Wake Forest Magazine December 2000 - Past Issues - Wake Forest ...

25
black driver to lure fans, a local
policeman recommended Scott, who
was on probation for hauling liquor.
Scott was at home in the culture of
racing, but because he was black, he
was taunted by white fans at his first
race at the Danville fairgrounds in
1947. Drivers’ reactions varied from
acceptance to outright hostility and
violence. At least one track, Darlington,
refused to allow him to compete.
Scott learned to endure whatever
torment came his way without resorting
to fighting. He did well on the
dirt tracks across the South, and in
the early sixties he moved into
Grand National racing. Although
he never secured a major sponsor,
year after year he put together a
respectable effort.
A handful of fifties drivers became
legends. Towering among them were
Junior Johnson, Curtis Turner, Fireball
Roberts, and Joe Weatherly.
Junior Johnson was born in 1931
in Wilkes County, North Carolina.
His father, Robert Glenn Johnson Sr.,
like many of his neighbors, farmed
and made liquor. When Junior was
four years old, federal agents found
1,113 cases of illegal liquor in the
Johnson home. In 1953, federal
agents found 1,200 pounds of sugar
near the Johnson home and brought
bootlegging charges against Junior,
Fred, and Glenn Johnson. Found
guilty and sentenced to eighteen
months in prison, they appealed, and
a three-judge panel overturned the
convictions. Even as they fought the
charges, the family continued making
and transporting liquor.
Junior Johnson quit school in the
eighth grade, by which time he considered
himself grown. He did not
start out planning to race automobiles.
From the time he was ten until he
broke his arm at fourteen when a farm
tractor overturned, he learned baseball
under the tutelage of a retired
professional pitcher. After he could
no longer pitch because of the pain in
his arm, he concentrated on learning
to drive, studying it as seriously as he
had studied baseball. When the North
Wilkesboro Speedway opened near
his home, he began racing.
Johnson was known as a fearless
driver. In a close race, other drivers
knew that he would summon his
nerve and never back off. In 1959,
while racing Lee Petty for the lead at
Charlotte, Johnson was forced off the
track with a flat tire after Petty incessantly
banged his bumper. Johnson
pitted, changed the tire, and after
returning to the race deliberately
forced Petty into the wall. The incident
brought out the Charlotte police.
Even as his racing career was
flourishing, Johnson was arrested in
June 1956 for firing his father’s
liquor still, and he served eleven
months in federal prison. In retrospect,
Johnson considered prison
“one of the best things that ever happened
to me,” in that it taught him
discipline. He retired from racing in
the mid-sixties when he was thirtyfour
and became a car owner. Until
1995, when he sold his racing team
and retired, Johnson’s cars won 139
races and six championships.
Roberts earned the nickname
“Fireball” as a baseball pitcher in his
teens. Introverted, moody, preoccupied,
and contradictory, he drove in
modified and Grand National races,
and in 1958, he won both the Rebel
300 and the Southern 500 at Darlington.
In Jarrett’s estimation, he was
one of the most gifted and smartest
Fearless driving and bootleg liquor were
the legendary Junior Johnson’s hallmarks.
drivers of the era. Tragically, in
May 1964, Roberts crashed at the
Charlotte 600, and his car burst into
flames. He died from burns on July 2.
Curtis Turner was born in 1924 in
the southwestern Virginia mountains.
His father owned a sawmill, made
liquor, and earned a reputation as a
tripper. By the time he was ten, Curtis
had learned to drive, and at fourteen,
he dropped out of school. By saving
the money he made hauling his father’s
liquor, Turner bought several sawmills
of his own. (Over the years, he would
display a knack for investing and then
losing money.) In 1946, he began racing
at Mount Airy, North Carolina.
Over time, he became perhaps the best
dirt track driver of his era, although
he was as likely to crash as to win. By
“throwing his car sideways and spinning
the wheels and throwing up
rooster tails,” Jarrett observed,
Turner awed fans at dirt tracks and
the famous beach course at Daytona.
Turner had rugged good looks,
stood six-feet-two, and weighed 220
pounds. He dressed in silk suits,
PHOTOGRAPH BY BILL WILSON. COURTESY OF THE ATLANTA HISTORY CENTER
W a k e F o r e s t December 2000