A swig of moonshine ought to be poured every time the checkered flag drops. Or maybe every time the green flag signals the start or the lead car makes another lap.

That’s just how tight the ties are between the making and delivering of Prohibition-era moonshine and today’s NASCAR entertainment.

Reckon the thousands of people loving Talladega and Bristol, Indy and Daytona and all the other racetracks would appreciate knowing those skilled drivers they love to watch emerge from a history of mountain road racing and chasing, tied up with family and community economic issues?

I didn’t get it fully until discovering Dawsonville. That’s the home of Bill Elliott, sure, but so much more.

Nestled in mountains an hour’s drive north of Atlanta and winding along fast-flowing trout streams, the moonshine-car racing story becomes clear in Dawsonville.

Thunder Road is what they call Georgia Highway 9 in these parts. It runs right through here because it was a main route of drivers hauling moonshine, going fast to outpace the revenuers, in cars outfitted for speed and heavy loads.

You can see some of those cars and the racing versions which emerged from them at the Georgia Racing Hall of Fame, and meet some of the people who know up close and personal how this moonshine, fast driving world worked.

Authentic moonshine-hauling 1940 Fords will fill the main street of Dawsonville the fourth weekend in October for the 41st annual Mountain Moonshine Festival. Moonshine haulers pre or post that year will have to park on the side streets.

What makes ‘em authentic?

"Hulled out backs to hold big loads, heavy-duty springs, sometimes tanks built in with a drain for releasing the moonshine and hot motors, more powerful than a stock motor," says Charles Samples, a volunteer with the Racing Hall of Fame.

Equally important, he says, is anonymity. "Your car had to blend in with all the others. Hauling moonshine was no time to show off, better to blend in," Samples said.

Vaudell Sosebee got me started knowing this was an interesting tale when I met her over pancakes and grits in the Champions Café adjoining the Hall of Fame on Georgia Highway 53. You can get eggs, bacon and sausage too if you prefer, plus red-eye gravy on your fat biscuits.

Her late husband Gober broke into Atlanta’s Lakewood Speedway winning more than 200 races, interrupting the racing domination of Roy Hall and Lloyd Seay, who was shot dead in a moonshine argument.

Vaudell went to those races; in fact she met Gober at the Speedway and every day now she wears a gold necklace designed like his hubcap and sporting the diamonds from his Masonic ring.

Gober was the first to install a roll bar, and Vaudell is ready and willing to tell the stories of those racing days of the 1940s and ‘50s. She’ll even show you the 1939 Ford he drove for three wins at Daytona and point out the airplane seat customized to fit him perfectly.