A day with Junior Johnson: Moonshine, ham 'n stories

Driving north along Highway 421 in picturesque Wilkes County, North Carolina, it's quiet, few cars are on the road, and off in the distance, the green pastures and foothills are dotted with farmhouses.

At first glance, newcomers to this sleepy, rural countryside would never imagine decades ago, post-Prohibition, the quaint farmhouses were fronts for lucrative bootlegging businesses that supplied speakeasies with illegal alcohol called moonshine.

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Moonshine or White Lightning; Kickapoo, Joy Juice, Hooch, Ruckus Juice, Mountain Dew, Happy Sally, Hillbilly Pop and Panther's Breath -- all slang words for the liquid institution of North Carolina, but more important, the liquid catalyst for which NASCAR was formed.

And only one man embodies both: Junior Johnson, legendary bootlegger turned successful racecar driver and team owner.

He is the fabric of NASCAR -- America's most popular form of motorsports -- and moonshine -- the backwoods beverage that bootleggers ran under a veil of darkness on the back roads of Wilkesboro, N.C., the town once considered to be the moonshine capital of the world. Along the dirt roads of Wilkes County is where stock car drivers like Johnson learned to become wheelmen by evading revenuers.

Today, Johnson uses these roads, now covered with asphalt, to drive his kids to school, have lunch with friends and check on business affairs in town.

"See that over there, that used to be a spot. They used to run liquor all through these mountains," said Johnson as he pointed to a plot of land now hidden away by a Citgo gas station and Subway sandwich shop. "Most of them got out of bootlegging to raise cattle or the chicken business."

NASCAR.COM reporter Raygan Swan rode shotgun with the legend inside a dusty farm truck to observe life as a living legend and one the last great American heroes.

10 a.m.: Entering the Junior Johnson Estate

"Hey ya lazy buzzard, wander over here."

Those were the first words I heard from Johnson's mouth. Fortunately he was talking to the dog and not me. He was calling for Sally, a coon dog he and his wife rescued from an abusive situation.

Standing in the drive way, he was dressed in his iconic overalls and me in iconic camo capris with coordinating Ray-Ban Wayfarers. He gave me a once over and said "Are we going coon huntin' today?"

Laughing, I introduced myself and he told me to go check out his "tadpole hole" while he changed clothes.

I walked to the back of his home, situated on 200 acres with about 800 head of cattle, and found a luxurious in-ground pool with adornments and a pool house larger than my condo in Uptown Charlotte.

Tadpole hole my Aunt Fannie! (Continued)