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Personal Anecdotes from Junior Johnson's Shop

15:10
30:20
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Colbert shares personal stories about his youth, spending summers from age 15 until college working at Junior Johnson's shop. He describes himself as a "really good free help" and highlights the deep bond he formed with Junior and Flossie Johnson, who became like adoptive parents. He then recounts a humorous story about Junior Johnson's exceptional mechanical intuition in Detroit. While testing Cosworth engines on a dyno, Junior predicted an engine would blow up before it actually happened, simply by the sound. Colbert also shares an anecdote about early NASCAR cheating, revealing how teams would use clever tricks, like hiding lead shot in roll cages that would fall out on banked tracks, or running fuel lines through roll bars to increase fuel capacity, to gain a competitive edge. These practices were possible due to less stringent pre-race inspections and the absence of post-race inspections, reflecting Junior's philosophy: "It's not cheating until you get caught."

Goal: Provide personal insights into early NASCAR culture and figures.

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happening? And well, I started 1972. I was 15 and uh basically uh from the time I was 15 till I went to college, uh I'd spend my summers at Junior Johnson's uh working until it was time to come home and uh get ready to play high school football. and um worked on the race team uh on the pit crew and uh I was really good free help and uh Did you stay at Junior's? I stayed with Junior stay with Junior and Flossy. Oh, that must have been an experience. Oh, it was I mean they were like my adopted parents. In fact, Flossy um up until uh the day she died, uh I took her to uh all the dad was Dad and T- Wayne were on the Hall of Fame ballot and then they were removed and then dad was on the Landmark ballot. He won the Landmark award in 2021 and um so uh I would take Flossy to and my my dad's sister, she's 98. I would take those two ladies to the Hall of Fame voting day and to the Hall of Fame induction ceremonies every year and they had a had a really good time because Flossy had nine drivers in the Hall of Fame, her and Junior. Wow. Yeah. You got to witness a lot of stuff that people never see like living with you hear all the stories about what it was like to work for Junior. What was it like to live with Junior? Well, you know, um Junior's one of the one of the smartest men that I ever met. We were in uh [clears throat] Detroit visiting General Motors and uh they were testing some Cossworth engines and uh we were there. They were running them on the dyno and uh Junior cocked his head and he looked at the engineer and he said, "That motor's getting ready to blow up." And the engineer looked at him and said, "There's no way. All the gauges, it's running perfectly. Everything's great." and he hadn't gotten that out of his mouth before the motor hang grenaded all over the the room. And uh the guy looked at Junior and he said, "How in the world did you know that was going to happen?" And Junior just looked at him and said, "It didn't sound right to me." And he could tell Junior um could tell his race car from other race cars on the track by the sound. Cuz he had a unique set of headers that only he ran and nobody else did. And uh um that's one of the reasons he went from Chevrolet to Ford uh because he'd sent a set of heads up to Chevrolet. And I can't remember if they went to Hendricks or they went to Childress's and uh they weren't supposed to. And uh when Junior found out about it, he uh called Edel Ford and switched from Chevrolet to Ford. Huh. Yeah. Yeah. I know…

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