page 12, “dear me, how beautiful she was”: Mitchell, North Georgia Journal.
page 12, “not yet broke in” and “the yellow of an egg”: Ibid,
page 13, “savage hunters” and “civilized population”: President Andrew Jackson's Case for the Removal Act, First Annual Message to Congress, Dec. 8, 1830.
page 15, “By God, what will you take for a piece?” and “run over and squish”: Superior Court of Dawson County court files and transcripts,
page 16, “The mountains didn't have much to offer”: Samples, “Garhofa's Raymond Dawson Parks,” Pioneer Pages.
page 16-17, Day,… sentenced for making “illicit… untaxed whiskey”: Superior Court of Dawson County,
page 17, “to its knees—It'll never rise again” and “It's the only thing that lasts”: Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind, audio ed. (Prince Frederick, Md.: Recorded Books, 2001).
page 17, fistfights… you remember most the ones you lost: Tony Horwitz, quoting Shelby Foote, Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War (New York: Vintage, 1999), 146.
page 18, “invaders of your country… agrarian mercenaries”: Shelby Foote, Shiloh, audio ed. (Prince Frederick, Md.: Recorded Books, 1993).
page 18, a bitter sense of tragedy: Horwitz, Confederates, 146.
page 18, a quarter of the nation's population: Peter Applebome, Dixie Rising: How the South Is Shaping American Values, Politics, and Culture (San Diego: Harvest Book, 1996), 328.
page 18, Vicksburg… little to celebrate in that: Horwitz, Confederates, 146.
page 18, “all of which… can be operated stone drunk”: Pete Daniel, quoting Rick Bragg, Lost Revolutions (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000), 93.
page 19, “lewd, crude, half-starved sharecroppers”: Applebome, Dixie Rising, 325.
page 19, “… one click away from true reality”: Webb, Born Fighting, 263.
page 19, “purposely isolated itself…”: Applebome, Dixie Rising, 326.
page 19, a traitor to the South: Ibid., 325.
page 19, within twelve minutes of his arrival…: Webb, Born Fighting, 262.
page 19, “bunghole of the United States”: Applebome, Dixie Rising, 11.
page 22, drive-through service station… proved a financial boon: Douglas Brinkley, Wheels for the World: Henry Ford, His Company, and a Century of Progress (New York: Viking, 2003), 334.
page 22, the creation of the first drive-in restaurants, motels…: Ibid., 335.
page 23, a settlement with more saloons than churches: Dabney, Mountain Spirits, 132.
page 23, Atlanta started from scratch: Horwitz, Confederates, 283.
page 23, “what a quarter million Confederate soldiers died to prevent” and “What is this place?”: Ibid,
page 23, streetcars clanging… clacking noises coughing out from the textile mills: Tony Earley, Jim the Boy (Boston: Back Bay Books, 2000), 122-124.
page 24, Henry Ford… farm-bound life… “drudgery”: Brinkley, Wheels, 127.
3. Henry Ford “created a monster”
Unless otherwise noted, all information about “the bug” comes from author interviews with Raymond Parks, his sister Lucille Shirley, Billy Watson, Gordon Pirkle, a few unnamed sources, and a few stories in Atlanta Constitution. Information about Parks's arrest and imprisonment comes from interviews with Raymond Parks, Violet Parks, and Lucille Shirley; also Jerry Bledsoe, The World's Number One, Flat-Out, Ail-Time Great, Stock Car Racing Book (New York: Bantam Books, 1976).
page 25, incomes ranked far below the national average: Louis Rubin, ed., The American South: Portrait of a Culture (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1980).
page 26, “there goes that crazy loon again”: Upton Sinclair, The Flivver King: A Story of Ford America (Pasadena, Calif.: published by the author, 1937), 4.
page 27, with the isolated, overworked farmer in mind: David Halberstam, The Reckoning (New York: Morrow, 1986), 75.
page 27, “Not like any other sound ever heard in this world”: Ibid., 76.
