Racing the Way It Was - Larry Curry Paid Crew with Box of Chicken and a Beer

All in a day's work for racer Larry Curry

By Doug Boyd

1991

On a sunny Saturday, Larry Curry and engine builder Brad Puryear stood over Curry 's No. 55 race car watching water disappear through the car radiator. The night before at Wake County Speedway near Raleigh, Curry had broken a rocker arm stud after only five laps of racing. Water leaked all through the engine. The pair had been working since 6 a.m. to get it back right.

Puryear removed a rocker arm cover. Beneath, the milky residue of water-polluted oil told where the radiator water was going. At 12:57 p.m., Curry and Puryear started removing the intake manifold to replace its gaskets.

During the week, Curry , 47, paints houses. Since 1965, though, he's spent his weekends winning stock car races on the short tracks of eastern North Carolina.

"It's all I've ever done as far as sports or anything," Curry said. "That and a little fishing. But you get to be 47 years old and it gets to where it's not so daggone fun like it used to be."

At 1:04 p.m., Puryear lifted the intake, and water stood inside the valley of the V8 engine. He spotted the leak at a break at the front of the left gasket.

Puryear builds Curry 's engines using tricks he learned when he built them for the best. He built Darrell Waltrip's engines when Waltrip drove Junior Johnson's Buicks to the 1981 and '82 NASCAR championships.

Roy Hamm, 55, took the intake and rocker covers to the workbench inside the small shop and cleaned the watery oil from them. Hamm has been helping Curry for about three years. He gets paid every Saturday with Bojangles' chicken and Miller beer.

At 1:19 p.m., Puryear left to go get a new set of intake gaskets. Curry and Hamm broke for lunch, but the three boxes of chicken were almost gone.

"Charlie," Curry said.

Charlie Hendrick sat off to the side watching the other men work on the burgundy and silver car. At 62, Hendrick can remember Curry and Puryear when they were boys playing in Curry 's father's shop just like Curry 's own grandson was doing that day.

"I'm the foreman," Hendrick said. "Foreman, supervisor, whatever you want to call it. I sit over here and I can see everything. They'd lose it all if I didn't tell them where it is."

As the cobweb-covered stereo atop an old GE refrigerator plays barely audible country music, Curry told a little about his early days in racing.

He started drag racing in 1963. Then he took a '55 Chevy, put a roll cage in it and went oval track dirt racing in '65.

"That roll cage looked like tobacco sticks up in there," Curry said. "I wouldn't race anything like that today." The tubular steel roll cage in No. 55 attested to that. Curry built the car himself. He trusts the welds, and that's important.

In 1976 at Wilson County Speedway, the accelerator on Curry 's car hung open. His car left the track and went over the outside guardrail, and Curry was badly burned in the wreck.

"I hit the top of a telephone pole and slid down," Curry recalled. "I got laid up about seven weeks, and while I was out the guy I was driving for built me a brand new car, and I came right out seven weeks after that, and the first two nights out, Friday and Saturday night, I won."

He also once drove a car with a hand clutch.

"In '68, I broke my leg in a demolition derby," Curry said. "I was in a cast from here," he said, pointing to the top of his left thigh, "to my toes. The boys put a hand clutch in the car, and I was back out the next week. They had to lift me in and out of the car. I wouldn't do that today."

Puryear returned with the new gaskets, so the chicken went back in the box and the men went back to the car. At 1:40 p.m., the new gaskets were in place and the intake went back on. Puryear stood inside the engine compartment to tighten the bolts. With the 11-inch-wide tires removed. The fender wells had that much room.

As Puryear worked, Curry talked about his racing strategy.

"I'm not trying to be aggressive and knock nobody out," he said while tightening intake bolts. "But if someone gives me an opening, I don't care if it's my brother, I'm going to put it right up there. I'm going to ride it as hard as I can."

Puryear said his engine puts out 400-450 horsepower, which helped Curry put the car right up there. But a driver has to know his competition, and that's where Curry is most careful.

"The worst thing is running with the lapped cars," Curry said. "They pull down and there you are, running 15 to 20 miles an hour faster than they are, and it's hard to stop. But they're racing, too."

Curry slipped the distributor back into place and talked about running on the NASCAR circuit.

