Now that the great car racing organization NASCAR has taken to bragging that it sponsors the most popular sport in the U.S., there’s been a lot of talk about how NASCAR’s origins are rooted in the Deep South’s old moonshine culture.It’s certainly an old culture, and not one that’s necessarily limited to the South. One of President Washington’s first crises in office was putting down the Whiskey Rebellion in 1794. This was when disgruntled farmers in western Pennsylvania objected to paying federal taxes on their home-made whiskey. Washington had to send troops to quell the disquiet.Even though the feds prevailed and restored order (as well as taxation) with their superior muscle, the Whiskey Rebellion was the mother of moonshine culture, a secretive world in which mostly rural folks produced their own hard liquor and were damned if they were going to pay any taxes on it.In the South, especially after the Civil War, where locals lost little love for the federal government, moonshining became the stuff of legends. In a foretaste of the problems the government would have during Prohibition in the 1920s, federal “revenooers” engaged in a running battle with backwoods brewers that they were doomed never to win.
Part of their problem was that many of the people running the illicit booze between deep-woods stills and end users were brash young men who knew the rural back roads well and became very good at driving them in modified stock passenger cars at high speed. Many federal agents, highly trained drivers themselves, were left in the dust by teenage boys who performed astounding feats of driving, often on dirt roads under moonless night skies.Part of the allure of moonshine, aside from its lower cost because it wasn’t taxed, is that much of it was pretty damned good booze. Moonshiners might have been scofflaws, but that didn’t mean that they were corner cutters or indifferent to the quality of their product. A lot of moonshine was smooth, clean liquor, some of it even aged, and much of it consistently high enough in quality to attract devoted local followings.As the South has urbanized, moonshine culture lingers on, but more as a wistful remnant than a major presence in Southern culture. If anything, people have taken an affectionate stance toward it. In Dawsonville, GA, considered the birthplace of NASCAR, folks celebrate the moonshine heritage every October at the Mountain Moonshine Festival.
The event, which turns 37 this year, features old-timers who used to drive the moonshine expresses, Elvis impersonators, cloggers, authentic stills (not operational), bluegrass musicians, picnics, parades and all the other activities a small southern town with a long memory can serve up.
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