Rolling Thunder Stock Car Racing: White Lightning

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Contents

Title Page

Copyright Notice

Epigraph

Parade Lap

Green Flag

On the Midnight Run

Competition

Let’s Race

The Other Side of the Mountains

Getting Ready to Go Racing

Going Fast, Turning Left

Wind ’Em Up and Let ’Em Go

Going to School

Feature

In the Pits

The Family Business

The Run

The Big Turn

The Race Car

Geometry

Checkered Flag

Contagious

Grandma’s Blessing

Carolina

Finish first but first finish

Preview: The Road to Daytona

Copyright

You know how it feels when you see and smell and feel that herd of gaudy monsters, roaring out of the last turn, heading for the green flag, shaking the ground like the stomping of Godzilla, sounding for all the world like the end of time is coming straight at you at nearly a hundred miles an hour? You know how it feels, the power of the motors vibrating in your chest, stunning your ears, your heart pumping in your throat, your arms high in the air as you wave them past, and then you taste the grit of their spent tire rubber in your mouth and their exhaust smells like hot dragon’s breath? You know how it looks and feels and smells from up there in the grandstand? Then just imagine how it looks and feels and smells to the old boy behind the wheel of one of those monsters. Just imagine!

—Jodell Bob Lee

PARADE LAP

Earliest memory: the hot day he rode in the old rusty truck’s tattered seat, straddling the floor gearshift, wedged between his daddy and momma.

Why we goin’ back to church, Daddy?

Aw, we ain’t goin’ back to church, Jodell. I’m gonna take you and your momma up to Goodner Mountain. They’re gonna be runnin’ the jalopies today.

Jalopers?

He was only three or four then, and the word felt strange on his tongue. He pictured bizarre animals, like the dragons and unicorns in his picture-story books his momma read to him at night. Peculiar, bright-colored animals, running wild among the pines and cedars that grew on the mountain.

And he sat up straighter, stared ahead through the oily windshield of the truck, and waited to catch his first glimpse of such an odd, exciting thing. And when he saw the dust cloud in the air ahead, rising from the ridgeline, he was sure he was about to. Then he noticed there were others, in their cars and trucks, heading the same way in a long, meandering line. He stood up in the seat and pointed emphatically ahead of them, up the rutted road leading to the dust cloud.

Hurry, Daddy! Hurry! We gotta be first ones there!

The unusually sticky warmth of the early summer afternoon has already become plain and simple hot. The heat is all the harder to bear because it is usually so cool there in the dry mountain air that blankets the Tennessee brushy hills, only a crow caw’s echo from the Great Smoky Mountains. But this day the weather is close, humid, more like that of the Carolina low country on the far side of the mountains, or down yonder in the broad valley that has been carved out by the Tennessee River as it rises and spills out of the hidden coves and hollows of the Smokies.

Ain’t it hot!

Lord if it ain’t!

Those words have been swapped at the breakup of more than one church service this Sunday morning.

Ain’t a breath of a breeze to be found, is they?

Nary a breath.

Hazy hot or not, the view in any direction from the knob-tops of the mountains would be considered spectacular by even the most disinterested observer. The nearby hills and distantly layered mountains pile up on top of one another like waves on an ocean, for as far as the eye can see, until they are finally smudged out by the fine blue mist.

And that same observer might notice a narrow dirt road that traces the middle of one of the deeper hollows like a strand of ribbon someone has purposely laid there, then it seems to disappear over the top of a tree-lined ridge, maybe heading for the hills that run beyond it. And he would surely see the long, steady string of well-worn cars and of rusted, dented farm trucks, their beds piled full of laughing, singing people, as they snake their way up the rutted road. They climb higher, toward a growing cloud of dust that hangs in the air at the top of the ridge like a tan canopy. As the parade of vehicles bounces and twists its way slowly up the hollow, the rumbling and complaining of the engines drowns out even the incessant dry rattle of the cicadas in the high grass alongside the road and the songs of the birds that hide among the pines from all the trespassers.

The road comes to a sharp turn at the top of the hollow, then seems to play out completely. It ends there at a wide-open field, fenced for cattle and nestled on two sides by round-topped green hills. The back edge of the field rises in a sweep to yet another ridgeline and a sharp outcropping of upturned rock and towering cedars. The effect is to form a neat bowl, a natural, perfect, three-sided amphitheater.

