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| Musings
of An Old Racer - Part 2 by Norm Bogan |
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During
the late sixties, I attended races at Riverside Raceway, where the "Dixie
Jet Set" was on display. Many
of our local drivers, participated and had plenty of help, but some of the
independent southern boys were travelling together to get enough to make up a
crew, often pitting two or three cars. In
1971, I hooked up with a driver named Cecil Gordon from Horseshoe, North
Carolina. He was travelling with
Henley Gray from Rome, Georgia. Together,
they had a three man crew for two cars. I
became the gas man for both. They
ran twice a year at Riverside and once at Ontario.
At
Riverside, I took Cecil and Benny Parsons all over Riverside and San Bernardino,
looking for windshields and parts for the road course setup.
At the Ford dealer, Benny requested parts by quoting the part numbers off
the top of his head. Pretty impressive! Petty
Enterprises would have a couple of station wagons for crew transportation.
As we were leaving Riverside to return to the motel, Richard Petty was
wandering around the Paddock parking area.
We accused him of looking for fans to sign autographs, but he lamented
that here he was, 3000 miles from home, with no money and no I.D.
Each of the crew wagons had left, assuming Richard was in the other car.
We told him to get in the car and took him to his motel room. In
1972, I went to races in Atlanta and Texas.
I recall checking into the Ramada Inn at College Station, just across
from Texas A&M. We got a room with two beds, promptly put the mattresses on
the floor and slept nine in that room. We
were still a band of gypsies in those days. While
following Cecil and his hauler in my pickup, near Bakersfield, TX, a cloud of
smoke suddenly puffed from the hauler. The compressor for the air brakes had thrown a rod and here
we were in the middle of nowhere. Cecil
borrowed my truck and drove seventy miles to Odessa to pick up a new compressor
and return to install it. In the
meantime, those of us remaining sought refuge under the hauler from the summer
heat in the west Texas desert. Just
shows that problems on the road beset us all. Along
these lines, I recall Richard Childress, now Dale Earnhardt's car owner, who was
a poor independent driver towing his '71 Chevelle on an open trailer behind a
Corvair van. The rig got away from
him coming home from Atlanta and he turned it over. In
1973, after the June Riverside race, I traveled back to Michigan, and on to
Daytona for the Firecracker race, and then set up residence in Hendersonville,
North Carolina, just down the road from Cecil, Dave Marcis, and Banjo Matthews
shops. Cecil won the second leg of
the Winston Cup that year and finished third in points behind Richard Petty and
James Hylton for the year. At the
end of the year, a non-NASCAR race was run for the independent drivers and Cecil
took home the trophy. My travels on
the NASCAR circuit are the source of many tales. I
recall Dean Dalton literally building an engine from pieces on the bed of his
truck in a motel parking lot in Michigan on Saturday night. Several
of the drivers were pilots and flew their planes to the races.
David Pearson, Cale Yarborough and Bobby Allison all buzzed the track on
arrival. Bobby would practice and qualify on Friday and Saturday, then
fly off to race that night. I
remember giving Bobby a lift to his plane parked on the drag strip at Bristol,
TN. Another
Bristol experience was a trip to Lonesome Pine International Raceway at Coeburn,
Virginia. This facility is in the
heart of Appalachia and as you drive into town you wonder how many residents
could attend. Arriving at the
track, you saw a concrete grandstand, with paved and lighted parking, paved pit
area, an excellent racetrack. The
stands were full with fans from Pennsylvania, Ohio, W. Virginia, Virginia,
Kentucky, Indiana, Tennessee, N. Carolina and S. Carolina.
At
Daytona in 1974, I left Cecil and went with J.D. McDuffie, who was running the
full schedule as a low buck independent and could use cheap help.
I was his gas man for two years, missing only the California races.
During this time, I worked a full time job and traveled to the races on
weekends, sometime a two hour journey to Charlotte or Martinsville and often an
all night haul to Michigan or Dover. J.D.
was an old dirt track racer, so on Friday and Saturday nights we would travel as
much as 100 miles to run at places like Fayetteville, Eden and Raleigh. At
the end of the 1975 season, I returned to California and started working with a
NASCAR modified driven by Bob Forster Jr. I
continued to work with McDuffie at the California races, with journeys to
Charlotte and North Wilkesboro until 1980, when I let my NASCAR license expire. At
Charlotte in 1976, I sat on pit road prior to the race and discussed places like
Ascot and Terre Haute with Johnny Rutherford.
