Tuesday, January 12, 2021

"..was capable of about 180 mph." Henry County, Virginia

 

from The Good Ol' Boys' Sport by Dave Kindred

in the Washington Post (March 10, 1981)
"What's going on here is that a garageful of good ol' boys from around the moonshine capital of the U.S.A. are building a race car for Buddy Arrington, the last of the convicted 'shine runners still racing alongside Richard Petty and the slick kids such as Darrell Waltrip and Dale Earnhardt...

"We're in Martinsville, Va., 3 1/2 hours southwest of Richmond. This is the county seat of Henry County, which along with neighboring Patrick County and Franklin County is what the American Temperance Union used to call "the wettest place in the United States." The beautiful little race track just outside Martinsville is owned by Clay Earles, who won't say he ever ran 'shine but will point proudly to a picture on his office wall..."

1 comment:

  1. Junior Johnson, as quoted in “Pappyland”

    “The 1944’s had the same motors as they got now. Like a Cadillac, overhead valve, supercharged, bored out, stroked, cammed, and hell fire…you could run it. They said you couldn’t get a Cadillac motor in a ’44 Chevy. They just dropped right in there. Dropped it in a dad-blame frame and called Vic Edelbrock. Talked to him. Built me a manifold, three or four carburetors. Then they had the lawn mower people, made the McCulloch, they made a supercharger. Shit, I got me one of them things and adapted it. Had to build brackets and stuff. You hook that thing to the fan belt and it started whining, and when it started whining, you had some damn power. Sitting there with three carburetors and that’s all I needed. You could put camshafts on that and hydraulic lifters on it and that thing would run so fast you couldn’t even see the road. And that ain’t no shit.”


    https://www.amazon.com/s?k=pappyland+book&crid=1TNVC6035UJ7A&sprefix=pappy%2Caps%2C224&ref=nb_sb_ss_ts-a-p_1_5

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