Slowly, yet with purpose, the racer uses his pocketknife to cut the grass away from the grave marker. Determined, he cuts and removes the grass one handful at a time.
Soon the overgrown crabgrass is cleared from the marker, removing what has obscured part of the racer's heritage, and revealing the name of the man who helped bring him into the world.
The racer-the man who left Ferguson, North Carolina, the son of a dirt poor logger and moonshiner and the same man who would return years later driving a tricked-up classic Jaguar-was searching minutes before for the marker bearing the name of his father, a man of the mountains.
"I know it's here," he says. "I know this is the spot." Just a few feet away, at the edge of the cemetery, sits the Jaguar. "The fastest car in Hickory," the racer says. It makes for quite a contrast-the lush green hills at the foothills of the Blue Ridge, the immaculate bright red sports car in the parking lot of the small country church.
No checkered flags today. Just a few pictures for a photographer, a little insight, some basic information for a writer, and some stories from the life of a racer.
Morgan Shepherd's story isn't a success story about a country boy making it in the world. His story is about working hard, making it, losing a good part of what you've built, then relying on your religious convictions to never give up in the quest to build again. His story is about the lessons you learn when you're 12 and your father dies, about the lessons you learn growing up in the rural South during the 1940s and '50s.
"Survival-that's what mountain life is," he says. "You take a little bit and stretch it a long ways. That's what I've been able to do over the years."
Running ShineMorgan Shepherd is a breed of racer from the old mold, a breed all but left behind by the growth and glitz of Winston Cup racing during the last decade. He's survived insurmountable odds, including poverty, problems with alcohol, and a reputation for being difficult to work with.
Yet at 60, Shepherd's still searching for a seat in a competitive race car. He's long past his prime, and long past the age a big-buck sponsor is willing to invest in. Still, Shepherd remains undaunted. He knows he can still get up on that wheel in a competitive car and run with the best of them.
Shepherd, and racers such as Dale Earnhardt, Bobby Allison, Richard Petty, Darrell Waltrip, and Cale Yarborough, helped to mold what's now known as Winston Cup racing with their hard-charging style of driving.
Like Morgan, many of those drivers came from hard times in the rural South. In NASCAR's early years, some men became professional drivers literally from running moonshine. Those racers brought their extreme drive to succeed-to make it out of backwater towns-to the racetrack. They had to drive hard to put food on the table. That was their edge. Shepherd was like that. He always knew he could reach for the stars because he would outwork everyone.
Shepherd was born in 1941 in Ferguson, North Carolina. His parents were farm workers. His dad, Jesse Clay Shepherd, also made moonshine. Revenuers were always just one step behind, ready to take away the family's breadwinner. In the hills of western North Carolina in the '30s and '40s, there was logging, and there was moonshine. Shepherd's father did both.
"The first time I can ever recall actually seeing my father was when I was 4 years old and he was walking down the road," Shepherd recalls. "He was just returning home from a year in prison for making moonshine. It was a way of life back then."
Shepherd says that when he was 8 years old, his father moved to the Conover-Hickory area of North Carolina and attempted to change his lifestyle. He aimed to do public work and find a job to support his family.
But the lure of the mountains was too strong. Within a year and a half, he was back in Ferguson, building a still in the basement of the family's house.