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As we heard about in episode forty
one, The World's Worst Sandwich. The

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United States of America has a long
and storied history with alcohol, and more

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specifically the banning and abolition of it. Today, however, is a look

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at how in the early to mid
nineteen hundreds the abolitionist laws banning the production

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and consumption of alcohol played a majorly
significant role in the creation of what today

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is a veritable institution of the American
South, a pastime whereby if you can

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keep your foot planted on the accelerator
and have the ability to continuously steer left,

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you'll be a champion in no time. That's right. Today we're talking

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about how the moonshine bootleggers of the
South initially souped up their cars and learned

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to drive fast in order to evade
the law, and how those very skills

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would become the basis of NASCAR.
These are the bizarre but true stories from

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history and in some way involved food. I'm Nick Charlie Key, and this

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is the fantastic history of food.
The United States of America has a very

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unique relationship with alcohol that spans almost
its entire history. In fact, in

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one of its most well known origin
stories, One of the main and seemingly

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crucial facts is consistently left out of
the story even to this day. The

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Mayflower carried with it some of America's
very first settlers, the Pilgrims, who

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were fleeing religious persecution and seeking a
fresh start in a new land. Now

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we all know they landed at Plymouth
Rock, established a colony, and the

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rest is history. Right Well,
it may interest you to know that their

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intended destination was in fact what we
know today as New York. But as

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they approached the Massachusetts coastline, they
began to fear that their rations of beer

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were hovering awfully low. This was
seemingly too catastrophic for them to even consider,

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and so as soon as a safe
port could be identified, they docked

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their ship and disembarked, not being
able to wait the rest of the trip

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to replenish their alcohol stores. In
no time, these settlers would encounter the

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Native Americans and begin trading with them. What they soon discovered is that the

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Native Americans had no comparable drinking culture, and quickly realized that the more free

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alcohol they gave them, the easier
they were to negotiate favorable deals with In

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time, drinking problems would arise in
the native populations because of this, and

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they would then be castigated by the
settlers for their rowdy behavior, even though

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it had been a problem of the
settler's own making. I'm sure it also

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didn't help that the water sources in
the colonies weren't always to be trusted and

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could contain potentially harmful or even deadly
bacteria. So what did people turn to

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as a viable and safer alternative?
Beer? Of course, the correct brewing

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method meant that the harmful bacteria was
killed in the process and made it far

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safer to drink, despite its negative
effects. In an effort to curb some

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of these side effects, many early
Americans, including most notably George Washington,

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would endeavor to produce what they termed
as small beer, which contained slightly less

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alcohol than its full bodied relatives.
And possibly because of all of these factors,

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there was for a long time no
firmly defined legal drinking age in the

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United States, and on the odd
occasion where there was, it was usually

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something low like fifteen years, and
even then hardly ever enforced by the local

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police. And while laws since those
early days have changed and fluctuated, there

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have been moments in history where a
group of people got together and decided that,

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in fact, an all out ban
on alcohol what was what was rarely

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needed to solve the ills of society, and this thinking is what led to

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the now infamous prohibition. Prohibition in
the United States was a nationwide constitutional ban

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on the production, importation, transportation, and sale of alcoholic beverages that lasted

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from nineteen twenty to nineteen thirty three. The reasons were firmly rooted in a

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variety of social, economic, and
political factors. One of the main reasons

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was the belief that alcohol was a
major contributor to many societal problems, such

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as poverty, crime, and domestic
violence. Many religious groups, particularly the

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Women's Christian Temperance Union, campaigned for
prohibition as a means to promote morality and

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to protect families. It was also
seen as a way to improve public health

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and reduce the burden on hospitals and
prisons. Supporters also believed that it would

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increase productivity and reduce absenteism in the
workplace. In the months leading up to

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the prohibition itself, the writing was
on the war for alcohol producers, and

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they could see the coming alcoholic apocalypse
very clearly. Winemakers especially had an overwhelming

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amount of stock that they did not
want to be left holding once the law

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came into effect. This led them
to slash their prices in order to get

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as man many people to buy from
them as possible, and in the process

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filled their stores and sellers for the
coming drought, and Americans happily complied.

