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'Fast Cars, White Lightning' coming to BRCC

Dan Pierce will speak about his book, 'Real NASCAR: White Lightning, Red Clay, and Big Bill France,' on Sept. 22, at BRCC.

The Center for Cultural Preservation in partnership with Blue Ridge Community College will launch the third season of its “Keeping the Fires Burning” series with “Fast Cars and White Lightning: Moonshining and NASCAR.”


Dan Pierce, author and professor of history at UNC/Asheville, will discuss his book Real NASCAR: White Lightning, Red Clay, and Big Bill France with a book signing after a program at 7 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 22, at Bo Thomas Auditorium at BRCC.
“If you’re a Southerner, by birth or by inclination, and love Southern foodways, folkways, highways, and low-ways, you’ll lap up Daniel S. Pierce’s Real NASCAR . . . like grits and red-eye gravy, even if you’ve never been to a stock car race or watched one on television,” Our State magazine said of Pierce’s book. The moonshining trade in Western North Carolina was dependent on drivers that could outrun the revenuers as they delivered their “corn from a jar” throughout the country. The program details NASCAR’s origins in bootlegging as well as the close ties between organized racing and the illegal liquor industry.
Tickets are $5 and can be bought at www.saveculture.org or by calling (828) 692-8062.