Luther Moon doesn’t seem to know how to slow down.
That’s how it is when you’re a self-described adrenaline junkie.
“I’ve been addicted to adrenaline all my life,” he said. “I’ve never done an illegal drug. I don’t drink and I don’t smoke. It’s just all about the thrill.”
Those thrills have come in a bunch of ways for Moon. He’s been a scuba diving explorer in the Caribbean, an Army paratrooper, a horse-racer of some renown, and a pilot, among other adventures. All of them, Moon said, sprang from the desire to live life to the fullest.
“Everything in my life has pretty much been an accident,” he said. I diidn’t set out to do it. I just woke up one morning, said I wanted to do it, so I did. With me, nothing is complete until it’s completed. Take horse racing. I didn’t enter a single race expecting to win it. I did it for the thrill and the adrenaline.”
Raised on a Virginia farm where Moon remembers raising everything they consumed except for salt and sugar, he’s been around and loved horses and riding for as long as he can remember. He recalls going into the fields as a child in hopes of catching a ride back on a pony, and that love extended to quarter horses as he grew and found his love of going fast.
“I’ve just had an infatuation with horses, he said. “That was coupled with my addiction to speed - my horses were performance horses. I actually won races at every major track in the northeast - Belmont, Maryland, Delaware Park, Penn National. I won at Camptown two years in a row, and the second time I broke the track record.”
The quest for that jolt of adrenaline was influential in Moon’s military career as well. He got his mother’s permission to sign up for service at 17 years old, and already had a path in mind.
“I signed up for the toughest outfit I had knowledge of at the time, and that was the 82nd Airborne Division,” he said. “I’d never been in an airplane until I jumped out of one. I guess that’s where I picked up flying.”
Moon eventually became a pilot, and owned a White Lightning aircraft. Sold in a kit to owners who built the plane themselves, the White Lightning was based in South Carolina, bringing Moon to the Greenville area.
“We eventually broke three speed records in the same day at Greenville,” Moon said. “Each pass was a little bit faster.”
Another trip to South Carolina brought Moon and his wife to stay.
“We were looking for a small town, and had been for a couple years,” he said. “We accidentally drove through Honea Path one day and liked it. There was a building available, so we inquired on purchasing it. We came down and bought it the next day.”
That building just happens to be one of the oldest on Main Street. It’s now where Moon and his wife call home, after an extensive renovation project.
“It was one of the first two general stores in Honea Path,” he explained. “The alley is the town’s original street, with the new Main Street being built in 1846. The building is from 1812, and had a new addition in 1890.”
The building features high ceilings, eight-foot windows, and two-inch thick heart pine floors. The interior has been lovingly and painstakingly converted into a living area by Moon himself. Yep. Contracting is just another one of his adventures.
“It started after the military, when I went down to the Caribbean to kind of erase everything,” he said. “When I came back home to Richmond, I had bought one house and was in the process of restoring it. Walking to the corner from where that was, I saw a reflection in the woods. I poked around, and there was an old house. There’s no telling how long it was empty and vacant. It had a slate roof that was still in good condition. I researched the owner, approached them about buying it, and started restoring it. In the process, I ended up selling the other house. As I was working, people would come by and ask if I could do this or that, and before I knew it, I was in business.”
That involved a big learning curve. And in the days before YouTube videos made learning a bit easier, Moon knew just where to go.
“One way I learned, and maybe it’s the old Google, I just went over to a job site and stood around and watched,” he said. “I was careful about asking questions, because if you ask too many, they’re going to run you off. So I would just stand there and watch and see how they did it. Occasionally, I’d ask a question here and there. I started in 1975 and worked at it 34 years before I retired.”
Moon’s not sitting still in his retirement, though. He’s still got some projects going. One of those includes running for mayor of Honea Path.
“I love the town, and just want to help,” he said.
And if he wins, he can add that to an already long list of adventures.
