TERMINOLOGY

Moonshine: An illicitly produced and smuggled form of whiskey with an above average alcohol content. The English once called any activity done late at night "moonshining,” though now it blankedly refers to all illegal brewing. Moonshiners is the term used to refer to the manufacturers.

Moonshine’s alternative names: White lightning, shine, popskull, panther’s breath, hooch, mountain dew

Bootleggers: Those who transport and sell moonshine. The term originates from from colonial transporters who literally hid the brew inside their tall riding boots.

Bootlegger Turn: While racing down the road toward a roadblock at 100 mph, the bootlegger brakes hard to 50 mph, then comes off the brake and spins the steering wheel with one hand and pull the emergency brake with the other (to lock the wheels).

Just as the car spins 180° within the parameters of the road, the bootlegger releases the emergency brake and gun the accelerator; the slide slows, and as the car barely stops, the bootlegger peels out in the direction opposite of the one traveled in 10 seconds prior

Bootlegger's Turn Example

A Photographic History:

"81 Years of Lawmen Battling Bootleggers"

Fun fact:

A bootlegger drives with hands at 7:30 and 4:30 so sharp turns can be made quickly in one fluid motion.

Moonshine is produced by a process of fermenting a grain and then distilling the alcohol that it produces. In colonial times moonshiners used rye or barley; for the past 150 years in the South, they've used corn. Grain + sugar + yeast + water = booze, if you can "cook" it and reclaim the steam safely.

True moonshine is not aged. It comes directly from a still, typically at 150 proof (75% alcohol). Because making moonshine is illegal, the practice is unregulated. This can be dangerous for consumers, as moonshiners could augment their formulas with ingredients such as bleach, paint thinner, or embalming fluid to intensify a brew (giving it a signature "kick"). "Legal moonshine" is an oxymoron.

Ironically, the two major results of Prohibition were the rise of organized crime in America and an explosion of moonshining. Prohibition did not stop liquor; by making it forbidden, it made it desirable—and more profitable.

Stock car racing existed well before any organization became involved. The AAA organized "high end" racing and thought stock car races would die out. The name NASCAR [National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing] was proposed by mechanic Louis "Red" Vogt at Bill France's 1947 organizational meeting. Its acronym was the only one pronounceable.

When NASCAR started in 1948, the only track that was not dirt was the Daytona Beach-Road track.

On dirt tracks, cars slide sideways around turns, drifting on four, or often two, tires, thus making the cars hard to control. The cars also throw up clouds of dust, so drivers behind cannot see, are also drifting, and so may hit a rut at the corner, which will flip the car.

In the 1960s only three dirt tracks were still in use. The last dirt-track NASCAR race was held Sept. 30, 1970 in Raleigh, NC and won by Richard Petty.

Darlington Raceway, which opened in 1950, was the first fully paved stock car track.

In the 52 races of the first official NASCAR racing season (1948), every winning car was a Ford.

The Daytona Beach-Road racetrack was the only early stock car track to include any pavement prior to 1950. Note: all oval tracks race counterclockwise with all left turns.

Stock car racing, unlike the formula racing of the Le Mans circuit, essentially means that you drive a car out of the driveway onto a racetrack. But because so many of the impromptu, "bet my car can beat your car" races that took place on rural straightaways or in open pastures in the early 20th-century South were run by bootleggers, who already had very fast cars altered to enhance speed and power, there were rarely any ordinary cars racing. The birth of NASCAR, even though early NASCAR organizers tried to obscure the fact, came directly out of bootlegging moonshine. Many of the early successful drivers had honed their speed-driving techniques eluding revenuers.

Other kinds of auto races at the time were populated by the upper class, so the fact that stock car racing came out of the rural South and was run and watched by the working class meant it had grass root or, rather, red clay appeal—which is why the rest of the racing world ignored it. When 20,000 people filled Atlanta's new Lakewood Speedway in 1938 to see its first stock car race, however, racing noticed. Stock Car Racing History in the Play

The play mentions several formative figures in early stock car racing, especially the Atlanta "team" of owner Raymond Parks, mechanic Red Vogt, and drivers Lloyd Seay, Roy Hall, and later Red Byron, all major winners on the post-war circuit of races. In Act 2, race promoter and former racer Bill France figures prominently; he saw that the sport needed organization and regulation and maneuvered to lead it.

The play is set in 1947-48 when stock car racing's appeal rose markedly and the sport itself was about to organize. Wilder sets the action just as it does, when there are several different dirt track circuits and new tracks appearing. Plus the character Hank's political rhetoric can still be heard from Southern politicians and citizens to this day in states' rights and civil liberties arguments, just as it was in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Although whiskey-making was part of everyday life in colonial America, so much so that it was taxed to pay for the Revolutionary army, A fervor of 19th-century anti-alcohol rhetoric built so that in 1919 the U.S. ratified the 18th Constitutional amendment, Prohibition, effective in 1920 and enforced by the Volsted Act. It outlawed the manufacture, transport, or sale of any beverage with +.5% alcohol. Buying and drinking alcohol were not illegal, however, the loophole that quickly undermined the law.

The 18th amendment was finally repealed in 1933 because alcohol simply went underground, enriching and entrenching organized crime syndicates. Many police also participated in bootlegging or got kickbacks. Booze was provided by mobsters in the North—to be sold at urban speakeasies or under the counter at diners, even prescribed by physicians— and sold by moonshiners in the South, delivered by young, daredevil bootleg drivers.

The power of a dollar over the past 70 years has certainly changed, but determining the real value when taking into consideration inflation and entirely different post-war economic landscape can be difficult.

Here is an overview of everything that a dollar could mean at the time versus today, where you can change the value to determine ranges for other price points.

These values are measured in commodity, income/wealth, and projects, as listed and evaluated below:

"If you want to compare the value of a $1.00 Commodity in 1947 there are four choices. In 2017 the relative:

real price of that commodity is $11.00

real value in consumption of that commodity is $17.30

labor value of that commodity is $19.30 (using the unskilled wage) or $24.90 (using production worker compensation)

income value of that commodity is $34.50

economic share of that commodity is $78.10

If you want to compare the value of a $1.00 Income or Wealth , in 1947 there are five choices. In 2017 the relative:

real wage or real wealth value of that income or wealth is $11.00

household purchasing power value of that income or wealth is $17.30

relative labor earnings of that commodity are $19.30 (using the unskilled wage) or $24.90 (using production worker compensation)

relative income value of that income or wealth is $34.50

relative output value of that income or wealth is $78.10

If you want to compare the value of a $1.00 Project in 1947 there are four choices. In 2017 the relative:

real cost of that project is $8.80

household cost of that project is $17.30

labor cost of that project is $19.30 (using the unskilled wage) or $24.90 (using production worker compensation)

economy cost of that project is $78.10"