Raymond Parks left home at 14 to learn the moonshine trade. He was quiet, careful, and good at it — accumulating wealth without accumulating enemies. When he had enough, he didn’t spend it. He invested it in stock car racing, a sport populated almost entirely by men who’d learned to drive running liquor. The first race ever held under NASCAR’s banner was won by a driver Parks bankrolled. He never drove a lap himself. He just had the vision to see where the money should go.
