Had an enjoyable lunch today. Russ Thompson invited me to join his regular yet infrequent racers' lunch. With only an email to a few and a handful of phone calls, word spread wide enough to rally up 40 folks or so from Nashville's racing past to gather for lunch and story swapping.
I grew up as a young teen going on many Saturday nights to local feature races at the fairgrounds. I did make it to a couple of Cup events. But my primary interest back were the heroes who ran the mini-stock, limited sportsman and late model sportsman races. Even when NASCAR's touring Late Model Sportsman division came to town for a 200 lap feature, I was generally more interested in a 25 or 50 lap undercard late model race featuring the local guys.
Back in the day, I knew cars and drivers' names. But because we simply arrived, sat in the stands, watched the races, and then headed for the exits, I didn't really know faces of drivers nor other folks such as owners, chassis & engine guys, officials, etc. So that nugget plus the number of years that have passed put me at a real disadvantage on knowing folks in the room. Nonetheless, I met a few folks and simply observed the good times folks seemed to be having.
A few notable memories however included:
- Meeting Walter Wallace, 2x speedway late model champion (67, 75). In the late 70s, Walter put his driving days behind him and worked for about 25 years as a NASCAR official in Cup and trucks. At 82 years old, he is about to relocate to Washington state.
- Meeting Earl Owens again. Earl continues to run a race shop near my house in Franklin. He also built the #45 cream colored Pontiac Grand Prix Joe Ruttman raced in the 1989 Daytona 500 and sponsored by ... Schaefer Beer.
- Meeting Ronnie Robbins, son of Marty Robbins, and listen to some racing stories of his own and of his dad.
- Meeting the soon-to-be 90 years old Mark Parrish (I believe that was his name). He along with Bill Donoho Sr and Bennie Goodman signed the lease with the city of Nashville to develop what became known as Nashville Fairgrounds Speedway.
- Meeting Randy Binkley, son of Charlie Binkley. Randy is an RR member though not as active as he once was here. He is very active, however, in collecting Nashville racing photos and sharing them through Facebook.
- Having Harry Dugan point out a few key individuals who impacted Nashville racing. Harry not only was a crewman for Marty Robbins back in the day but also is active today with the Boy Scouts troop in which my son was involved. He helped him immensely with his Eagle project. Harry would point and say "that one was an engine man - he build motors for Coo Coo" and "that one was a chassis builder" and "that's Blossom, he has crewed for everyone, and I don't even know his real name." Ha.
Russ has held several of these lunches in recent years. Unfortunately, my schedule always conflicted with them - until today. Hopefully it won't be the only one I attend.
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Schaefer: It's not just for racing anymore.
updated by @tmc-chase: 12/05/16 04:09:31PM
