If Any of the Chase Contenders Need a Little Coaching...
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This has been around awhile, but still funny. If any of the Chase contenders need a little help...
updated by @dave-fulton: 12/05/16 04:02:07PM
Forum Activity for @dave-fulton
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updated by @dave-fulton: 12/05/16 04:02:07PM
Don't Forget Harry Melling - He Put Bill Elliott & Dawsonville on the Map
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Reading about the festival in Dawsonville, GAthis weekend and it being Talladega weekend, I was thinking about Harry Melling and how quickly he seems to have been forgotten. Harry was a quiet man around the garage and not big on self promotion like a lot of car owners and sponsors - remember, he was both. If not for Harry Melling, most of us probably might never have heard of Bill Elliott or Dawsonville. If not for Harry Melling, some other car would hold the record at Talladega. It's been 12 years now since he died early of a heart attack in 1999.
I fould this little clip written by veteran motorsports writer Al Pearce that appeared in the Newport News, VA Daily Press on the weekend of Harry's death 12 years ago.Let's not forget this man and his contributions to NASCAR stock car racing.
Melling Was Hooked On Racing Instantly
Motorsports Notebook
June 01, 1999
By AL PEARCE Daily Press
The unexpected death Saturday morning of NASCAR team owner Harry Melling brought to mind the story of how he became involved in racing.
Mr. Melling wanted to use the 1980 Gabriel 400 near his home in Jackson, Mich., to promote a new automotive product. The speedway suggested owner M.C. Anderson, who agreed to take Melling Tool as a one-race associate on the No. 27 Chevrolet of Benny Parsons.
When Parsons won the race, Mr. Melling was hooked. Late the next year, even as he sponsored the Bud Moore/Parsons team, Mr. Melling gave an unknown named Bill Elliott $500 for the fall races at Charlotte and Atlanta.
The Elliotts and Mellings got along so well that Mr. Melling bought Elliott's team in 1982. Thus began a 10-year association that produced 40 poles, 34 victories, the 1985 Winston Million, the 1988 Winston Cup and the first of Elliott's 13 Most Popular Driver awards.
"Where would I be without Harry?'' Elliott mused over the weekend. "It's impossible to say. I do know this: He didn't do a little for Bill Elliott, he did a lot. Mostly, he believed in us and stuck with us as we went from getting better to running good to winning races.''
The Late Harry Melling
Above: The 1987 Harry Melling Owned Thunderbird Driven by Bill Elliott That STILL Holds the Fastest Lap Recorded by a Stock Car - Talladega, AL - 212.809 MPH
Above: A Bill Elliott Driven Harry Melling T-Bird / The team was late to switch to the 1983 football shaped aero T-bird, running the "shoebox" at Daytona
Above: Model of Melling sponsored, Benny Parsons driven M.C. Anderson Car
Above:Melling sponsored, Benny Parsons driven Bud Moore Ford
A lot of folks didn't realize that Harry Melling was thought of just as highly in Golf circles as in Stock Car Racing Circles, as noted in this farewell in the publication Michigan Golfer :
By Terry Moore
Harry Melling, owner of Treetops Sylvan Resort in Gaylord, suffered and died from a heart attack on May 29 in Gaylord. Along with Everett Kircher of Boyne and Paul Nine, formerly of Grand Traverse Resort, Melling must be partially credited with jump-starting the northern Michigan golf boom. President of Melling Tool Company and Melling Racing in Jackson, Melling purchased Sylvan Ski Resort in Gaylord in 1983. Soon after he revitalized the sleepy ski resort by convincing legendary course architect Robert Trent Jones to design a championship golf course there. Opened in 1987, it was aptly named Treetops due to the stunning vista offered golfers on the course's downhill par-three sixth hole. Treetops quickly became one of the most popular golf destinations in the state while also providing a tremendous boost to Gaylord tourism and its fledgling golf marketing efforts. With the help of Rick Smith, Treetops energetic and talented Director of Golf with a penchant for not-taking-no-for-an-answer, Melling later hired famed course golf architect Tom Fazio to design a second course at Treetops. "It took us 15 months to get Fazio here," Melling said in an interview, "but once he saw the land, he said there was no problem." At the Fazio Grand Opening dinner in 1992, the taciturn Melling, with his trademark cigar in hand, made an impromptu remark saying his dream was "to have a course at Treetops for every day of the week." His untimely death caused Melling to fall two courses short of his dream, as the Jones and Fazio courses were later joined by two 18-hole courses (Signature and The Tradition) and a nine hole par-3 (Threetops) course, all designed by Smith.
