Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, October 9, 1993 TAG: 9310090072
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BOB ZELLER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: GREENSBORO, N.C. LENGTH: Long
A chilly, early spring rain had slacked off, giving way to another dark Appalachian night, when federal Alcohol Tax Unit officers D.C. Lawson and W.A. Riggsbe drove their government-owned Ford truck into Ingle Hollow around 8:30 p.m. on March 18, 1953.
They were on the prowl for whiskey making.
A good agent could smell mash fermenting at an illegal distillery from a quarter-mile away, but on this lucky night, their eyes hit pay dirt long before their noses did.
Stashed by the side of the road, not 100 yards past the home of Robert Glen Johnson Sr., were a dozen 100-pound bags of Dixie Crystal sugar - enough to make almost 150 gallons of illegal "sugarhead" moonshine.
As Lawson and Riggsbe sat for a moment and discussed what to do, a car came up behind them and pulled into the Johnson yard. They heard someone open the car door, slam it shut and go inside the house.
Lights shone from within the two-story frame dwelling, where the elder Johnson, Wilkes County's most prolific and determined moonshiner, lived with his wife, Lora Belle, and their sons L.P., Fred and Robert Glen Jr., known to all simply as "Junior."
None of the Johnsons was in sight, but no one leaves a half-ton of sugar by the side of the road for long. The agents knew they had stumbled onto an active moonshining operation - a running still.
The chilling intrigue of a cat-and-mouse game between moonshiners and revenuers was about to begin.
When it was over, 21-year-old Junior Johnson, a big-time operator like his father, was charged - for the first time - with making and selling illegal moonshine.
This was three years before the better-known case in which Johnson was arrested as he was firing up his father's still. He served 11 months and three days in prison for that episode - a stint that made him a legend - the "Last American Hero," as Tom Wolfe's landmark 1965 Esquire magazine article called him.
Here was the ultimate champion of the downtrodden, blue-collar Southern white male. Johnson had fought the government, paid for it with jail time and had gone on raising hell anyway, making more moonshine and hauling it in a high-powered car he drove so fast it took your breath away.
But the story of Johnson's first arrest in 1953 - one that helped shape his life in moonshining - has never been told.
In fact, the full scope of Johnson's exploits as a moonshiner has remained obscure.
He was arrested and tried three times in all and had to fight the government aggressively throughout the 1950s to avoid spending more time in prison than he did.
Then, in 1958, the same year the feds brought a massive conspiracy case against the Johnson family - charging not only Junior and his brothers, but his mother as well - Johnson faced a manslaughter charge. A car he was driving in eastern North Carolina crashed into another vehicle, killing a woman in the other car.
Intoxicating lifestyle
The story of Junior Johnson's moonshining days is rich with the drama and excitement of a bygone era, when moonshiners ruled Wilkes County and a determined, aggressive corps of a dozen young federal ATU agents battled to break its stranglehold.
The lifestyle was intoxicating to both moonshiners and revenuers.
"It was very exciting, and there was a competitive side of the thing that a lot of people liked," says Junior. In fact, he says, "Moonshiners and revenuers had a pretty good rapport."
"Winnin' races was a thrill," Johnson says, "but haulin' whiskey was more exciting. If you lost that race, you went to jail."
Today, there are no federal agents in Wilkes County. The federal Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agency doesn't even prosecute moonshiners any more. It has far bigger problems with illegal firearms.
Illegal whiskey still is distilled in the deep recesses of the Brushy Mountains, but the Appalachian foothills county is better known today for its chicken farming. And Junior Johnson, one of its biggest illegal whiskey makers in the 1950s, is today one of its biggest chicken farmers.
Johnson, of course, is best known for his spectacular career in NASCAR stock-car racing - first as a driver and then as a car owner.
He entered his first NASCAR Grand National (now Winston Cup) race in 1953 - the year of his first arrest - and won 50 races before retiring in 1966. Since then, he has added 136 more as a car owner, having fielded cars for Cale Yarborough and Darrell Waltrip in the primes of their careers.
At 62, the white-haired legend today is as hearty - and crafty - as ever. Each spring and fall, he toils for long hours getting the hay up in his farm's fields. At the track, he is the only team owner who uses a scrambler to hide his team's radio transmissions.
He walks slow, talks slower, and his public countenance - usually stoic and unsmiling - creates an imposing presence. He has the look of a man who hunts, which he does avidly. But he also has the look of a man who has been hunted. Only among friends will he loosen up and become the good ol' boy, quick with a quip and a belly laugh.
Assets accounted
Johnson hasn't made illegal white lightning in more than 30 years, but he cannot escape his past.
Moonshining has shadowed him throughout his life, in part because he doesn't want to forget it, but also because it won't let him forget.
"I don't guess it will ever go away," he says.
It has been both a blessing and a burden.
It was the most exciting time of his life. It made him an unforgettable character in the 20th-century American landscape.
But for more than six months this year, he faced the very real possibility that his adventures of some 40 years ago would rise up and take all the property he had amassed in his beloved Ingle Hollow - $1 million worth of land and buildings and other assets.
None of his famous Ingle Hollow spread - the land, the shops for Bill Elliott's No. 11 Budweiser Ford, the gas station, the house - was ever in his name. Because he was a moonshiner, Johnson purposely owned nothing - on record, at least - so the revenuers could seize nothing.
All of the property was in the name of his ex-wife, Flossie Clark Johnson, whom he divorced last year. And a judge had ruled in February that it was all hers.
Last month, however, with his appeal still pending, Johnson reached a property settlement with Flossie. They essentially divided their estate in half. He keeps both of the race teams; she gets the house and chicken farm.