The field itself is a couple of hundred yards wide and several hundred yards long. Circling the flat center part of the pasture is a makeshift dirt track, scribed more by use than by construction machinery. In the near side of the field at the end of the road is a car park where the train of vehicles is pulling to an orderly stop, each one of them arranging itself neatly next to the others, as if in some logical, predetermined order.

The people pile from their cars and walk directly up the side of the hill, away from the road. Some hold hands or walk arm in arm, some pick at each other, chicken-fighting, while others hold the hands and help the older ones to climb the grade. Some carry picnic baskets, many have blankets, quite a few lead children, others tote gallon jugs of mysterious, clear liquid. But they all end up sitting in clumps, scattered all across the sides of the hills among the bitter weed and dog fennel. The thick green grass is already trampled short, leaving a perfect place for the crowd to sit and look down on the dirt track below them.

The cars are there already, well before the onlookers arrive. About fifteen or so old coupes and sedans rest there, nose to tail, lined up on the raceway like overfed greyhounds but clearly ready to run. The track itself is probably only forty feet wide at its broadest and cuts a third-of-a-mile circumference out of the pasture.

On a cue from a tall, skinny man in faded bib overalls, a simple wave of the furled flag he holds, the engines of the assembled cars suddenly growl to life with the throaty rumble of unmuffled tailpipes. Pigeons and doves flutter away in terror. Rabbits hop madly for better cover.

The sound is near deafening, captured and held as it is in the bowl-shaped valley, and even those perched on the very top lip can feel the ground vibrate and almost instantly smell the oil smoke and gasoline the motors are belching.

The couple of hundred or so people gathered there can no longer tolerate sitting on the ground. They rise to their feet as one, as if someone has announced the doxology, then they are cheering, screaming, hollering. Even so, they are hardly able to hear their own voices over the bellow of the engines.

Down on the track, the brave soul in the bib overalls unleashes the tattered white flag, then jumps out of the way as the echelon of cars lurches past, headed off into the first left-leaning turn. All but one car, anyway. That one still sits there, unmoving, its engine obviously dead. A couple of men jump from among a clump of others who have been standing there in the center of the track. They put their shoulders to the car’s turtle shell and begin to push, straining hard against its dead weight. Then, with the boom of a loud backfire and a puff of black smoke, the engine finally awakens. The other cars are already entering the third turn, only a quarter of the track away from passing the straggler as the stalled car finally moves off its mark.

The late starter spins its rear tires in the dirt impatiently, raising powdery rooster tails, as it races off to catch up with the end of the rest of the field. Working hard, it slides through the first and second turns, losing traction, spewing dust, dirt, and gravel, clearly on the verge of a three-sixty spin, or of skidding off the track into the cow grass.

There is another pair of thunderous backfires as the car’s driver eases off the throttle at the end of the straight stretch and lines up the nose for the groove of the next corner. He deliberately places the car in the center of the turn as he jumps hard again on the gas, steering deeply as the car beneath him power-slides off the corner and finally catches up to its mates, who are by now making their way out of the fourth turn and on to the final straight stretch.

While the covey of cars makes a second lap, the fellow with the dirty white flag stands timidly beside one of the two fence posts that mark the starting line, watching the assembled jalopies. Those spectators scattered along the hillside now stand in unison, waving, still screaming as if the drivers could actually hear them, as if they could take their eyes off the track ahead long enough to actually see them.

Finally, another lap around the circuit done, the cars come slowly out of the fourth turn, so close to each other that the billowing dust can hardly find enough room to work its way up and between them. As they reach the straightaway and point as one toward the first turn, the flag man flutters his ragged banner just long enough for the lead cars to see, then turns and hightails it like one of the scared rabbits. He is only twenty feet from the outside cars when the pack roars past, already gaining speed. The dirt their tires fling dusts his backside as he dives into the crowd of spectators.

The noise level, deafening before, is now almost unbearable as the racers circle. The air is thick with dust, the crowd straining to try to see what’s going on through the haze, most of them sneezing and hacking when they remember to breathe.

Through the dust they may be able to see that three cars at the front of the line have begun to noticeably break away from the others. They are steadily pulling out front by four, then five car lengths, then extending their lead even more each time past the fence-post start line.