page 27, a “fiery Scotsman”: Douglas Brinkley, Wheels for the World: Henry Ford, His Company, and a Century of Progress (New York: Viking, 2003), 38.
page 28, “fast speed freaks”: Peter Collier and David Horowitz, The Fords: An American Epic (New York: Summit Books, 1987), 43.
page 28, “I never really thought much of racing”: Ibid., 37.
page 28, “sober and honest and hardworking”: Sinclair, Flivver King, 23.
page 29, “fingers, hands, arms, legs and crushed bodies”: Brinkley, Wheels, 418.
page 29, equivalent to a six-figure salary: Economic History Services, www.eh.net (an unskilled wage rate of $417 and GDP per capita of $546).
page 30, Ford and car had become synonyms: Brinkley, Wheels, 12.
page 30, “crotchety and mean, frolicsome and full of jokes”: Ibid., 350.
page 30, Ford had “inadvertently created a monster”: Fred Siegel, “Rebuilding: The Idea of the City: The Present Crisis in Perspective,” www.cooper.edu/humanities/humanitiescities.htm.
page 30, “a colorless liquid poison”: Eric Burns, Spirits of America: A Social History of Alcohol (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2313), 115.
page 31, “Goodbye forever to my old friend booze”: Ibid., 188.
page 31, “the beer-drinking German…”: Halberstam, The Reckoning, 69.
page 32, “Do they carry whiskey jugs in their blouses in Kentucky?”: Collier and Horowitz, The Fords, 39.
page 33, $2,500… worth $29 million: Halberstam, The Reckoning, 77.
page 33, “because they wanted America drunk”: Sinclair, Flivver King, 56.
page 33, “liquor to befuddle the brains of Christian leaders”: Burns, Spirits of America, 161.
page 34, “the modern world wanted pep, zip, chic”: Sinclair, Flivver King, 69.
page 34, “a car should not have any more cylinders than a cow”: Collier and Horowitz, The Fords, 49.
page 34, Model A was “like a friendly farm dog”: Brinkley, Wheels, All.
page 35, “I can make any other car take a Ford's dust”: Ibid., 421.
page 35, “75% of all crimes… the aid of the automobile”: Bryan Burrough, Public Enemies: America's Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, 1933—34 (New York: Penguin Press, 2004), 17.
page 38, “fast as a rabbit”: Eddie Samples, “Garhofa's Raymond Dawson Parks,” Georgia Automobile Racing Hall of Fame Association's Pioneer Pages 5, no. 1 (Feb. 2002).
page 41, Machine Gun Kelley and Baby Face Nelson: Burrough, Public Enemies, 18.
page 42, the mayor and police chief announced plans…: “Police to Go After Racket ‘Big Shots’ in Lottery Drive,” Atlanta Constitution, Aug. 25, 1938.
page 43, “When I sell liquor, it's bootlegging”: Burns, Spirits of America, 203.
page 43, two dollars a gallon by 1934: Jess Carr, The Second Oldest Profession: An Informal History of Moonshining in America (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1972), 119.
page 46, “probity and reliability… inestimable character”: “Raymond D. Parks, Parks Novelty Company,” Atlanta Constitution, Jan. 2, 1948.
page 46, A rumor spread: Interview with Violet Parks,
page 48, hardworking… “rednecks”: Tim McLaurin, Keeper of the Moon: A
Southern Boyhood (New York: Anchor Books/Doubleday, 1991), 14.
4. The bootlegger turn
Unless otherwise noted, the story of moonshine's origins is from: Esther Kellner, Moonshine: Its History and Folklore (New York: Ballantine Books, 1973); Joseph Earl Dabney, Mountain Spirits (Asheville, N.C.: Bright Mountain Books, 1974); Jess Carr, The Second Oldest Profession: An Informal History of Moonshining in America (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1972); Horace Kephart, Our Southern Highlanders: A Narrative of Adventure in the Southern Appalachians and a Study of Life among the Mountaineers (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1984); and Eric Burns, Spirits of America: A Social
History of Alcohol (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2003).
