is bananas, sir.

0:22.0

So I told my daughter just the other day, she's a freshman in college, and I said, she said,

0:27.5

what have you learned at your age?

0:29.5

And I said, what I've learned is that wisdom has nothing to do with intelligence. Wisdom is the fact that

0:36.5

you just been around longer than everyone start digging through notes. Man, I got I got stacks of ESP in the magazines and I'll go digging through those for

0:55.7

quotes for stuff I got in the 90s back when I was you know 11 years old

1:00.8

right for this magazine. What about the moonshine?

1:05.0

I know you're a man of North Carolina blood.

1:08.0

When was the first time this entered your life and please say so in a way that does not get, well let's just say your daughter on your case.

1:15.4

All right, so I'll say this, I had tried moonshine at a younger age, right?

1:22.0

When you grow up into Carolina, itinas just kind of all over the place.

1:26.1

My granddad, who as far as anyone knew was a T-toteller, the reality was, he'd slip off the backports there in Carls Creek, North Carolina

1:34.4

and during the holidays when we all got too rowdy and he just needed something to

1:37.8

take the Christmas edge off. That's fine. So in North Carolina you can buy the moonshine at the ABC store, the state controlled

1:50.0

liquor store, and that's fine. And there's a Junior Johnson brand moonshine.

1:55.0

But I had a jar of moonshine that Junior Johnson,

2:00.0

the last American hero hero gave me.

2:05.0

There's the white flag for the final lap.

2:07.0

Junior Johnson is still ahead but on my lunch.

2:10.0

Here they come roaring down to the finish line.

2:12.0

Johnson's ahead by a few seconds only.

2:14.0

They're chagined its junior Johnson.

...

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