Forum Activity for @dave-fulton

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

Stock Car Racing History

I had not noticed the similarity until you pointed it out. Painted like team cars or same sponsor.

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

Stock Car Racing History

Charles Ray, I remember every single one of those cars you've listed. I always thought Tinker Avery was a cool name for a race driver.

RR member, Tim Hamm has this 1974 photo posted of Mike Wiggins and his #6 Chevy II at Wilson. Notice the Horton Engineering (Carl Horton) / Grifton on the rear quarter.

Mike later was sponsored in those black & silver cars and traveled for W.C. Shackeleford out of Kinston representing the Winners Circle Drug Awareness program. Along with Maurice Petty, Ritchie Petty, Mickey York, Bobby Labonte, Morgan Shepherd, "Brother Bill " Frazier and a number of others, Mike unwittingly was shilling for a crook who went to prison for insurance fraud.

You'll see Mike's name listed below (last one) in the list of those on the Advisors Board in the cover letter from Shackeleford that accompanied the complimentary set of Winner's Circle cards I received from Shackelford.

Back in 2008, member Dirtnut posted this line at Local Race Chat about Lake Speed wrecking Mike's car at Wilson.

The last time I saw Mike was in the early 90s at our Richmond track. He was manning the display for Winner's Circle and had his own car on display along with several others. I recall Mike being very quiet and soft spoken.

Lots of good memories in that list of drivers you posted.

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

Stock Car Racing History

I don't recall either name.

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

Stock Car Racing History

Wish I knew who was in #49 and #57, but I don't remember.

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

Stock Car Racing History

Here's a several more photos of Larry Curry in a couple of different #55s at Wilson County Speedway in the 70s as posted by Racin_Girl_22 at the Local Race Chat web site.

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

Stock Car Racing History

These days when you drive from Wilson to Raleigh you bypass Larry Curry's hometown of Knightdale.

But back in the 70s, anytime we were gonna drive from Wilson to Raleigh, my late father-in-law always reminded my daughters to look out for "Jackass Road" in Knightdale - much to my wife's consternation. One daughter would inevitably ask if we knew anybody who lived on Jackass Road - at which point my wife would caution me not to go there!

A few years back as the Raleigh suburbs grew and Knightdale became a Raleigh "bedroom" community, the new residents got uppity and petitioned for a name change to the infamous road. The result made the Associated Press national wire:

AP , Associated Press

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

Stock Car Racing History

Member, Charles Ray Stocks has made a comment on the Wilson County Speedway Memories club page - http://stockcar.racersreunion.com/group/wilson-county-speedway-memories - about former racer, Larry Curry of Knightdale, NC (near Raleigh) winning both races and demolition derbies at Wilson County Speedway in the 1970s. I remembered Larry well from our team racing with him at both Wilson and Wake County Speedway in Raleigh.

What I remember most about Larry is the afternoon in the 70s when he got airborne in turn 3 the highest I've ever seen a car get on a short track.... all the way to the top of a light pole which was a huge telephone pole. He hit that pole and landed out near U.S. 301.

While looking around, I found that Larry kept right on racing into the 21st Century in his 60s at East Carolina Motor Speedway where he became Competition Director when he quit.

I found a story written in 1991 by a journalism major at North Carolina State University about Larry - then 47 - and his racing experiences up to that time. I thought the story offered an excellent retrospective about how we used to race at the weekly level.

Doesn't matter the state or the track, I think everyone who ever raced locally can appreciate and relate to the shop and track experiences and conditions described in this 23 year old story.

My memories of Larry at Wilson was of this burly racer who was coming through come heck or high water. I really appreciate Charles Ray Stocks reminding me of Larry Curry

Larry Curry at Wilson County (NC) Speedway - 1975 - photo by RR member, Tim Hamm

.

How much of this story sounds familiar?

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.

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updated by @dave-fulton: 12/05/16 04:00:58PM

Frances Flock's Garage Tribute to Husband Tim

Stock Car Racing History

Columnist, Scott Fowler of the Charlotte Observer wrote a column this week about visiting the garage of Frances Flock in Indian Land, SC (just south of Charlotte on U.S. 521) where she maintains a tribute to her late husband, Tim Flock. There is also a short video.

NASCAR HOF inductee Tim Flocks widow doesnt monkey around with remembrance of him

By Scott Fowler
sfowler@charlotteobserver.comJanuary 28, 2014

INDIAN LAND, S.C. Frances Flocks two-car garage holds no actual cars.

Instead, it contains thousands of mementos of her late husband Tims racing life pictures, plaques, trophies and five enormous scrapbooks so stunning in their attention to detail that digital versions of them actually made it into NASCARs Hall of Fame in Charlotte before Tim Flock did.