Suddenly there is a crunch and a thump as two of the cars bump together hard on the far straightaway. Once, twice, then a third time the cars kiss, rub fenders, then bounce apart. But the final smack sends both spinning, out of control, off the edge of the track, across a small ditch, and into the tall, axle-high grass. The outside car spins, hood following trunk, skewing, bounding wildly. Its driver never lifts his foot from the accelerator, shoe leather glued to gas pedal, throttle stomped to firewall. Finally, when he senses that the tires have once again found some semblance of bite in the dirt and rock, he eases up on the pedal. Once the wheels have traction and the car is back under control and pointed roughly in the right direction, it roars off, giving chase once more to the rest of the field.

The second car, though, slides to a shuddering, smoky stop, its motor dead. The driver, so busy trying to get the spinning car under control, has made an elemental mistake. He has forgotten to push in the clutch when he jammed on the brakes, stalling the engine. He cranks frantically on the starter, pounds the steering wheel, begs, cusses, prays, trying to get the engine to turn over again. He talks to the car as if it is a stubborn horse that refuses to climb out of a ditch. And the field roars past him at least three more times before he finally surrenders and crawls through the open window on the driver’s side of his dead mount. He can’t get out the conventional way because the door is tied shut with a length of hemp rope. Kicking cow pies, head down, he walks to the shade of a skinny sycamore halfway up the hill and sits there to watch the rest of the race.

After twenty-five or so more circuits around the oval and a couple more fender-swaps and spinouts, the fearful flag man tiptoes down the side of the hill, hides behind the fence post until the lead cars come out of the fourth turn, then waves his white flag just enough times so they can maybe see. Last lap.

The crowd has not yet sat down again since the start. Nor have they stopped their constant cheering. But now they scream even louder for the rusty old black coupe that leads the entire final orbit and passes the fence-post finish line first. The rest of the cars, the ones that had not won, chug off the track, making for a stand of oaks and some blessed shade. There they will find a drink of something cold and wet, let the engines and tires cool a bit, then pop the hoods, jack up the rear ends, and look for another mile per hour any place they can find it.

The winning car makes a slow victory lap, then eases up in front of the bulk of the crowd, shuts off the engine, and coasts to a stop in a clump of saw briars. Now it is the silence that is deafening until it is finally broken by the renewed cheers of the people. The driver leans out the window, takes a swig of something liquid someone has kindly handed him, gives a wave of the bottle at those who salute him, then recranks the engine and roars off to where his brothers have gathered.

He slides the vehicle in among the assembled toolboxes and helpers and openmouthed cars. Several men help him out the side window. Someone fetches him something cold from a cooler and he presses it to the back of his neck as he joins an assembly of red-faced, sweating drivers. They are all talking loudly due to their roar-numbed ears, their arms waving as they relive twists and turns and knocks and bumps in the just-completed race.

Then, in the middle of another swarm of cars and drivers under the shade of one of the tall oaks, a noisy scuffle suddenly breaks out and spills out into the hot sun. There is an eruption of pushing, shoving, and shouting, and then, as quickly as it flared up, the scuffle is put out. Someone has taken issue with a particularly enthusiastic bump or rub they had taken, but quickly, before someone has to actually back up big words, hands are shaken, backs slapped, and everyone is friends once more. Heads again disappear under hoods, beneath rear axles, into beer coolers, getting ready for the next start.

The interlude between races allows the spectators to flush the dust out of their craws, retell their favorite move by their favorite driver in the last race, and say grace over their picnic baskets. They mostly know each other and tend to socialize the way country folk do everywhere while the cars and drivers are readied for the next run. And the half dozen more dogfights that would be repeated over the balance of the afternoon.

These are the northeast Tennessee mountains, but other impromptu rituals are taking place in amazingly similar detail all across the Carolinas, southern Virginia, Alabama, and north Georgia, like far-flung religions that somehow end up with comparable beliefs. There is something satisfyingly primal about it all. It is clearly something that’s inbred, this genetic obligation to drive fast, run hard, and, most important, finish first.

Get together an assemblage of automotive machinery, young men crazy enough to pilot them or mechanical enough to coddle them, put them all in a reasonably flat place, and they are likely to try to out-duel one another, each of them viciously pushing for first place. And it is all for nothing more than bragging rights, for mine’s faster than yours, or a chance to impress some yellow-haired girl from up the other side of the mountain.

If the opportunity is there, they are going to race, surely as they are going to eat, mate, or breathe. It is all that simple.

