Racers, Graveyards & Jawbreakers

With Halloween just around the corner, I figured we could use a graveyard story. My NASCAR Grand National racing hero back in the mid-60s was JT Putney, an "independent" Chevy driver from Farmville, Virginia who lived in Arden, NC, an Asheville suburb. Between stints as a corporate pilot for Southeastern Aviation, JT drove for Herman "The Turtle" Beam in his number 19 Chevies, having replaced Cale Yarbrough when Cale left for the #27 Fords of Banjo Matthews, another Arden based business near the Asheville airport.

The Late J.T. Putney

Each year NASCAR conducted what was termed the "Northern Tour." Races were run in such placesas Oxford, Maine; Bridgehampton, NY; Islip, NY and Fonda, NY among other venues. Big winners of the "Northern Tour" included drivers such as the late Billy Wade for Bud Moore and Bobby Allison in his independent Chevelle #2.

My hero, JT Putney was entered in the 1966 Fonda event, but instead of a hero, he wound up being a goat. Here's one account of JT's Fonda exploits by Steve Shaw as recounted in a column chronicling the 10 Stupidiest Moments in NASCAR History ( up to the time of the column ):

6. Graveyard Shift-J.T. Putney, Tiny Lund-Fonda Speedway, 1966-

Putney had started second, and quickly jumped to the front, leading the first 31 laps. However, on lap 32 he spun off of turn two. The tiny 1/2-mile dirt track didn't have an outside retaining wall on the turns, so he spun over the banking. Putney regathered his car into control on a service road that led from the Erie Canal to the backstretch. Oddly enough, the road went through a graveyard, which is where Putney drove through before returning to the track. But by returning to the track, he drove straight in the path of Tiny Lund, who t-boned Putney, and also took out Bobby Allison and Lyle Stetler. Putney not only took out four cars in his bonehead maneuver, but he was KO'd by a punch from Lund. Lund had approached Putney following the incident in the garage area, and knocked Putney unconscious with a right-cut to Putney's jaw. NASCAR officials fined Lund $100.

One of JT Putney's 1966 #19 NASCAR Grand National Chevrolets

Anybody else have a NASCAR graveyard story for Halloween?

This doesn't have to do with graveyards, but rather a Tiny Lund (expected) punch. Little Bud Moore told this story during one of the Columbia Speedway Reunions. Here is the abbreviated version because if you've ever heard Little Bud tell a story, you'll know why:

During a race there (at Columbia Speedway) Lund booted Little Bud out of the way and passed him. Near the end of the race, Little Bud returned the favor by knocking Lund out of the way and passing him. In the pits after the race, Bud recalls seeing Lund coming toward him like an angry bull. Bud said he just knew that big 'ol rascal was going to punch his lights out. When Lund got to him he looked at him for a minute, then kicked Bud in the rear end (cleaned-up version). Little Bud said it hurt like hell, but he was sure glad he didn't get punched.

This story also doesn't have to do with a graveyard. But it does involve Tiny Lund.

As told by the late Sam McQuagg. Sam said that he and Tiny were running flat out and there was no way that Sam could get by without dumping Tiny. So that's what he did. He hitTiny going into a corner and knocked him up the track and went on to win the race. WhenSam parked his car in the pits and before he could get outhe looked up and here came Tiny. When Tiny got to the car Sam said to Tiny, take your best punch because at some track in some race you will be bent over working on your engine and I will come up behind you with a ball pin hammer and crack your skull open. Tiny stopped. Grumbled a few &^%%*&% then turned around and left. Sam said that he never had another problem with Tiny after that.

From this Sunday morning's Charlotte paper:

Could be a call from the past
Disconnected phone mysteriously rings at home of Kannapolis man.

By Mark Price
By Mark Price The Charlotte Observer
Sunday, Oct. 30, 2011

A wall phone rings in Chris Harris' Kannapolis home, he answers, and the line is dead.

No big deal, until you realize he doesn't have phone service to the house.

"It was an aesthetic phone only, a cheap Walgreen's special I hung up to cover a metal plate on the wall," says Harris. "It's never been hooked up in all the time I've owned it."

But ring it did, he says. At first, Harris thought it might be some kind of power surge, but the phone company and the electric company denied it.

"It would awaken me... I'd answer, but no one was there. It was as if someone just put the phone down and walked away," he says.

It seemed purely coincidental to him that the ringing started shortly after his father, Marshall, died of cancer in 2008. But Chris Harris thinks differently now.

In his father's final years, the two spoke almost entirely by phone - four times a week - because Chris Harris' job with NASCAR kept him on the road.

He left NASCAR four months after his father died, and says he eventually noticed that the ringing coincided with moments he was preoccupied with how to earn a living. "If my dad were going to try and communicate, that would be the way."

Harris finally got frustrated with the noise in 2009 and put the phone in a closet. The ringing stopped, he says. But just recently, he hung it back up over that metal plate, just to see what would happen. It hasn't rung. Yet.
Chris Harris has a disconnected phone hanging on the wall at his home in Kannapolis. It started ringing after his father died in 2008. Robert Lahser - rlahser@charlotteobserver.com


Read more: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2011/10/30/2734358/could-be-a-call-from-the-past.html#storylink=misearch#ixzz1cGtHZ67U