I Was A Race Fan, Part 2
12/31/2014
Dave Fulton
I'd return to the Richmond track in September 1964 with dear
friend, Frank, beginning a tradition that would eventually take the two of us
to hundreds of races in many series at tracks too numerous to name correctly.
The week after receiving my driver's license in October 1964, I dislocated my
hip playing football and spent six weeks in traction and six months on
crutches. In March 1965, I somehow climbed with Frank's assistance to the top
of the 4th turn Richmond bleaches on crutches - an experience I don't want to
repeat. But, I was a race fan.
With our driver's licenses now firmly in hand, Frank and I began in spring 1965
our weekly Friday
night treks to Southside Speedway, then Saturday night adventures to Langley Field,
South Boston, and Old Dominion. We made it up to Beltsville, Maryland for a GN
race, but our two biggest adventures came in 1966, when we boarded in Richmond
the first ever "race
train" from Washington,
DC to the brand new North Carolina Motor Speedway at Rockingham and then on
Labor Day when we took a Greyhound bus to Darlington, South Carolina to witness
our first Southern 500.
In September 1966, Frank and I headed to different colleges for 4 years making
our race trips together more difficult. But, we persevered. Virginia tracks
were phasing out the mods and bringing in the Late Model Sportsman division. We
embraced the new division, while mourning the loss of the modified coupes. We
took in races in the new NASCAR GT (later
Grand American) division at
Richmond, South Boston and Raleigh.
Following graduation, I took a job with the makers of Wrangler Jeans, settling
in Wilson, North Carolina, then home to another fabulous half-mile dirt track.
Somehow I became involved monetarily with what would have been known at the
time as a Limited Sportsman car there. Our 301 cubic inch
1955 Chevy, driven by the late Danny Lee, raced at Wilson, Wake County Speedway
in Raleigh and Chantilly Speedway in Weldon, NC. I once drove it in a
pavement heat race at Cumberland International in Fayetteville, NC. That was a
huge mistake. I was not cut out to drive race cars. I was a race fan.
My buddy Frank took a sports writing job in Siler City, NC (home to Aunt Bee) while teaching Journalism at the
University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. As tickets to the Grand National
races, now sponsored by Winston, became more expensive, Frank got us pit passes
to Rockingham and Darlington. During this time, two of our
old Southside Speedway modified regulars - Bill
Dennis & Lennie Pond - became NASCAR Rookies of the Year,
verifying what we already knew about our Richmond hometown weekly racing.
At the same time, Southside regular Ray Hendrick was winning huge LMS events at
Charlotte and Talladega as well as the Modified Race of Champions at Langhorne
and Trenton and being paid handsomely by northern promoters to come up and beat
their weekly regulars.
At the same time, the much loved Southside car owner, Junie
Donlavey began campaigning full time on the GN circuit, his volunteer crew
placing the underfunded #90 upfront for Richard Brooks, Ricky Rudd, Ken
Schrader and Dick Trickle, among a list of drivers as long as there is in
NASCAR history for a single owner.
I was the Division Personnel Manager for Wrangler's largest manufacturing
division in summer of 1980 when the plum fell right off the tree and into my
lap. While on a recruiting trip for Industrial Engineers to North Carolina
State University in Raleigh with our Corporate Personnel Manager, I was told
our company was going stock car racing. I was asked if I'd like to interview to
head up the program.
Turns out we'd be sponsoring the former Rookie of the Year, a young fellow
named Dale Earnhardt. Before I could move to corporate headquarters in
Greensboro, we'd put our name on the Earnhardt/Osterlund car for the final 1980
race at Ontario, where Dale would win his first NASCAR National Championship
for Wrangler. In January 1981, Dale and I sat together in a booth in Daryll's Restaurant on Church Street in Greensboro eating
meatball subs. Dale had never seen a personal services contract before. The one
he signed that afternoon for $100,000 had Italian sauce stains on the Wrangler
copy.
Life became a whirlwind after I signed on to manage a stock car racing program.
We went through three car owners with Earnhardt the first year - Rod Osterlund,
Jim Stacy and Richard Childress. That one season would fill the pages of a
lengthy book. It was hell and hard work seven days a week. But, not only was I
working in stock car racing, I was a race fan.
For 1982 we took Dale and our Wrangler dollars down to Spartanburg, South
Carolina to the shop where WWII hero, Walter Maynard "Bud" Moore housed his fleet of fast Fords.
I have never met a finer man or nicer family. Four years later my family would
temporarily move into Bud's house on Lake Bowen, west of Spartanburg.
In January 1984 I got a call from NASCAR telling me that the folks at 7-Eleven
in Dallas, Texas needed someone to turn around a faltering motorsports program
featuring Kyle Petty racing out of a ghost shop in Level Cross, North Carolina
that had once been Petty Enterprises. Severely understaffed and trying to race
a new Ford Thunderbird in 1984, Kyle's operation was doomed. Richard provided
what advice he could, but he'd moved over to Mike Curb. Kyle's cantankerous
grandfather, Lee made afternoon appearances from the golf course, cursing the
crew and telling them how sorry they were.
We managed to broker a deal for 1985 that saved Kyles'
career as well as the operation of the Wood Brothers, when 7-Eleven convinced
them to run the full schedule and take on KP as their driver. Those were more
fine people to work with. They don't come any nicer than Richard and Kyle or
the Wood family - Glen, Leonard, Eddie, Len, Kim and their spouses and
children. One of my favorite Christmas cards shows a little toddler, Jonathan
Wood peeking between the banisters of a staircase. In no time it seemed, he was driving his own race car. Time flies. My girls were
growing, we were moving around, but I was still a race fan.
For 1986, Derrike Cope, our Winston West driver for 7-Eleven convinced me to
move back east to Spartanburg and help him start a Cup operation. Bud Moore and
his wife met my family with a car trunk holding two weeks of groceries that we unloaded
into their lake house they insisted we use - at no charge. After a later stint
in Charlotte running a Public Relations and Marketing company handling stuff
for folks like Robert Yates and Davey Allison, I moved back to Richmond for the
next ten years. There, from 1990-1999, I served my old friend, Paul Sawyer as
his Director of Media Relations at the beautiful Richmond International
Raceway.
While back at Richmond, we staged races for not only the Cup and Busch Series
cars, but for the NASCAR Modifieds, Late Model Stock
Cars, Trucks and the disastrous Sportsman series, as well as races for USAC
Silver Crown and Midget divisions. Again, it was hard work, but I loved every
race. I was a race fan.
I haven't been inside a Cup track since I left Richmond in 1999.
Dale passed in 2001. NASCAR began to make changes I didn't understand. The cars
could no longer race side-by-side. "Lucky
Dog" and "Wave Around" rules put cars back in competition
that hadn't been competitive. Drivers started avoiding fans, holing up in
million dollar motor homes and ducking the autographs Richard Petty once so
diligently signed well after dark. Races became boring, television ratings
tanked. I tried to keep watching because I was a race fan.
I tried taking one of my grandsons to two local weekly tracks in the Charlotte
market. One was dirt, the other was asphalt. The races were awful. Each field
had only 5-8 cars. They were running 7-8 divisions and we couldn't tell the
difference. My weekly track experience had come in the days of 2-3 divisions
and 18-20 cars in each race with divisions you could tell apart.
Soon all these goofy Chase rules appeared in the soon to be renamed again Cup
series. I no longer understand what I watch - when I watch. The starting times
of races have been tampered with, making them run too late.
Now the grandstands are being torn down. I wonder why?
I WAS a race fan - FOREVER, I thought. Today
I have my doubts.