"It'd be a dream," Curry said. "But I'm too old to do it. But if I was 20 years old and knew what I know now, I'd go up yonder to Junior Johnson's, Darrell Waltrip's, anywhere, and just sweep the floors. Anything to get started."

At 1:45 p.m., Hamm brought over the rocker arm covers, and Puryear and Curry bolted them on. Puryear then climbed from the engine compartment, and Curry went to the driver's window. He bumped the starter button. The ignition was too advanced, so Puryear turned the distributor. Another bump on the starter showed still too much advance, so Puryear turned the distributor some more. Curry bumped the starter again, and the timing sounded good, but No. 55 thirsted for gas. Puryear pumped the carburetor twice, fuel squirted into the intake and Curry hit the starter button one more time.

At 1:58 p.m., No. 55 roared to life. The radiator holds its water. Curry shuts off the engine and drains the oil from the crankcase. It's clean. He changed the oil filter while Hamm refilled the engine with Havoline.

Curry's grandson, Chuckie, then ran into the shop. Just like the men, he wants to work the jack and get a Miller from the refrigerator. He put his hand down by the exhaust pipe to feel the hot exhaust pulse from the engine.

"He's not scared at all," said Curry 's wife, Pat, 42. She watches their three grandchildren every Saturday.

As Curry washed the car, he went back to his early days in racing.

"My first car was number 11 because that was easy to put on," he said. "Then I bought a car that was 55." That was in '65, and it's been that way ever since. "People get to know you by your number," he said.

At 2:59 p.m., the men rolled No. 55 onto its trailer. At 3:20 p.m., Curry pulls out in his old burgundy-and-silver GMC van with No. 55 behind headed to East Carolina Motor Speedway, 80 miles down U.S. 64.

At the track during heat races to determine starting positions for the feature race, Curry was fast but loose in the turns. The rear of the car doesn't want to follow the front.

"The secret to racing is getting something to handle," Curry said after pulling back into his pit. That's especially true at ECMS, a track with a funky dip in turn two.

Pat Curry spends races in the scoring booth atop the main grandstand. She scores races at ECMS and enjoys it, except when her husband races.

"It's hard for me to score because I want to watch him," she said. "I have a nervous breakdown up there."

As a previous race ended, Curry strapped himself into No. 55. The engine is holding up but the car won't handle. Curry 's aim is to avoid trouble.

The cars made several parade laps with Curry in the third starting position directly behind pole-sitter Mike Bogue. When the green flag waved, Bogue led into turn one with Curry behind. Old rival John Whitley, who started second beside Bogue, cut in front of Curry and No. 55 hit Whitley with its right front.

"I hit the clutch and the brake at the same time," Whitley said later. He looked at the tire mark on his left-rear fender. "Was that him?" he asked.

The contact doesn't help No. 55's handling. Curry stayed steady and on lap nine he was in fourth place. By lap 16, Curry pulled even with third-place Tony Rigdon down the straights. He looked inside on lap 20 and went by on lap 21. Caution flew on the next lap as Whitley's Pontiac rolled silently into the pits. He refired it and went back out.

Curry was second behind Bogue on the restart and held it for two more laps before the caution flew again. On the next restart, Curry got loose and Rigdon retook second. When the checkered flag flew on lap 30, the order was Bogue, Rigdon, Curry and Whitley.

"I burned up the brakes," Curry said. "Slammed the pedal to the floor. had to pump them three or four times coming down the straightaway." With better handling, he wouldn't have had to use the brakes so much.

"This is the illest handling race car," Curry said. The car handled great the year before. "We didn't change anything on the chassis," Curry said, his voice trailing off as he stared at the car and shook his head.

Curry laughed off the bump with Whitley. They had some times in the past. Once, a race had to be stopped because they were banging so much, Curry said.

"You can't hold a grudge," Curry said. "You're constantly working on the car if you hold a grudge. Fifteen or 20 years ago, I'd get so mad I'd go out there and tear something up and I'd work all week. I was younger then."

Curry drove No. 55 onto the trailer, and as a testimony to its poor handling the car goes on crooked. Puryear and Hamm bounced on the back end and slid the car over until it was straight.

Pat Curry returned from the scoring booth in time to see her husband sign an autograph for a young fan. Everybody was smiling again as they climbed in the old GMC, 18 hours after their day started, for the midnight drive back home.