Racing History Minute - Darlington continued
Stock Car Racing History
You have recalled great memories, Tim. Thanks for painting such a vivid picture of your family's preparations before leaving home for the Southern 500 and the activities leading up to the Labor Day race.
Neither my daughters nor my grandsons have ever had the pleasure of visiting an ice house at dawn and watching the attendant chip off the exact size block you needed with perfection and use those huge ice tongs to lift it into your cooler.
In the 50s - early 60s, our family always traveled with a 7-Up cooler absolutely identical to the one pictured below selling for $125 on e-bay:
Our cooler was lined with galvanized steel and had a galvanized steel tray at the top. The big cooler handle fitted into a groove atop the handle on the lid, locking the lid in place. We called it the "ice chest." My sister and I would beg to be the one allowed to unscrew the metal cap on a chain on the little drain plug just as it is pictured in the photo above to let out water when the ice was to be replenished..
I remember dad scraping the salt and pepper off a huge Smithfield ham (from the peanut fed porkers of Smithfield, Virginia) then soaking it overnight in the bath tub. Mom then boiled that ham in a huge roasting pan on top of the stove, before coating it with brown sugar and cloves and baking it in the oven.
As a nine year old, I rode to the local ice house with dad at dawn on a hot Richmond August morning in the summer of 1958 to get the block of ice that went in that cooler. We were beginning a 275 mile journey from Richmond to a cottage we'd rented for a week on the oceanfront at Carolina Beach near Wilmington, NC. That same cottage appeared in an Associated Press wire photo in 1959, torn down by a hurricane.
Our Smithfield ham was placed on top of that block of ice with the precision of a surgeon. The top tray was loaded with deviled eggs, potato salad and other such necessities before the cooler was placed in the trunk of dad's '57 Chevy.
There was no I-95 in 1958 - just the Richmond-Petersburg Turnpike before getting on U.S. 301 South headed toward North Carolina. We traveled in tandem with our good friends, the Newsome family, also driving their '57 Chevy.
After a hearty breakfast at the home of Mrs. Newsome's sister in Emporia, Virginia, we continued south, before turning off at Wilson, NC onto U.S. 117 toward Goldsboro and eventually the coast. Somewhere on U.S. 301 in the heart of tobacco country we stopped at a Stuckeys and I was allowed to buy a colored postcard of a goat (must of been an early prediction of a Goat Rodeo) with a hind leg lifted over a tobacco plant. The caption on the cartoon asked, "Do Your Cigarettes Taste Different Lately?" I kept that postcard tacked up on a bulletin board in my bedroom until I left for college 8 years later.
For some reason, I remember stopping in Mt. Olive, NC - home to the Mount Olive and Cates pickle factories for gas. Dad went into an Amoco station on one side of the road and the Newsomes into an Esso station directly across. Mount Olive was full of '57 Chevys that day!
Eventually we arrived at Carolina Beach for one of the best vacations our family ever had. That old ice chest served us well the entire week at the beach.
I realize my response has nothing to do with Darlington, but your memory, Tim, of your family getting ice for the tin box in the blue cooler really struck a nerve and took me back 55 years to the summer of 1958. Thanks for rekindling a particularly pleasant memory.
I look forward to more tales of Darlington Southern 500s past.
