Andy Towler has a good photo posted on our photo page today of Jimmy Griffin's #007 1955 Chevy that I recall watching at both Southside Speedway and South Boston Speedway.
Link to Andy Towler's Jimmy Griffin photo:
http://stockcar.racersreunion.com/photo/jimmy-griffin?context=latest
While trying to find some more info or photos about Jimmy, I ran across a great story posted on the website, libertydwells.com by poster, Patriot, obviously from the Richmond area originally.
Her post fits in perfectly with much of the recent talk of "Boys have it" and what happened in the pits at the weekly track when the drivers got out of the cars after the race.
By the way, I well remember "Piggy" Hutchins and the punching bag he kept hanging in the bar at The Attache on West Broad Street in Richmond.
Enjoy!
Roaring Back to Nascar's Good Old Days
Nascar holds its annual All-Star Race at the Charlotte Motor Speedway Saturday night. Tailor-made for television in 1985, it's one of the events that brought Nascar into the mainstream. So it's timely that the Nascar Hall of Fame, based (like many of the race teams) in this North Carolina city, has opened an exhibit harking back to a simpler era.
"Grassroots Racing" features cars, trophies and photographs from four Nascar short tracks (all are a half-mile or less in length) where some of the sport's pioneers cut their teeth. All are still open, but the Sprint Cup, Nascar's top tier, long ago moved on to bigger venues in Daytona Beach, Fla., Texas and Las Vegas.
South Boston Speedway is a 0.4-mile oval on the Virginia-Carolina border known for fender-banging and fried bologna sandwiches. It hosted 10 premier Nascar events, then known as the Grand National Series, and Richard Petty won half of them. Mr. Petty, who has won 200 Nascar races and turns 75 on July 2, remembers racing at South Boston in 1963. His car had the new, powerful Chrysler Hemi engine. "It was too powerful for that little track," he says. "We blew the engine in practice, put in our backup engine, which wasn't a Hemi, and won the race."
LINK:
South Boston didn't have any real "stands." The track sits down in a hole and you brought your blankets and coolers and spread out on the hillsides around the track. We raced Southside [Richmond] on Friday nights and South Boston on Saturday nights.
Our local guy was Sonny Hutchins. There was a local guy around South Boston named Jimmy Griffin. He and Sonny were mortal enemies on the track. Sonny drove the old "90 car," built by Junie Donleavy, and we called her Big Bertha. She had so much sheet iron in her that is was a wonder she could get out of her own way, but Sonny could put her anywhere because you couldn't hurt her, and if she was running in front of you, you couldn't move her.
Think about how short a 0.4 mile track is. There are no "turns." It's all one big turn.
Coming down to the end of a race one night, Sonny and Jimmy were racing for the checkered flag, when Sonny edged Big Bertha just barely out in front of Jimmy, then spun him.
The race was over and everyone was streaming down off the hillsides, onto the track. Jimmy got out of his car and went running over to where Sonny was pitted, with the idea of punching Sonny's lights out.
Jimmy's brother showed up and he was going to jump in and make it two on one, when a hand reached out and nearly jerked him off he feet. The brother turned around and said, "Turn me loose. That's my brother."
The hand that had him said, "Yeah? Sonny's my brother."
Sonny's brother was knicknamed Piggy --I knew that family for 30+ years and never knew why Piggy was called Piggy, anyway, all it took was one look at Piggy for Jimmy's brother to know that he didn't want to tangle with Piggy. Piggy had fought Golden Gloves as a youngster, and he had "the look." Nobody ever messed with Piggy.
Piggy was one of the best looking men I ever laid eyes on. Simply gorgeous. In all the years I knew him, I never knew Piggy to throw a punch. Sonny, Piggy and the other brother, Boogie [I never knew why Boogie was called Boogie, either], owned restaurants and bars all over Richmond, and dealt with belligerent drunks on a regular basis, but no one ever got drunk enough in one of Piggy's bars to challenge him.
The brothers grew up on Oregon Hill in Richmond, poor as church mice. There was also a sister named Doris and one named Inky. Sonny had poor eyesight from birth, but the family was too poor to afford glasses for him. When he was about 12 years old, the Lions Club put glasses on him for the first time, and he said it was like waking up in a new world, to actually be able to see.
Junie Donleavy used to tease Sonny and tell him that he was going to put a prescription windshield in the race car: maybe if Sonny could see better, he wouldn't wreck so many cars.
Here's a link to a Legends of NASCAR page that profiles Sonny [and a lot of the other Legends]: LINK [Pay special attention to the old 21 car, of which I have fond memories.]
That really takes me back. Names I hadn't thought about in years. The obit says that Sonny was survived by Piggy, which shows you how dim my memory is. I thought Piggy went before Sonny. His wife is gone now, too. She died about two years ago from cervical cancer. Now there was a wild woman. Sonny introduced me to my future husband in about 1968 [they were best buds], and at the time, I was sharing an apartment with Sonny's girlfriend. I was working a daytime job at the Bank of Virginia, and nights as a waitress in The Hut, one of Sonny's bars. Sometime between the time I met the man I would marry, Sonny met Connie and fell in love --real honest to goodness love, and the girlfriend was out. Sonny and Connie got married on New Years Eve, 1969, and I got married almost a year to the day later in 1970. I was friends with the former girlfriend, and Connie, the new wife, and it put me in an awkward situation. [That's another long story, of which I will spare you.]
Anyway. Early morning ramblings from someone who is old enough to remember when Richmond International Raceway was a dirt track called Strawberry Hill.
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"Any Day is Good for Stock Car Racing"
updated by @dave-fulton: 12/05/16 04:00:58PM