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Within just three months, the winemakers
would go on to sell one hundred and

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forty one million bottles of wine,
enough to fill seventy five Olympic sized swimming

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pools. One particularly enterprising businessman named
Horatio Lanza knew that if he simply bent

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his own morals a bit, he
could stand to make a fortune, so

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in the rush to sell all of
this wine, he personally bought just over

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one point three million gallons of the
stuff, storing it in anticipation of the

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coming laws, and eventually made a
killing when selling it back to people on

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the black market at ridiculously inflated prices. And it was because of these very

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sorts of black markets that made the
practice of prohibition so much more difficult to

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enforce than its supporters had imagined.
Along with the rise of these black markets

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came the emergence of organized crime,
as illegal or bars known as speakeasies and

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bootlegging operations sprang up from coast to
coast. And it's that last part of

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the sentence that will rarely be focusing
in on just a little bit further into

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this episode. The government was unable
to effectively enforce the law, and so

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many people just continued to drink despite
the ban. In fact, the consumption

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of alcohol actually increased during prohibition as
people turned to more potent and dangerous forms

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of alcohol, such as bathtub gin. There are many fascinating stories from this

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time detailing the lengths that people would
go to in order to make or consume

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the alcoholic beverages they loved so much. Today, we're going to run through

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a few of the more notable and
fun examples and then speak about one of

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the more long term and potentially unintended
positive benefits of these illegal practices. To

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begin with, there were your obvious
smuggling tactics, like the one named the

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booze mule, which simply entailed a
man strapping a waistcoat to himself with ten

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to fifteen pockets sewon entered into each
one of these pockets, he would slip

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a flask of liquor, to then
be surreptitiously distributed to any paying customers.

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This was a brash and easily busted
ruse, when police would more often than

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not notice a man waddling slightly with
his arms sticking out at a funny angle,

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trying very hard to look normal.
But there were more subtle methods for

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smuggling one's personal liquor stash around town, and one that suited both the gentlemen

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of the time as well as their
lady counterparts. They would walk elegantly down

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the street, enter their favorite coffee
house, order their beverage of choice,

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and then take a seat somewhere in
the parlor. When their beverage would arrive,

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the walking stick they'd been carrying along
with them down the street would once

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again appear. A small button on
the handle would be pressed and a flap

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would open up, revealing an entirely
hollow cane filled with alcohol that could then

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be discreetly decanted into their morning coffee. Other ladies of the time opted for

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less mechanically complex solutions, choosing rather
to merely strap a small flock us to

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their thighs that was held in place
by their garters. Then there is the

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fantastic pun based solution that gets my
vote simply for the wordplay alone. Men

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and women would carry a fake book
around with them that had been hollowed out

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internally to hold a small flask of
alcohol. Attached to the flask was a

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little pipe with a cap or a
cork in the end that could then be

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poured out directly from the book itself. It held just enough, on average

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for four shots of alcohol, and
because of this, the title of the

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book emblazoned across its cover was the
cleverly named four Swallows. The bootleggers themselves

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had some rather unique methods of trying
to disguise their activities as well, and

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possibly the most ingenious of all was
when moonshiners tending their stills in the forests

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and countrysides crafted and then wore specially
designed shoes with wooden blocks fastened to the

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soles. These wooden blocks had been
specially carved to leave what appeared to be

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nothing more than a cow's hoof print
in the soil, making sure that law

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enforcement officers wouldn't be able to track
their movements to and from their secret distillation

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operations. The big city operations,
with access to more advanced technology and methods,

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used some old, hollowed out torpedoes
to smuggle booze across the Detroit River

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from Canada into the United States.
The torpedoes were filled with alcohol and then

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pulled from bank to bank via a
system of underwater cables and pulleys. At

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its peak, these torpedoes were smuggling
up to forty cases of alcohol an hour

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across the river. Prohibition also had
many unintended consequences. It led to the

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loss of vast amounts of jobs in
the legal alcohol industry, and so many

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people, simply so that they could
put food on their tables, turned to

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illegal activities to make a living,
and that is the crux of today's story.

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Citizens turned to bootlegging for a variety
of reasons. For some, it

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was just a simple way to continue
to consume alcohol despite the ban. Naturally,

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the demand for alcohol didn't just disappear
with the ban, and therefore many

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people were willing to pay a premium
for it. Now, even before the

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prohibition, secret distilleries had been running
for decades in the rural areas across the

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South brewing up home made spirits to
sell under the radar and crucially far away

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from any sorts of taxes. The
name we all know it as moonshine came

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directly from the need to conduct these
sorts of operations in secret. Distillers would

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work by the light of the moon, with fewer cars on the roads and

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people generally tucked up in bed inside, but also as a means to hide

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the smoke rising from their stills.
In fact, moonshine production dates back all

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the way to the seventeen hundreds,
when officials first imposed heavy taxes on the

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sale of alcohol. Farmers and immigrant
workers throughout the South took this opportunity to

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start making some extra cash by producing
and selling alcohol without the cumbersome taxes attached

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to it. In these early days, it was just sold locally to friends