He was there to run a car for my friend John Ray. J.R. was very cordial
and accommodating. He's a heck of a
race car driver, who flew his own P-51 Mustang and once conducted the
Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra. In
1973, they had the annual Pit Crew competition at Rockingham.
The car would come on pit road, change two tires and add a can of gas
against the clock, with time penalties for loose lug nuts or gas left in the
can. Junie Donleavy, one of the
really nice people in racing was garaged next to us.
To prepare for the competition, you had to drain the tank.
Junie had his car all prepared, but as the crew went for a sandwich
before battle, we obligingly filled his gas tank.
Needless to say, with penalties, his pit stop was about two minutes. At
Atlanta, Richie Ciccetti, who would later gain fame as manager for heavyweight
champ Larry Holmes, had a Ford with Jim Hurtibise as driver.
The car was down on power and Herk was known to try for an edge.
NASCAR had required restrictor rings in the intake manifold, to cut
speed. Since Herk was down on
horses, he drilled the rings full of small holes to increase flow, which helped,
but which was observed in inspection and was the reason for his
disqualification. At
Daytona, Hurtibise was trying to put Bob Davis' Dodge Hemi into the race through
the 125 mile qualifier. On the pit
stop, Bob handed Herk an orange and he drove away with it.
After the race, Herk said, "why the hell did you give me that
orange?" Bob replied that he
figured if Herk could peel it, he knew the car was handling. Wendell
Scott, a black driver, who's life story was made into the movie, "Greased
Lightning", was the epitome of the low buck driver.
He would race without a pit crew, so when he came in the pits, He'd climb
out of the car, change tires and add fuel and then buckle back up and rejoin the
race. Wendell was always scrounging for cast off parts, such as lug nuts,
throughout the pits. The Petty
hauler had a box on board, labeled "Wendell's Box".
This is where all their throw-aways went. Jabe
Thomas, was known as the "Clown Prince".
He was an independent who usually had two cars at the track.
When NASCAR was running 50 plus races per year, Jabe quite often
furnished a car to points chasers, who had suffered a crash and couldn't field
their car. Jabe used to brag about
his stable of drivers, which included Richard Petty, Bobby Allison, and Bobby
Isaac. Drivers meetings were always
humorous, with Jabe inquiring as to just what time the lunch break would be.
Jabe delighted in slipping a rock into your pocket at any gathering or
bull session. Competitors were able
to get even with Jabe, since he was deathly afraid of snakes.
Jabe would be all buckled in to start a race and someone would go by and
drop a rubber snake or even some rubber tubing in the car and you would see Jabe
fly.
Joe
Frasson came to NASCAR from Golden Valley, Minnesota.
He raced a Cotton Owens built and prepared Dodge Hemi.
His sponsor was his dad, Mario Frasson Cement Co., thus his handle from
the racers, "Cement Joe" and his CB handle "Minnesota Mule"
and those about say it all. In
later years, Joe attempted to campaign a Pontiac, when the engine had to match
the nameplate. He gained national
TV exposure when he beat the car with a jack handle after failing to qualify. Bill
Champion had been a veteran motorcycle racer with “Little Joe” Weatherly and
had followed Joe into stock cars. He loved to relate the story of a motel stay in Daytona
during Speed Weeks, when for two weeks, each day as they left for the track,
they slipped that paper strip back over the toilet seat. He was sure that the maid must of thought that was one
"bound up" crew. Cheating
on the NASCAR circuit has always been challenging.
Competitors coined the phrase "Cheat Neat".
While working with J.D. McDuffie, we decided to cheat at Martinsville.
Taking a page from a farmer, who fills his tires with water to get more
traction, we found a way to pick up a couple of hundred pounds for inspection
and loose them as the race started. We
filled the left front tire with water, went through inspection okay, staged and
started the race. "Suspecting",
we had a tire going down on the parade lap, we pitted and changed the left front
and rejoined the field. Worked just
like we planned it, but the engine blew in just ten laps, so I guess punishment
was meted out.
Country
singer Marty Robbins was a racer and over the years ran some pretty competitive
races as his schedule would allow. One Saturday night in College Station, Texas, he sat by the
Holiday Inn pool and picked and sang for several hours for anyone who wanted to
listen. This was a guy who was
probably getting $10000/night in Las Vegas.
He was a pretty classy guy.
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