Junior Johnson: Great driver, great Wikipedia entry

Junior Johnson: Great driver, great Wikipedia entry

Racing legend Junior Johnson was among five recently voted to be the inaugural Nascar Hall of Fame class. I consider myself a Nascar fan, but I admit to not knowing much about its history. Before reading Johnson's Wikipedia entry, the only things I knew about him were 1) he was a Nascar pioneer; 2) he might or may not have been a moonshine runner; and 3) there's a label of pork rinds named after him.

Anyway, here's my favorite paragraph from his entry after the jump:

Johnson was born in Wilkes County, North Carolina, the son of Lara Belle Money and Robert Glenn Johnson, Sr.[1] He grew up on a farm and, like numerous of the pioneers of stock car racing, developed his driving skills running moonshine as a young man. He consistently outran and outwitted local police and federal agents in auto chases, and he was never caught while delivering moonshine to customers. Johnson became something of a legend in the rural South, where his driving expertise and "outlaw" image was much admired. Johnson is credited with inventing the "bootleg turn," in which a driver escapes a pursuer by sharply putting his speeding car into a 180-degree turn on the highway, then speeding off in the opposite direction before his pursuer could turn around. Johnson was known to purchase and use police lights and sirens to fool policemen who had set up roadblocks into thinking that he was a fellow policeman; upon hearing his approach, the police would quickly remove the roadblocks, allowing Johnson to escape with his moonshine.

I've never done anything in my life that's half as cool as any word in that paragraph. Among the different things I learned about Junior Johnson: 1) He's still alive; 2) he served 11 months in prison for moonshining; 3) Ronald Reagan eventually pardoned him to remove the arrest from his record; and 4) he actually owns that brand of pork rinds. Bless you, Junior.

It's also nice to see North Carolina well-represented in the Nascar Hall of Fame class. In addition to Johnson being from Wilkes County, Dale Earnhardt was from Kannapolis and Richard Petty is from Level Cross over in Randolph County. As Jimmie Johnson moves seemingly unstoppable toward his fourth straight title, it's good to remember that before Johnson and Gordon and the rest of the California crew, Nascar was N.C. through and through.