Way back when the world was teetering on the brink of cyber extinction, via the awful Y-TWO-KAY (Y2K for techies) conflagaration, the internet was just beginning to 'saturate' the american household, including my own. After hunting and pecking for a while, I completely fell into an old-time racer's wonderland, honey pot, and briar patch.............a web site called "North Carolina Vintage Stock Cars", and then I found one called "Welcome to the early years".................hmmmm. This new-fangled internet, if it didn't blow up the world, was going to revolutionize and re-connect old racers, and their old pictures, and stories, and all the fans interested in such.I soon found a search engine that could find people. I had to pay for the service, but right there on my screen was the name, address and phone number of Walt Zawaski!................Okay, so Walt a'int exactly a household name, didn't make NASCAR's 50 greatest list, but I just called ol' Walt one day, out of the clear blue sky."you say your dad drove that blue '57 Chevy.......................?" (Mrs. Zawaski).............."Yes mam" (me)"we shore do remember him........don't we Walt?" (Mrs. Zawaski yelling to Walt in the background)I must have passed the identity test, after a few more questions, she put Walt on the phone................"I still got my two coupes" Walt began.........."And I'll turn 'um upside down and make flower pots out of 'um before I SELL 'um.............gotta a '38 and a '39.........both still got the CLAY on 'um from the last time I raced 'um......""GASP!" (me)It was 1964, I was 10 years old, and my dad had taken me to the newly opened Carolina Beach Speedway. That'll be 45 years ago this summer, but I remember a red-oxide primered Ford coupe, actually it was painted white on the driver's side, but every other side was red primer. It had the right-side door cut down, and was #17a........white number on the primer side and a primer number on the white side..........how COULD I forget a coupe like that? Anyway, #17a sort of comically poked down the straigaways but then the driver would nail it in the turns..........broadsliding, with twin SAND rooster tails (there wasn't a speck of clay on the entire site that was Carolina Beach Speedway). Actually, such a technique wasn't too bad at the CB Speedway. No, he didn't win the race, Richard Brickhouse did, but the coupe was driven by Walt Zawaski.Within a couple seasons, the Carolina Beach Speedway was enroute to becoming the Cape Golf Club, but it gave rise to other area race tracks, most notably, Little River (SC) and Leland (NC). Back in the day, all the coastal Carolina speedways featured two racing divisions: amateurs called "jalopys" and the more sophisticated eastern late models. Walt and his flathead powered white and primer coupe was a jalopy.Really, it wasn't a jalopy. Walt's coupe was a bonafide '50's era NASCAR sportsman. Walt had raced the car to the 1959 track championship at the old Jacksonville (NC) speedway and Myrtle Beach's newly opened Rambi Raceway. American hot-rodding and NASCAR both owe a debt of gratitude to Henry Ford and his flathead V-8, but by the late 1960's, flathead technology was rare as hen's teeth. All coastal jalopys ran the 223 (Ford) or 235 (chevy)............6 bangers.Y'all remember the various 6 cylinder classes, they all that high pitched whine............one that was REALLY hauling the mail, sounded like a bumble bee. Walt's flathead V-8 could easily be heard, deeply roaring above the bees. Lots of times the bees were swarming after the flathead. Once, they protested...........but the Little River tech-man didn't know enough about a flathead to know if Walt was legal or not.............so he was declared "legal"! In our phone interview, 40 years later, Walt confided that he always ran the aluminum high comression Canadian heads.........just painted 'um. And he employed a Lincoln distributor........had a mechanical advance mechanism. Rumor once indicated Walt had rigged up a small block Chevy fuel pump on the flatty, but he didn't mention that one........and I forgot to ask.Walt attended the beach races at Daytona, and teamed with fellow Wilmington racer, Davis Raper, to enter a '37 Ford coach in one of the very first modified-sportsman races at the BIG D. Fireball was scheduled to drive the Wilmington coach, but declared it "aerodynamically unstable".......even with "air holes" added to the front fenders. Undaunted, the Raper team had Red Farmer wheel their #42 modified. The team would buy and ex-Cotton Owens '61 Pontiac and enter a handful of GN events with Ralph Earnhardt driving. Serving as Ralph's crew chief, was Walt's personal carreer highlight.Walt Zawaski passed away this past February. his two clay-spattered coupes, #17a and 17b are still in his garage, along with their '53 Studebaker tow car, and who-knows-what-else. He kept promising that I could go and see them, but he finally admitted they would actually be "hard" to see......with all the stuff piled on them. I never made it, and sadly Walt didn't either. But, hopefully the time capsule in Walt's garage can be saved, an incredible testimony to stock car racing's past. ...............cut-down doors, half windshields, and roaring flathead Fords.