Actually, the 1974 Music City 420 at Nashville Fairgrounds Speedway was STARTED on May 11. It FINISHED on May 12.
http://bench-racing.blogspot.com/2012/05/may-11-this-day-in-petty-history.html
Gotta love an old school race memory where the winner was greeted in victory lane by a guy named John Jay Hooker.
Back in those days John J Hooker was always running for some office in Tennessee.
I haven't found a photo yet, but I remember in 1966 when Buddy Baker ran 5 races in the Emory Gilliam #00 Dodge. They got the pole at Maryville and also ran it at Bristol, as well as the Northern Tour races at Oxford, Fonda and Islip.
The #00 on the door was incorporated into the name HOOKER.
I believe he may have done the same thing with Neil Castles and some others in the 60s-70s, but it is the Buddy Baker #00 at Bristol that I remember. Should be some photos out there of HOOKER on those #00 cars.
Funny stuff here...
From TIME Magazine , October 15, 1973....
Rotund Andy Granatelli, chairman of STP Corp., has become one of television's most familiarindeed, unavoidablecommercial pitchmen, touting his much criticized engine-oil additive as the "racer's edge." A little more than a week ago, Granatelli, 50, got the razor's edge when his board of directors abruptly cut him loose and replaced him with John J. Hooker Jr. , entrepreneur and sometime politician . Hooker was hand-picked by Derald H. Ruttenberg, chairman of the widely diversified Studebaker-Worthington Inc., which owns a controlling interest in STP. The keenly publicity-conscious Granatelli was almost as incensed by what he believed was inadequate press coverage of his ouster...
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,910820,00.html#ixzz1ua3SaV00
Here is JJH in victory lane with the Petty clan again at the 1974 Talladega 500.
How John Jay managed to land the top gig at STP - or anywhere else for that matter - is remarkable to me. In the late 1960s, he and his brother decided to launch a second major fried chicken chain to compete with KFC. They supposedly licensed Minnie Pearl's name for it - though there is some debate about how that deal worked contractually and financially. They took the company public without having any significant operations and were busted by the Securities & Exchange Commission.A lot of prominent Nashville area businessmen, politicians, and money-people lost a chunk.
The whole failed venture, scam, fraud or whatever you want to label it was told in Bill Carey's book about the history of many Nashville businesses: Fortunes, Fiddles & Fried Chicken . [ Click Here ] for an excerpt about JJH and his chicken business.
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