A graduate of Ferris State, Melling succeeded his father Benjamin as President of Melling Tool, a maker of automotive products, in 1975. In 1979, Melling first became involved in NASCAR Winston Cup Racing as a primary sponsor for driver Benny Parsons. In 1988, Melling Racing won top honors in NASCAR competition--the Winston Cup points championship with driver Bill Elliott. In 1997, Winston Cup Scene, an industry NASCAR magazine, named Melling one of the "40 most important people in NASCAR history."
In golf as in racing, Harry Melling knew his way around the track every day of the week .
updated by @dave-fulton: 12/05/16 04:02:07PM
TV Program Alert - TONIGHT, Thurs. 10/20 - NC and NC Border-area Residents - UNC-EX TV rebroadcasts North Carolina Racers: Back Roads to Glory
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For those of you who receive over the airwaves, via cable or satellite the University of North Carolina Television Explorer Channel - UNC-EX - at 10:00 pm tonight, Thursday, 10/20, at 10:00 pm, there will be a rebroadcast of the 1998 Ken Squier narrated program: NORTH CAROLINA RACERS: Back Roads to Glory.
updated by @dave-fulton: 12/05/16 04:02:07PM
AND CURTIS TURNER SAID TO BUCK BAKER........
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I watched the rebroadcast last night on University of NC Public Television of the 50 Year NASCAR Anniversary 1998 production of North Carolina Racers: Back Roads to Glory. The telecast opened with a 1998 Junior Johnson interview. In it he talked about tough drivers, singling out his late driver LeeRoy Yarbrough as one of the toughest. He further stated that there are only "about 3 drivers now" (1998) who could have raced with the drivers of his generation. Junior said the majority of drivers of 1998 were:
1) Not strong enough.
2) Not man enough.
3) Not tough enough.
Wonder if he could findeven three2011 drivers he thinks could race with the drivers of his generation?
AND CURTIS TURNER SAID TO BUCK BAKER........
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In 1982, I had the wife of the Chairman of the Board of Pepsico, a resident of Purchase, NY,in my Wrangler VIP Suite at Talladega to attend her first stock car race. With two lines of cars running side by side and nose to tail, Earnhardt, Sr. suddenly bolted up the track in turn 2 from the inside lane and made a hole in the outside lane where there hadn't been one. That lady, dressed in her New York finery, jumped up and screamed, "G..damn, you couldn't put thtat boy's b...s in a 55 gallon drum!" She forced Pepisico's Chairman to bring her back to Talladega twice a year after that to watch Dale. That's the kinda excitement that's missing today.
AND CURTIS TURNER SAID TO BUCK BAKER........
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Legend, I'm "hard" pressed to recall ever hearing any driver I worked with say that he had been raced too hard. Let me think back to my conversations with Dale, Sr................ Nah, I don't remember him saying that. I don't think DW even said that at Richmond about Dale in '86 or Geoffrey Bodine about Dale any of the couple hundred times Dale spun him out. Guess it's a more recent thing with our pretty face drivers and their million dollar motorcoaches. If today's drivers were forced to spend about 10 years on the local bullrings like so many drivers used to do before getting a GN/Cup ride, you wouldn't hear that namby pamby crud so much. Heck, years after Buck Baker stopped driving he was still hitting hard. When Buck was firstnominated for inclusion in the National Motorsports Press Association Hall of Fame at Darlington, my late friend and writer Gene Granger of Spartanburg reminded the media members that Buck had returned to racing in 1976 for 8 events at age 57 and was therefore not yet eligible for Hall of Fame nomination. When the tour got to Charlotte, Gene had a knock on his Ramada Inn motel room door and opened it. He immediately received a fist from Buck Baker resulting in a broken nose. But, I never heard Granger complain of Buck racing too hard or hitting too hard. He gave the old stock answer, "That's Racing." Those drivers "back in the day" didn't run to reporters to complain about an issue, they settled the issue. Wouldn't you love to see Lee and Buck and Curtis and Little Joe turned loose at Darlington with some of today's boys?!
