It's on the history channel now: 4:36PM central. With Junior Johnson. Edit: I posted this because there is about an hour of cars from the early 1900's through the Junior Johnson days of running moonshine. This is where it all started...prohibition and rum runners at sea to the moonshine hotrods of the 50's and 60's. Alot of information and pictures I found very interesting. Do you have any stories, or uh family secrets, about them there days? These guys had a belly of guts and nerves of steel. It will probably come on later tonight but, I don't have a TV guide, if you have one can you post it? I'd like to watch it again. Have a good one, Aman.
Hope its on late, sounds like a good one I think I have a mag. showing his collection of (big trunk) 40 ford coupes?
I've seen this documentary about trippers several times and give it my seal of approval.. As for stories, I'd tell you a couple but then I'd have to kill you.. Let's put it this way, the family still a state south of here is still operational. Jan
Thats a great show............Junior says the fastest car he ever drove was one he hauled Moonshine in.
In the 1940s my grandfather ran a cafe in Columbia, South Carolina and served moonshine in coffee mugs. The place was known as "Betty's Tiny House".
Around 30 years ago I tried to Demonstrate to Kiwikev a "Curtis Turner Bottleg turn..' in a '39 coupe on a dirt road.
There was one car that sold for scrap at the big auction here weekend before last. It was a 46 Ford sedan that had a homemade water pipe roll bar in it and I first thought it was an old dirt track car, but it still had headlights and taillights, and the doors weren't welded up like most of the old dirt cars I've ran across over the years. I started looking it over and noticed someone had mounted 4 (thats right, four) coil springs on the rear axle along with the gennie spring. There were two big springs on each side, one in front and one in back of the axle with some really primitively welded brackets to hold them there. Okay, it was definitely set up to carry a really heavy load. The floor behind the front seat was braced all the way to the rear of the trunk, and the dividing braces that were behind the seat in those cars was gone. Now, none of my family that I'm aware of was into that sort of occupation, but there was a lot of that went on around here all the way up to the 70's. One community near here is called Whiskey Ridge, and it is where the old-timers say Capone had some interest during Prohibition. Legend or truth, I can't say, but I do know a lot of whiskey came out of those hills and hollers between the Cumberland and Tennessee rivers. That's common knowledge here. I remember in about 75 or 76 there was a huge still operation found and raided on the farm that joined my uncle's, and they had two early 60's Olds sedans converted to runners. So I have, at least when I was a kid, seen a couple "real" haulers. They were so similar to the 46 in the way they were set up with boosted suspension and floors (but I don't recall a roll bar in them) that I thought it had to be one. I got to thinking while looking at the 46 Ford, and recalled that the fella selling all the stuff had two stills that had been confiscated in West Tennessee and punched full of holes, and they were selling at the auction as well. I went looking for him, but I ran into a fella I work with that flies planes with the old guy, and he said that Howard claimed that car was a moonshine hauler and had been confiscated at the same time the stills were taken. I thought "wow!". I walked back to the 46 and tried to find enough reason to give the $300 that the crusher dude asked me for it, but I just couldn't at the time. I mean it was a rusty (with a capital R) heap. The flathead was missing the heads and intake, so I assumed it had at one time had something other than stock parts on it. Me and Randy looked it over pretty good, but neither of us paid any attention to the shifter tower poking up through the floor...that is until last weekend when we were fiddle-fartin around in the shop and the subject of the car came up. I suddenly thought about that shifter again, and told him I bet that car either had a truck tranny or something else heavy-duty (maybe a 39) since the original should have been a column shift. Well, the mind went racing again, thinking about possibly getting hold of a 39 tranny (which I had looked for specifically at that sale) or a maybe even a banjo with some really desirable gears or posi, maybe a "real" old school cam in that block. Hell, who knows? I called the scrapper dude to see if he still had the car. Nope! Crushed it already! Dammit! So, I learned a valuable lesson (never too old)...if I think I might have found something, check and double check. Don't wait a week to think on it. Most likely it was just a granny-low truck tranny anyway
Sorry for bringing up an old thread, but I thought this thread would be the best place to ask this question. I've seen the show that's mentioned above. I saw another show last night on the History Channel about Appalachia (hosted by Billy Ray Cyrus..."Hanna Montana's" dad). There was a segment on the show about running moonshine, the cars that were used, and the start of NASCAR. They were showing a '46 Ford sedan with an Eldorado engine, and mentioned the heavy-duty rear springs. That got me to thinking...was this possibly one origin of the "jacked up" rearend look? That look was (and still is to some extent) very popular in my part of the South.
I read an article on this during a flight... Apparantly, Junior had a car with a special set up that, when used, would only activate the left front brake, in order to make quick U-turns when being chased. Gotta love the ingenuity!
I think I read somewhere that the 'runners used to lose some leaves out of the front end, to lower it at the front only. This would allow the car to sit "level" with a full load in the trunk, and not draw attention from the cops. The downside was a "hot rod" rake on the trip home!
Man, that's a chromedrat original. The best shift knobs made. http://www.evil1customs.com/skull.htm Thanks, JH
when at all possible the trip home the car was loaded with sugar as bulk amounts of sugar are a nessisary ingrediant for shine , it was also a good way to get busted as the revenuers were keeping a close eye on folks buying a lot of it .. it was easier to follow the sugar sales than to actually catch the moonshiners both runners and makers my family also got thru the depression this way ...
"Driving with the Devil" by Neal Thompson is a GREAT read on this subject. Check your local library or get it from Amazon here: http://www.amazon.com/Driving-Devil-Southern-Moonshine-Detroit/dp/1400082250 It goes into some detail of the cars construction. I'm not done reading it yet
Oh yeah, there was lots of illegal moonshining here in South Carolina, especially here in the mountains of northwest South Carolina. I live in the northern part of Greenville County, check this site: http://www.rootsweb.com/~scgreenv/records/dc_file1.pdf and this page is true, too: http://www.blueridgerounders.com/darkcorner.htm Until "legal" liquor was approved in the early '70's, there was still a lot of activity in the area. The county law enforcement building still has a large still in the lobby that they confiscated in the moonshine days. Back in the 1960's, '70's, even early '80's, you could find old moonshine cars for sale (although they were never advertised as such), usually '40's and '50's cars. Lord, I miss those days!!