Tim Flock, one of NASCARs earliest pioneering drivers and a two-time points champion at the sports highest level, in 1952 and 1955, will be inducted posthumously into the hall of fame Wednesday. No one at that event will enjoy the moment more than 85-year-old Frances Flock, who proclaims the night will be like going to the Oscars.

Her garage at her home about half an hour from Charlotte is basically a small museum dedicated to her late husband. It is carefully designed and carpeted. Even her garage door has checkered flags and other mementos attached to it. None of them fall down when you open the garage, either.

Frances Flock said the garage helps her feel close to her late husband.

It means so much to me to keep my husband alive, she said. Every time I come in and out, I feel his presence because Im completely surrounded by him.

Tim Flock died of lung and liver cancer in 1998. When asked the question of how long she and Tim were married, Frances Flock gives another clue to the depth of her devotion with her answers exactness.

Fifty-three years, five months and four days, she said.

The two met at a dance in Atlanta in 1941. Tim Flock, who would later impress even Richard Petty with how smoothly he drove a race car, exhibited grace in other areas as well that night.

I was dancing the jitterbug with a sailor that night, Frances Flock said. He spun me, and it was so hot, I kind of lost my balance. Well, Tim was propped up against a post. The guy who I was dancing with didnt try to grab me because he had already turned loose of my hand. So Tim grabbed me, right around my waist. Thats the way we met.

They would marry in 1944, when Frances was only 16 but an old maid in my neighborhood, where most were already married by then, she said and Tim was 20.

Tim had two older brothers Bob and Fonty who were racing before he tried it out. He ended up becoming the most well-known of the Flock racing family (which also included a racing sister). That was partly because of his championships and partly because he pulled off one of the most unusual publicity stunts in racing.

This would never work today for a variety of reasons. But in 1953, Flock kept a Rhesus monkey inside the race car with him for eight races.

Jocko Flocko, as the monkey was known, had his own race suit and was Flocks co-driver for one win, at a race in Hickory. He stayed in a cage at the Flocks home in Atlanta between races. When asked if she had much direct contact with Jocko Flocko, Frances laughed.

Oh no, she said. That was Tims and the two oldest boys mess. I had five children to raise and one of them was a small baby at the time.

Jocko Flocko was taken out of the race car for good, however, when he was hit by a pebble in his eighth race and ended up latching himself to Flock and clawing into the racers back in a panic. That forced an unscheduled pit stop to get, as Flock would later recall, the monkey off my back.

Flocks best season was 1955, when he won 18 races. He had 39 wins all told in NASCARs premier series. Flock quit racing in 1961, whereupon he went to work for Charlotte Motor Speedway for the next 30 years in a variety of roles. He and Frances raised their family near the UNC Charlotte campus, 4 miles from the speedway. She moved to Indian Land to be closer to her family a few years after his death.

As the flame keeper of her late husbands career, Frances has long been interested in when Tim would make it into NASCARs hall. This is the fifth NASCAR hall of fame class, and she had attended a couple of the earlier announcement ceremonies in hopes that her husband would be honored.

I was so heartbroken after the one (in 2012) that I said Im not going anymore, Frances said. And my son said, Mother, well go one more time. If Daddy dont go in this time then we wont go anymore. So we went. And when he was announced, I was so tickled all I could do was throw my hands up. And then I started crying.

That was in May 2013, when the class of 2014 was announced. Flock was the leading vote-getter for this class.

Frances Flock keeps busy throughout the summer months going to car shows and selling Tim Flocks biography and other memorabilia. They used to do that together, and she has continued the tradition. She usually works in the Carolinas, but has driven as far as Kansas City and Florida with family members to go to the shows. She knows all of Tims racing stories by heart, she says, and likes to tell them to the younger generation.

Thats my hobby, she said. Thats one of the things I promised him I would continue to do as long as I had good health and people asked me to come to the shows. And right now Im booked all the way through September 2015.

This week, though, Frances Flock is going to the Oscars in Charlotte. Her late husband has finally made it to the big dance, and this time her family stands ready to catch her if she starts to fall. Better clear off some more space in the garage. This is going to be big.

Fowler: sfowler@charlotteobserver.com; Twitter: @scott_fowler

Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/2014/01/28/3571755/nascar-hof-inductee-tim-flocks.html#storylink=cpy

updated by @dave-fulton: 12/26/16 06:51:43AM

1/30/59 - Daytona Track Nears Completion as Owners Partner with New Drivers for 500 Mile Sweepstakes

Stock Car Racing History

The January 30, 1959 Daytona paper revealed several new owner / driver combos as construction of the new 2.5-mile Daytona International Speedway neared completion and race time for the inaugural 500-mile Sweepstakes approached.

updated by @dave-fulton: 12/05/16 04:00:58PM

What happens, when you don't know "The Rules"? The TRUTH comes out....

Current NASCAR

So, you caught that line on the NHOF show about Tim Flock's "retirement" , too. What a slap in the face.