Growing up in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains
Johnson offers a brief life history of growing up in Wilkes County, North Carolina. Addressing such topics as family, education, farming, moonshining, popular culture, radio, and religion, Johnson paints a vivid portrait of what it was like to live in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains during the 1930s and 1940s.
Citing this Excerpt
Oral History Interview with Junior Johnson, June 4, 1988. Interview C-0053. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Full Text of the Excerpt
- PETE DANIEL:
-
[This is an interview with Junior Johnson. It's being done on
June 4, 1988, at Dover, Delaware, at the Dover Downs Race Track.] I
think most people would want to know about your family background. That
is, how long have the Johnsons been up in the mountains of North
Carolina?
- JUNIOR JOHNSON:
-
Well, my grandpa lived in the same area where I live now and my father
lived since about the 1900's. That's where my
father was born, in that same area, and it was where me and my brothers
and sisters all was born and raised up.
- PETE DANIEL:
-
Could you just put on for the record your parents' names?
- JUNIOR JOHNSON:
-
Robert Glenn Johnson, Sr. and Lora Money Johnson.
- PETE DANIEL:
-
Did you go to school right there in your neighborhood?
- JUNIOR JOHNSON:
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A little community called Clemmon. We went to school there up until we
finished the seventh grade, and then you moved on to a high school
called Ronda for the rest of your years in school. I only went to the
seventh, I mean through the seventh and started in the eighth, and I
quit school in the eighth.
- PETE DANIEL:
-
Were any of your teachers particularly significant in your life?
- JUNIOR JOHNSON:
-
All of my teachers was very significant in my life. I had a teacher
called Tom Calloway that was one of the, I thought, smartest persons
I'd ever seen in my childhood years. I also had a teacher
called Nola Howard. She was really a great person, and still living. She
retired from teaching several years ago. She was a
patient, good person, and she really took a lot of time with her school
kids.
- PETE DANIEL:
-
Do you have friends now that you grew up with back there?
- JUNIOR JOHNSON:
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Yes, I still live in the same territory or area where I was born and all.
I grew up there and I still live there, and all the neighbors and
friends and relatives still live in the same area where I growed up. All
of my friends are still there.
- PETE DANIEL:
-
Did you have any particular person you looked up to and sort of set as a
role model when you were growing up?
- JUNIOR JOHNSON:
-
Well, I looked up to my father a lot because I thought my father was one
of the most knowledgeable people about everything that he went to do.
You know, farming, he was in the whiskey business when I was a young
boy. He had more knowledge about everything that he did, and anything
that anybody wanted to do, he knew how to do it and how to go about it
and stuff. I've always felt like if I could grow up and be
like my father, I'd be happy and satisfied with my life, and
I still feel that way about it. He was the one person
in my eyes as far as I was concerned.
- PETE DANIEL:
-
Was he a farmer, mostly? Is that what he did mostly?
- JUNIOR JOHNSON:
-
He farmed for a living, but back in them days you could just survive on a
farm. In that area of North Carolina where I lived was kind a a
moonshining area. Of course, about everybody who lived around where I
lived was either involved in it one way or the other, or they sold the
material to make it with, or they had some connection with the moonshine
business. Course, he, by his being that close around
it, and him being where he could get involved in it, he got involved in
it.
- PETE DANIEL:
-
What did folks do for leisure? You were growing up mostly in the what,
late '30s and early '40s, on through there. Did
you have movies? What all did you do for recreation?
- JUNIOR JOHNSON:
-
Most of the time radio was about the only communication you had with the
outside world, at the time that I was growing up. Television
didn't come along until quite some years after I was growing
up. But radio was about all your connections with the outside part of
the United States, our world, far as that goes.
- PETE DANIEL:
-
What did y'all listen to?
- JUNIOR JOHNSON:
-
Ah, stuff like the Grand Ole Opery on Saturday night. They had various
programs on that most all the family, like Amos and Andy, this type of
program was basically what everybody listened to and followed and all.
You know, through every day there were certain things on that they kept
up with. That's some of the most famous ones.
- PETE DANIEL:
-
Was religion a big part of life growing up?
- JUNIOR JOHNSON:
-
Religion was pretty well taught in everybody's home because
they had plenty of time to go to church and raise their kids in a
religious type atmosphere. They didn't have all the things
like they have today to go to to get 'em away from religion.
So about all families were very religious.