North Carolina Museum Celebrates Corn Liquor

Matt Edwards, executive director of the tiny Mount Airy Museum of Regional History that's just mounted an exhibit chronicling stock car racing's bootlegging roots, won't say whether there was any moonshine at an opening reception last weekend.

"I'm going to plead the fifth," Edwards says after three long, quiet seconds.

Yet the 1,200-square-foot gallery on Main Street in the town that inspired Mayberry isn't at all sly about the drinking locals used to do. While some NASCAR critics have accused the organization of sanitizing the sport's past, "White Liquor and Dirt Tracks: The Origins of NASCAR" contends millions of fans wouldn't tune their sets to coverage of Bristol and Talladega if it weren't for the thirst of yesterday's mountaineers.

"There's no denying the bootlegging background," Edwards says. "We wanted to show the shift from illicit moonshine to bragging on the tracks."
The festivities surrounding the new exhibit included a panel discussion featuring some of the region's early racing stars and H.W. Golding, whose family ran Mount Airy's first dirt track.

"He makes no bones about his family being bootleggers," Edwards reports.

The exhibit, which Edwards says is the first in a series addressing North Carolina's racing heritage, showcases several still photographs and the side panel of a blue Thunderbird that Bill "Awesome Bill from Dawsonville" Elliot smashed up at Daytona in 1989.

"We got the side that hit the wall," Edwards laughs.