Me and my friends were the lucky kids of the '60's. We played............ outdoors.............all the time. Imagination was never in short supply. In the 1960-era Carolinas, or in our part of them, stick and ball sports were for 'city-slickers'. Stock car racing, and NASCAR were, the center of our world. Darlington, SC was about 100 miles away, and in the early days, nothing seemed larger or grander. Nothing! My dad took me to the "Rebel 300" in 1963, but that was AFTER I had a proper introduction to the sport via the dirt track Saturday night world of modified-sportsman racing; those awesome pre-war coupes and coaches. In those days, the modifieds were the featured event at neighboring RAMBI Raceway in Myrtle Beach, SC.

Ah, RAMBI Raceway and those modifieds! But just what made them so special to us kids? Hadn't NASCAR placed the old coupes on the back burner, one-upping them with the modern-looking 'strictly stock'/Grand National division? And, hadn't public opinion relegated the mods to second rate status, with overwhelming ticket-office support of the "new" cars? For us, I think, the mods just LOOKED cool! A small tire on the left front, trimmed fenders and hood, enlarged rear windows, screen wire windshields, multiple carbs, or fuel injector stacks! And cool numbers too:..... 300 and Z-1, and 21A, and 16jr. the mods had attitude..............but they were vanishing. It was 1963, and Detroit had abandoned the coupe-design-format in 1948.

Maybe they represented Hoover-times and the Great Depression, and maybe the fans of the 50's and 60's were not that interested in any reminders of that era. At any rate, the popularity of the 'modern' sedans had not been lost with NASCAR's honchos and the concept of the LATE model sportsman was being heavily encouraged and promoted by the early 1960's.

In those single-TV-station-antenna-on-the-roof days, by some unexplained mechanism, me and my friends 'knew' when RAMBI was hosting a modified event. It was more difficult than it sounded. For one thing, RAMBI was not racing weekly, just special events, randomly scheduled. It was challenging, but IF we knew RAMBI was racing, there was a chance our parents would take us! It did not work out that way every time, BUT sometimes..................it did! Truth be told, we DID have an information super highway: good-ole main street, It ran right through town! We had learned, by observation, lots of RAMBI modifieds were based in Virginia.....................AND, many traveled to Myrtle Beach via U.S. 17! Many RAMBI racers flat towed right smack-dab through Shallotte, NC! On a suspicious Saturday, it paid to keep an eye peeled on main street. By early Saturday afternoon, we would congregate on my grandparents' rocking-chair-equipped-and-main-street-located front porch, constantly scanning south-bound traffic. In the 1960's, it was rare, and impressive, if a RAMBI-bound modified rode on a trailer. In fact, the only one that comes to mind, that we ever saw, was the #1va of Doug Yates. Most of 'um were flat- towed behind passenger cars. The race car served as a trailer, of sorts, spare tires, jack handles and tool boxes could usually be seen from our perch on grandma's front porch. It was almost at exciting to see them tow through town as to see at the race track.

So, that long ago Sunday morning, we knew this coupe (on the sidewalk) had raced at RAMBI the night before; the clay was still spattered in all the right places. We knew some of the RAMBI drivers/cars, many in fact, but none of my group could recognize this one sitting right in front us. It was white, #37, and had the familiar spare parts and tires in the cockpit, and a tow bar. It was most likely from Virginia. We never really determined why they had stopped (in the first place), and we must not have had enough courage to actually ask our new heroes anything. At any rate, we didn't make a sound.

The wonderful visit ended. Just like that......#37 was gone. But the kids on that sidewalk never forgot, the car or the number. In fact, in the following years, as the LATE models were replacing the modifieds, my dad became a racer......and the old Esso station was transformed into a real live RACE SHOP! As the years went by, dad 'gave' us race-car-crazy kids one of his discarded cars.......a well-worn '55 Chevy. Naturally, he quickly sold it out from under us, but before that happened, we had painted the old car black (spray cans) and painted a bold, white number 37 (sounded like a 'modified' number to us)!

As soon as "our" black #37 was sold out from under us, it was re-painted purple, by its new owner, but he kept the number...........37! And for the next several years, on the coastal Carolina dirt tracks there was this #37 late model, it was a tribute of sorts to those long ago racers. We only knew their number, but IT lived AND raced on........It would take FORTY years and the creation of computers and the internet before I would learn the rest of the story and the identity of the coupe-on-the-sidewalk owner. His name was........... Butch Torrie, and appropriately, there's a "Remembering Butch Torrie" club, here on RacersReunion! Life's funny, with strange twists of fate, and obscure tiny events, but the simple act of stopping by the side of the road, thrilled a bunch of kids more than can fully be explained.............. Thanks Butch!

-Bobby

email: lefthander00@hotmail.com

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(Editor’s note: Bobby Williamson is a member of the regular cast of the Tuesday evening racing show ” Racing Through History”, presented on Zeus Radio Network by RacersReunion®. Archives can be found by following the link. Live broadcasts can be heard from 7:00-9:00 PM every Tuesday. Please feel free to join us in the RacersReunion® Chat Room for the show.)