In the Winston Cup series, Johnson is having his least successful year ever as a car owner. His two teams are winless with only four races left in the season. His unparalleled streak of at least one victory a year since 1967 is in jeopardy.
But in the midst of this tumultuous year, Johnson feels invigorated. He remarried in December, to 28-year-old Lisa Day; had open-heart surgery in March, and found out in April that he was to be a father.
On Aug. 26, Lisa Johnson gave birth to a healthy, 8-pound, 2-ounce Robert Glen Johnson III, who even before his birth was called Junior Jr. in the Winston Cup garage.
One of these days, when Junior is in a story-telling mood, his son may hear tales of the '50s, when Wilkes County, N.C., called itself the moonshine capital of the world, and few disputed it.
Bullheaded stubbornness
Junior's first arrest in 1953 still rankles him today.
He was never caught with the 1,200 pounds of sugar, nor was he ever found at the illegal still the agents found that night. In fact, none of the Johnsons was ever seen that night by the agents.
But the government, using circumstantial evidence, still charged the Junior, his brother Fred and their father.
"If they'd got me for what I'd done, I could have lived with it," Johnson says. "Everybody who fooled with the whiskey business understood if you got caught you paid the price."
Getting busted without getting caught was another matter. "That's worse than us makin' whiskey, I think," Johnson says.
Back then, most Wilkes County moonshiners meekly pleaded guilty, fearing an even harsher sentence if they were convicted after insisting on a trial.
Even though he was only 21, Johnson's response revealed an essential Johnson trait: unwavering, bullheaded stubbornness.
He insisted on a trial. And when he was convicted and sentenced to 18 months in prison, he insisted on a costly appeal.
It came down to a panel of three federal appeals judges, then, to consider the events of that night in 1953, when agents Riggsbe and Lawson stumbled upon the bags of sugar on the road next to the Johnson house.
After spotting the sugar, and watching the car pull in, the agents split up. Riggsbe stayed with the truck - and the sugar. Lawson grabbed a flashlight and walked toward the house.
Just then, a car took off. Seconds later, two others peeled out. Lawson managed to shine his flashlight on the last car as it spun its tires, spitting gravel as it sped into the dark countryside. It was a 1940 Ford - a car whose roomy trunk made it the classic bootlegger's hauling vehicle.
The roar of that 1940 Ford had barely faded when the agents turned in the other direction and saw an old truck approaching, its dim headlights dancing in the dark as it bumped slowly up the dirt road.
On it came, closer and closer, as Lawson and Riggsbe tensed for the inevitable chase. At 75 yards, the truck, a battered 1936 Ford, suddenly stopped. Three men tumbled out and ran three ways.
Riggsbe grabbed one, Ernest Money, who stood with mash slop around his trouser cuffs. Lawson nabbed John Willie Martin, who claimed he'd been fishing up yonder at a pond and just hitched a ride in the truck.
Later, at the end of the dirt road, the agents found a 750-gallon wood-stove still, 10,000 gallons of fermenting mash and another 1,900 pounds of sugar. And they heard more noises from the Johnson house - banging sounds and running motors and cars being jump-started as they slipped away with their lights off.
But there were no Johnsons to be seen or found that night.
Two months later, however, a U.S. District Court grand jury in Wilkesboro indicted Junior, as well as his brother Fred and their father, Glen, on felony criminal charges of possessing a distillery, distilling non-taxpaid whiskey and fermenting mash. Money and Martin, the still hands, also were charged.
`You'd have to move away to do business'
But by the time the trial started on May 25, 1953, Glen already was back in jail on another conviction.
The key trial issue was whether the road in front of the Johnson house was public or private. If the road was private, the sugar and the still were automatically linked to the Johnsons.
One moment in the trial seemed to capture the mood of that era.
John Willie Martin was on the witness stand, and the prosecutor asked him who was driving that old 1936 Ford truck the night he was caught.
"I know, but I don't want to tell that," Martin replied.
"You will have to answer it," Judge Johnson J. Hayes said, "or the court will have to punish you for contempt for refusing to answer."
Replied Martin: "If I was a person like that, people that do things like that, some morning he will wake up and find his own self dead."
A moment later, Martin deftly avoided contempt by saying he knew the man's face, but "just to know his name, I couldn't call it to save my life."
But Martin was still convicted, as were Junior and Fred Johnson and Ernest Money.
Money and Martin accepted their 18-month terms, but the Johnson brothers fought back.
Even as he staunchly defended his innocence in the case brought by Riggsbe and Lawson, Junior Johnson was still busy making illegal whiskey. The early '50s, he says, were his most active years as a bootlegger.
He made as many as four liquor runs a night. He operated as many as four stills at once and had up to 25 men working for him.
"Sometimes the revenuers would get so hot around here, you'd have to move away to do business," he said. "I'd just move off to other areas and keep right on going. I'd go down in Mississippi or Louisiana and Atlanta. I'd buy it south and haul it north."
Johnson made countless runs in cars, of course, but in his heyday, he used trucks in what amounted to an underground freight hauling business.
But as far as the appeals court was concerned, the ATU had to catch him red-handed to get him. And Riggsbe and Lawton had failed to do that. In a three-page opinion in October 1953, the judges overturned the conviction.
"There was no showing that [the Johnsons] had ever been at or near the distillery or knew of its existence," the court wrote. "There was no evidence that the [Johnsons] were at home on the night of the visit by the agents."
The government eventually dismissed the charges. But that did not stop the ATU. If anything, the federal agents intensified their efforts to get the Johnsons, particularly Junior. And in 1956, their work paid off.
SUNDAY EXTRA Just as Junior Johnson's racing career begins to blossom, he is arrested at his father's still and goes to a federal penitentiary. His troubles with the law, however, do not end with his release.
Keywords:
PROFILE AND AUTO RACING
by CNB