page 50, “When I have to turn…”: Ed Hinton, “The Legend: Lloyd Seay Was the Young Sport's Brightest Star until He Was Gunned Down,” Sports Illustrated Presents 50 Years of NASCAR, Jan. 28, 1998, 48.
pages 50-51, “devil-may-care”… “angel face”: Bernard Kahn, “Crown Is Predicted for Stock Car Race,” Daytona Beach News Journal, 1941 (exact date unknown); also Leroy Simerly, “Auto Race to Be Held Today at Fairgrounds,” Spartanburg Herald, 1941 (exact date unknown).
page 51, “climb a pine tree”: Hinton, Sports Illustrated, 46.
page 51, coolest feller: Ibid., 48.
page 53, “the dreamers and daredevils”: James Webb, Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America (New York: Broadway Books, 2004), 87-88.
page 53, “problem children”: Ibid., 99.
page 54, tarred and feathered: Alec Wilkinson, Moonshine: A Life in Pursuit of White Liquor (St. Paul, Minn.: Hungry Mind Press, 1998), 54.
page 54, “Nonconformity as well as mistrust…”: Webb, Born Fighting, 129.
page 56, George Washington… paid his gardener: Philip Brandt George, “George Washington: Patriot, President, Planter and Purveyor of Distilled Spirits,” American History, Feb. 2004, 73.
page 57, “Booze was food, medicine” and “indispensable accompaniment to liberty”: Burns, Spirits of America, 8, 5.
page 57, “Amos believed it was his God-given right”: Tony Earley, Jim the Boy (Boston: Back Bay Books, 2000), 211-213.
page 58, “missed a durned lotsa fun”: Dabney, Mountain Spirits, 93-101.
page 60, “It was a thousand-dollar-a-week job”: Carr, Second Oldest Profession, 128.
page 60, “a gentle home pet that grew…”: Kellner, Moonshine, 127.
page 60, thirty-five million gallons… produced nationwide in 1934: Ibid., 124.
page 60, a million gallons a year came from… Dawsonville: Dabney, Mountain Spirits, 132.
page 60, “Virtually everyone in Dawson County was associated”: Leigh Montville, “Dawsonville, U.S.A.,” Sports Illustrated Presents 50 Years of NASCAR, Jan. 28,1998,112.
page 61, at age ten and “I couldn't waste all the good liquor”: Kim Chapin, “The King of the Wild Road,” Sports Illustrated, 48-60; D. L. Morris, Timber on the Moon: The Curtis Turner Story (Charlotte, N.C.: Colonial Press, 1966), 16.
page 61, In 1935, police and IRS agents pounced: Tom Higgins and Steve Waid, Junior Johnson: Brave in Life (Phoenix: David Bull Publishing, 1999), 21; Tom Wolfe, “The Last American Hero Is Junior Johnson… Yes!” Esquire, Mar. 1965.
pages 61-62, “Lose on the track and you go home”: Bill Center and Bob Moore, NASCAR 50 Greatest Drivers (New York: Harper Horizon/Tehabi Books, 1998), 21.
page 62, “If it hadn't been for bootlegging and racing”: Kellner, Moonshine, 128; also Sylvia Wilkinson, Dirt Tracks to Glory: The Early Days of Stock Car Racing as Told by the Participants (Chapel Hill, N.C.: Algonquin Books, 1983), 36.
page 63, “It was a game, you against them”: Montville, Sports Illustrated, 115.
page 63, “I'd start picking my nose”: Dabney, Mountain Spirits, 164.
page 63, “like a cat in heat”: Paul Hemphill, Wheels: A Season on NASCAR's Winston Cup Circuit (New York: Berkley Books, 1998), 79.
page 63, “Where are you from?”: Montville, Sports Illustrated, 115.
page 65, place bets on whose engine they were hearing: Ibid.
page 66, One agent was maimed by a bootlegger: Ralph S. Smith, “An Informal Inquiry into the Dark Science of Bootlegging, A.D. 1920-1932,” a three-part series, Winston-Salem Journal, Aug. 13-15, 1967.