Ken Rush
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From the Kevin Andrews photo collection as posted on RR's "Grand American" site, Wayne Andrews in the #15 Mercury Cougar and Ken Rush in the #44 Chevy Camaro battle for the lead in the first race ever held at Talladega, the 1969 'Bama 400 Grand American race, won by Rush, NASCAR's 1957 Grand National Rookie of the Year.
Ken Rush
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The Racing Career of Ken Rush - Test Your Trivia
Pit Stop
From the May, 2002 issue of Stock Car Racing
By Benny Phillips
Photography by High Point Enterprise
What driver won the first NASCAR-sanctioned races at Talladega, Michigan and Dover?
After two days of begging, and a Mounds candy bar thrown in as a bonus, you might tell them it was Ken Rush.
At the brand new Talladega Superspeedway in '69, on the Saturday afternoon before the first Grand National race (which would become Winston Cup), NASCAR's Grand Touring cars staged a 200-mile event. Rush, driving a yellow Camaro, won by nearly a lap.
A few weeks later, Michigan Speedway opened. Again, NASCAR ran its Grand Touring cars on Saturday. Rush won by more than a lap.
In the summer of 1970, Dover signed its first NASCAR sanction. Once again, Rush streaked to victory on Saturday. Richard Petty won the race on Sunday.
Rush also won at South Boston, Virginia, that year. Then came a horrifying accident at Flemington, New Jersey, which led to the end of his career.
"It was a half-mile dirt track," Rush recalls. "After the first few laps, you couldn't see out the windshield for all the mud. I was coming wide-open, and Stan Styers spun in the middle of Turns 3 and 4. I didn't see him until I hit him, and I drove straight into him, head-on."
Rush lost 12 teeth and suffered a broken sternum and a broken jaw.
"They worked on me in the emergency room until about 3 or 4 o'clock in the morning," Rush says. "Finally, they rolled me into a hospital room. I smoked back then, so I reached over and got a cigarette. I lit it and puffed, but nothing happened. I threw it away and got another one. Same thing happened, and then I realized my lip was cut all the way through and when I puffed, the air was going through my lip. I had to hold my lower lip together in order to puff the cigarette."
Today Rush, 70, and wife Patsy live in High Point, North Carolina. How did it all begin?
"Bob Welborn and I became friends in 1950. He was already racing, and helped me get started. Then Jim Paschal helped me get into the Late Model division."
Rush started racing in 1955 and won track championships at Bowman Gray Stadium and the Greensboro Fairgrounds. In 1964, he won the Modified championship at Bowman Gray.
"We were a wild bunch, sometimes about half human, especially at Daytona," Rush says. "In 1957, crew chief Paul McDuffie, Red Jones, myself, and two other guys, I can't remember their names, were down on the beach in this new Chevrolet station wagon. It belonged to Chevrolet.
"I was driving. We'd go down the beach at 70 or 80 mph and cut the steering wheel. On the hard sand the vehicle would spin around and around like it was on ice. Somebody said, "Let's try it at 100." I pegged the needle out of sight and cut the steering wheel. The station wagon didn't go 40 feet until it threw the right rear tire off. When that happened, here we go turning over and over. We ended up way out in the ocean. I was the only one who got hurt. It about knocked a hole in my head, and I nearly drown.
"Red Jones had a bottle of whiskey. He said the law is coming, and he stood on the roof of the car and threw the bottle as far out in the ocean as he could.
"They pulled me to shore as the police arrived. I looked back at the ocean, and in the moonlight you could see this bottle of whiskey bobbing up and down with the waves, following us ashore.
"The policeman asked if we'd been drinking. He was standing at the edge of the water. Somebody was trying to persuade him we hadn't had a drop. Then the whiskey bottle hit his boot."
Welborn heard about what happened and went to the hospital to check on Rush. The nurse told him he couldn't stay but a minute. "This man has a serious brain concussion," she said.
Rush said Welborn told the nurse, "Lady, he may have a head concussion, but he ain't got a brain."
Looking back on his career, Rush says there is one thing he would change if he had control over such matters. "I would have been born in 1971 instead of 1931. That way, I believe I would have something to show for my racing career. I won a lot of races that paid $200 or less for first place. Sixty percent of that would go to the team owner.
"Race drivers today make a lot of money," he says, "but I don't believe they have the fun we did."
Read more: http://www.stockcarracing.com/featurestories/scrp_0205_racing_career_ken_rush_stock_car_driver/viewall.html#ixzz1b9aNL7dh
Ken Rush in 2002