They are bound to race. One way or another, they are bound to race.

*   *   *

Are they gonna run around again, Daddy?

I expect they will. They’s a few of ’em still got tires left on ’em.

The boy stood there, leaning against his father’s broad shoulders as he and his momma sat down together again in the fragrant grass. The youngster couldn’t take his eyes off the assemblage of cars down there below them, the men who excitedly talked and waved and danced among the vehicles as if they were being jerked around by invisible wires.

And he especially watched the one who had finished first. The one who had been saluted by the crowd.

Especially him.

GREEN FLAG

ON THE MIDNIGHT RUN

Damn, he really is fast! Jodell Lee thought as he maneuvered through the last curve that dumped him out level at the foot of the mountains. Ahead of him, out there past the hood ornament, the road ran straight as a bullet’s path for a good ten miles or so. Shoot, I’ve gotta get a move on and some kind of quick. Come on, baby, let’s see what that old boy back there can really do.

The car trailing him had closed to within a couple of hundred yards at the most. Jodell kept a close eye on his rearview mirror. He imagined that he could almost catch a glimpse of the luminescent glow on the man’s face from the dashboard lights. And he was beginning to wonder what in the world was under the hood of that car back there. Man, it had closed in on him so quick and had hung so close the car almost seemed to be chained to his own rear bumper, in tow.

Suddenly the front grill of the trailing car erupted in an explosion of flashing red lights. The law! No surprise at all.

Hmmm, this makes things real interesting, Jodell whispered out loud, through a big grin. This could be some fun.

But it was a furrowed look of concern that crossed his face next as the trailing car eased a bit closer. He gripped the wheel a little tighter as he concentrated on the familiar roadway that spun out ahead of him, looking, thinking, trying to plan a way out of this fix.

As soon as he was on the longest, straightest stretch of highway, Jodell dared to take one hand off the wheel and reached beneath the dash, fumbling until he found the lever for the exhaust bypass. The voice of the engine changed noticeably, from a throaty roar to a deep, resonant rumble. And there was the distinctive crackle and pop from the set of straight pipes, allowing the exhaust to now come directly off the headers beneath the car’s hood. It sounded for all the world like a large swarm of very angry bees.

He kicked down hard on the throttle and the car leapt ahead like a freed deer. It cleared the next small rise as if it might actually take flight and then sailed down the strip of narrow, unlined blacktop highway into the night.

This was the best time, the almost mystical time. Sometimes it felt as if he were not merely driving the car, but that the car had become a part of him. His hands were the steering box, willing the wheels which way to turn. His arms were an extension of the gearshift lever, linked straight to the transmission, determining which set of gears would mesh best. His feet on the gas and brake pedals were no longer simply a part of his body, but were now welded to the car itself, doing his will.

Sometimes he felt the car might take off like an airplane and soar over the valleys and mountains. He wouldn’t have minded if it had. Grounded or flying, he was always certain that no one, not even the Feds, could any more catch him than they could capture a hurricane in a croaker sack.

Jodell knew that in the still, cool night air, the howl of his engine could probably be heard for miles up and down the hollers and coves.

A young boy sitting on his front porch halfway to Chandler Mountain could certainly hear the deepening of its bellow, in sequence, as each of the three deuces sitting on top of the manifold kicked in, and the boy might long for the day when he, too, could make such a machine sing such a powerful song.

Or a grandpa somewhere, long since gone to bed for the night in his cabin at the top of a deep holler, might be awakened by the din, maybe roll over and smile, and wish that he still had a smidgen of his own youth left, and that he could once again feel such tingling, throbbing power working beneath his loins.

Jodell’s flathead V-8 surged with power like a caged cat. She clearly wanted to prowl, begged to be set loose. And when he did set her free, the old Ford raced off down the straight open stretch of road as if shot from a cannon, immediately putting serious distance between herself and the following sedan.

Jodell smiled. The motor work he and his cousin, Joe, had done on the engine had already paid off in the last few seconds, just as it had so many times before.

He fiddled through the gears expertly. Behind him, the sedan was now struggling to keep up, fighting to stay between the ditches on each side of the narrow blacktop, in real danger of being long since left.

Jodell found the switch under the dash that disconnected all the tail and brake lights. The lead on the sedan had grown to a good half mile, but he knew that might not be enough.