page 67, “The losers had to play the law”: Hemphill, Wheels, 96.
page 67, Sherwood Anderson… “mostly kids who liked the excitement”: Carr, Second Oldest Profession, 119.
page 67, “the best automobile driver of [his] time”: Dabney, Mountain Spirits, 157; Jerry Bledsoe, The World's Number One, Fiat-Out, Ail-Time Great, Stock Car Racing Book (New York: Bantam Books, 1976), 80.
page 67, “Maybe you could let me go on through?”: Greg Fielden, High Speed at Low Tide (Surfside Beach, S.C.: Galfield Press, 1993), 73; Hemphill, Wheels, 79.
page 68, “hot with law every night”: Hinton, Sports Illustrated, 48.
page 69, “He never knew what a brake was”: Montville, Sports Illustrated, 153.
page 69, One night, two revenue agents…: Dabney, Mountain Spirits, 164-165.
5. An “orgy of dust, liquor and noise”
Unless otherwise noted, all information on Red Vogt and his friendship with Bill France is from his family: his son, Tom Vogt; his step-daughter, June Wendt; and her son, Steve. Also: Bob Desiderio, “Mechanic Vogt Started Career at Age of 10,” Daytona Beach Morning Journal, Feb. 24, 1956. Barney Oldfield information is from: Robert Cutter and Bob Fendell, Encyclopedia of Auto Racing Greats (New York: Prentice-Hall, 1973), 445; Douglas Brinkley, Wheels for the World: Henry Ford, His Company, and a Century of Progress (New York: Viking: 2003); William F. Nolan, Barney Oldfield: The Life and Times of America's Legendary Speed King (Carpinteria, Calif.: Brown Fox Books, 2002). And all racing scenes are from various newspaper articles and Greg Fielden, High Speed at Low Tide (Surfside Beach, S.C.: Galfield Press, 1993).
page 73, Red took to calling him “watermelon”: “Louis Jerome ‘Red’ Vogt: The Dean of Stock Car Racing Mechanics, 1904-2004,” Crackers and Coffee, Feb. 7, 2004.
page 73, France secretly raced his dad's Model T: Brock Yates, “The Force: Bill France's Vision Made NASCAR the World's Premier Racing Organization,” Sports Illustrated Presents 50 Years of NASCAR, Jan. 28, 1998.
page 74, “We had the money and the know-how…”: Larry Fielden, Tim Flock, Race Driver (Surfside Beach, S.C.: Galfield Press, 1991), 33.
page 74, a so-called wet funeral: Ralph S. Smith, “An Informal Inquiry into the Dark Science of Bootlegging, A.D. 1920-1932,” three-part series, Winston-Salem Journal, Aug. 13-15, 1967.
page 75, Ford … a “leader” of the Fascist movement: Brinkley, Wheels, 263.
page 75, “a supermechanic with the mind of a stubborn peasant”: Upton Sinclair, The Flivver King: A Story of Ford in America (Pasadena, Calif.: published by the author, 1937), 110.
page 79, a sleek canvas-and-wood experimental vehicle sped: LIFE: American Speed, from Dirt Tracks to Indy to NASCAR (Time Inc. Home Entertainment, 2002), 14-16.
page 79, “the absolute limit of speed”: George Stephens Clark, “Gasoline and Sand: The Birth of Automobile Racing,” Mankind: The Magazine of Popular History 3, no. 4 (Dec. 1971).
page 79, “brushed at least a dozen coats while making the turn”: LIFE: American Speed, 19.
page 80, “the greatest race in the world” and “transcendent event”: Ibid., 22.
page 82, “barroom brawler, dirt-track daredevil”: Brinkley, Wheels, 45.
page 82, “rather dull and colorless affairs”: Randal L. Hall, “Before NASCAR: The Corporate and Civic Promotion of Automobile Racing in the American South, 1903-1927,” journal of Southern History 68, no. 3 (Aug. 2002).
page 83, Henry Ford came to Daytona and Ormond Beach: Jerry Bledsoe, The World's Number One, Fiat-Out, Ail-Time Great, Stock Car Racing Book (New York: Bantam Books, 1976), 32.