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and family within no more than a
twenty or thirty mile radius. But when

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prohibition happened, I'm sure you can
imagine how even the small time producers went

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into overdrive to meet the rising demand. It also just so happened to coincide

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with the rise of mass produced automobiles, which opened up a whole new world

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of possibilities bootleggers began replacing their small
time forty gallons stills with ones that could

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hold up to one thousand gallons and
began hiding them in swamps, dense forests,

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and in caves around the Appalachian Mountains. For others without any historical legacy

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of moonshining, this new business model
simply offered them a means of making a

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living. The legal alcohol industry had
been shut down, and bootlegging provided away

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for these people to continue to earn
a living and support their families. And

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along with that, the increase in
the illegal production of alcohol brought more money

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into the region as a whole,
which helped boost the local economies. In

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addition, the government's efforts to enforce
prohibition were often ineffective. The government did

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not have the resources or the will
power to fully enforce the law, and

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many people were able to continue to
produce and sell their homemade alcohol with very

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little fear of getting caught. These
bootleggers, who operated mostly in the South,

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had to be resourceful and creative in
order to evade the law that did

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choose to crack down on their operations. Now they had a few options at

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their disposal. In the scenario.
First, they could go straight and shut

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the operations down, or they could
go even more covert and underground in the

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distribution of their product. But there
was a third option that became the one

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they inevitably went for. No stopping
of their production and certainly no sneaking around

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with it. No. This option
was to simply make sure that if the

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police did see them transporting their goods, that those policemen simply wouldn't be able

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to catch them. When they were
shipping smaller quantities, they would often turn

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to creative tactics, like using secret
compartments hidden within their vehicles to conceal their

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moonshine. But each distillery began producing
more and more alcohol and could no longer

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keep up with the demand just by
hiding the alcohol in their vehicles, so

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they turned to another solution. The
distilleries began employing drivers who, by all

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outward appearances would simply be shuttling around
town in ordinary looking cars. But it

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was what was hiding underneath the normal
exterior that made these cars by no means

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ordinary. The vehicles were outfitted with
heavy duty shocks and springs to absorb the

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rough terrain of the back roads,
and bumpy mountain passes. The seats in

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the back were often removed in order
to ship more booze, and the regular

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engines were replaced with high performance racing
engines to make sure these cars could outrun

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any corps or tax agents they might
stumble upon while out on a delivery.

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But it wasn't just the cars that
were extraordinary, it was the drivers themselves

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too. They knew every path,
road, twist and turn throughout their areas,

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and this came in handy at high
speeds, as they always knew when

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to break or when they could get
away with going flat out. Sometimes at

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night, when the police were in
hot pursuit, their in depth knowledge of

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the roads allowed them to turn their
head head lights off and simply drive by

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intuition, the cops losing them in
the darkness. To practice for their inevitable

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encounters with the fuzz, they would
often race each other on these back roads

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and highways, honing their driving skills
while at the same time getting a chance

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to show off their souped up vehicles. Many of these bootleggers who were masters

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of these back road races became local
legends, and their races became a source

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of entertainment for many people. In
the beginning, these races tended to only

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happen as the result of two bootleggers
bragging to each other as to which of

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them had the faster car. But
in time they became something to look forward

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to on the weekends, when spectators
would gather at the start and finish lines

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to watch these dared devils go head
to head. There is a legend that

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is still spoken of about a man
named Jelly Roll who supposedly operated a secret

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garage hidden deep in the woods right
by the North Carolina and Virginia state line.

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Here, if you were trusted enough
to ever find out where his garage

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was, and if you were ever
personally introduce us to him by a trusted

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accomplice, you too could have him
make you a car so powerful as to

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be almost untouchable and uncatchable by the
authorities. There is a fantastic old tale

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talabled by a man named Bill Blair, who tells the story of his father,

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Bill Blair Senior, and his escapades
with the law. One night,

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an early model Ford was speeding down
the winding back roads of North Carolina.

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It was driven by Bill Blair Senior
and was loaded to the hilt with white

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liquor. A few hundred yards up
the road, his friend Elma was driving

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like a maniac, possibly after having
imbibed a little too much of his own

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precious cargo. This erratic driving caught
the attention of some local policeman who immediately

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set off after him. Bill,
still trying to pretend like he had nothing

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to do with this crazy driver in
front of him, hung back a bit

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and watched it all unfold in front
of him. Elma screeched around the corners,

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narrowly missing signposts, and led the
policeman on a wild back roads goose

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chase. After about ten or fifteen
minutes of this, with Bill making sure

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to stay just close enough to the
action to see what was going on,

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Elma approached a fork in the road. He faked to go right and then

