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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."