page 83, “rogue, rule breaker, braggart”: Ibid.
page 84, “Will the Car Like You Drive…”: Hall, Journal of Southern History.
page 86, a tidy little one hundred-dollar profit: UMI Publications, NASCAR: The Early Years (Charlotte, N.C.: UMI Publications, 2002), 11.
page 87, “entitled to my winnings” and “given a fair deal”: Fielden, High Speed at Low Tide, 32, 31.
page 87, “The surest way to get a ‘hillbilly’ to do something”: Paul Hemphill, Wheels: A Season on NASCAR's Winston Cup Circuit (New York: Berkley Books, 1998), 78.
page 88, the town of Stockbridge: Fielden, Tim Flock, 35; also Sylvia Wilkinson, Dirt Tracks to Glory: The Early Days of Stock Car R
acing as Told by the Participants (Chapel Hill, N.C.: Algonquin Books, 1983), 35.
page 90, “I don't know how they got wore out so fast”: Wilkinson, Dirt Tracks to Glory, 36.
page 90, he once narrowly escaped death: Eddie Samples, “Lakewood Speedway Continued…,” Georgia Automobile Racing Hall of Fame Association's Pioneer Pages 2, no. 1 (Mar. 1999).
page 92, “it doesn't have fenders on it”: Eddie Samples, “Lakewood Speedway: The Indianapolis of the South, Stock Car Racing Begins,” Georgia Automobile Racing Hall of Fame Association's Pioneer Pages 1, no. 3 (Aug. 1998).
page 92, an overflow crowd of fifty thousand had watched Seabiscuit: Laura Hillenbrand, Seabiscuit: An American Legend (New York: Ballantine Books, 2001), 266.
page 92, “churning up the most interest”: “Lakewood Trials Are Slated Today,” Atlanta Constitution, Nov. 10, 1938.
page 92, “They'll spill speed and maybe some gore”: “First Race Program Billed in Atlanta,” Anniston Star, July 1, 1938.
page 95, “just like the movies”: “Seay Is Winner of Auto Event,” Atlanta Constitution, Nov. 12, 1938.
page 95, insisted that he… had really won: “The Boss of the Beach: Racing's Red-Headed Huck Finn,” Speed Age, Mar. 1949.
page 97, “the odor of the races has never been too good”: Atlanta Constitution, June 13, 1950.
page 97, the cutting edge of the wild side: Pete Daniel, Lost Revolutions: The South in the 1950s (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000), 93.
page 97, “The fiercely competitive racing culture” and “orgy of dust, liquor and noise”: Ibid., 117,96.
page 98, “I'm no fool. … I guess they melted ‘em”: Bledsoe, World's Number One,
Fiat-Out, Ail-Time Great, Stock Car Racing Book, 82.
page 98, “I've got the fever”: Ed Hinton, “The Legend: Lloyd Seay Was the Young Sport's Brightest Star until He Was Gunned Down,” Sports Illustrated Presents 50 Years of NASCAR, Jan. 28, 1998, 47.
6. “All the women screamin' Roy Hall”
Unless otherwise noted, descriptions of Red Vogt's modifications (and stock car modifications in general) are from author interviews with Tom Vogt, June Wendt, George Moore, Billy Watson, Raymond Parks, David Sosebee, and others; also articles in Speed Age, Motorsport, and Pioneer Pages; Bob Desiderio, “Mechanic Vogt Started Career at Age of 10,” Daytona Beach Morning Journal, Feb. 24, 1956; and the History Channel's Automaniac documentary series (episode, “Moonshine Cars”). All of the Daytona Beach race scenes (and other races), including quotes by and about Roy Hall, are from various newspaper articles in the Atlanta Constitution, Daytona Beach News Journal, and Daytona Beach Sun Record, as well as Greg Fielden's wonderfully detailed High Speed at Low Tide (Surfside Beach, S.C.: Galfield Press, 1993).
Driving with the Devil Page 40