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pulled hard to the left, but
ended up sliding his car smack bang into

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the side of a maple tree.
No sooner had the smoke started to rise

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from the crashed vehicle than Elma was
shimmering out of the side window, disappearing

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into the forest. The policeman who
had been chasing him exited their own vehicle

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and began firing their weapons into the
dense, dark forest where they thought they

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had last seen him run. As
Bill approached the scene and began to slow

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down his own car, Elma jumped
out of a nearby tree somewhere behind the

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policeman, opened Bill's side door and
shouted, let's go. The roar of

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Bill's engine as his vehicle sprung into
life alerted the police, and as Bill

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spared past them, the chase was
once again back on. With Elma in

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the passenger seat and one hundred and
twenty gallons of alcohol in the back,

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his car was a lot heavier and
a lot slower than usual. Soon the

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police had caught up to them,
and Bill, not just a fast driver,

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but an intelligent one too, slowed
down just enough to allow the police

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car to draw up alongside them.
Just as they did so, he hid

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his brakes and swerved into them,
tapping the back of their car and sending

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them spinning into the nearby ditch at
the side of the road. Twenty minutes

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later, Bill and Elmer rolled up
to the secret cabin along the Dan River,

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which had doors just big enough to
drive through and hide the car inside.

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This was just another night for two
experienced drum runners. As the nineteenth

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thirties wore on and prohibition was finally
lifted, the demand for bootlegged alcohol waned.

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This left behind it a group of
men now out of work, but

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were souped up cars in a skill
set that no one needed. They began

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turning to these back road races as
a way to earn some money, but

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it was measly amounts and the risks
were often great. But on December fourteenth,

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nineteen forty seven, a man named
Big Bill France, a driver in

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his own right, called a meeting
of all the other drivers, car owners,

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and mechanics in the area. He
proposed the idea of taking these back

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road races and formalizing them into one
cohesive racing league with standardized rules so as

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to ensure the fairness across the board, because these weren't specially designed racing cars,

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but rather standard issue models or stock
cars with souped up parts. The

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new league became known as the National
Association for Stock Car Auto Racing, or

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as I'm sure you can guess,
NASCAR. Two months later and the first

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official race was held in NASCAR's first
year. Our old friend Bill Blair Senior,

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the daring late night bootleg driver would
go on to win a championship race

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in Danville, Virginia, but then
just another three races over the next one

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hundred and twenty three between then and
nineteen fifty eight, when he retired.

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But he was not the only former
Moonschina to find their true calling in NASCAR.

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Another man and future NASCAR Hall of
Famer went by the name of Junior

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Johnson. Junior, whose real name
was Robert Glenn Johnson, used to run

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illegal whisky from his family still to
the underground bars in the nearby cities.

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He was known for his high speed
driving, but would eventually get caught by

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police and serve eleven months in prison
for his bootlegging antics. His release from

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prison just so happened to coincide with
the birth of NASCAR, and he decided

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to turn his attention to where his
true skill set lay, and he quickly

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began to make a name for himself. He soon won his first race and

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would go on to win fifty races
in his career, as well as the

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overall NASCAR Championship in nineteen sixty.
Once his driving days were over, Junior

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Johnson went on to become a team
owner and was instrumental in the continued growth

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and popularity of NASCAR across America.
Now, it is no hidden secret that

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the early boom in the sport was
funded not by sponsorships or spectator ticket money,

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but primarily by illicit moonshine money being
funneled back into the sport. That

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credits the very same Moonshine as the
place it all began. Junior Johnson was

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once asked why early moonshiners seemingly made
the best NASCAR drivers, and he responded

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with a simple but profound answer.
Moonshiners put more time, energy, thought

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and love into their cars than any
other races ever will the stakes were always

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so much higher. You see,
when you lose on the track, you

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still get to go home, but
lose with a load of whiskey in your

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car and you go to jail.
This show is made entirely by me,

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00:20:45,799 --> 00:20:49,680
Nick Charlie Key, with our theme
music having been made by the enigma that

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is the mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder. If
you'd like to support the show, the

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00:21:00,039 --> 00:21:03,920
simplest way to do that is over
on our Patreon account. There's just one

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00:21:03,960 --> 00:21:07,720
option, so for just two bucks
a month, you'll help me keep producing

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00:21:07,720 --> 00:21:11,519
this show, and in return,
you'll get your name forever etched onto our

275
00:21:11,559 --> 00:21:15,240
supporter's Wall of Fame over on our
website and then maybe listen out for your

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00:21:15,279 --> 00:21:19,319
name in an upcoming episode. So, until next time, bon appetite,