Silent Speedways

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Text and photos by Perry Allen Wood, 6/2007



Click photos to enlarge and learn more.

Introduction

The silent speedways of the Carolinas. All 29 of them. They did not deserve to die, but neither did my dad or your Aunt Agnes or Fireball Roberts. Their time just came and they passed into memory. When the big corporate dollars came in, first as a trickle and then as a flood, it was inevitable. Some of these tracks had little chance to survive and are lucky to have held a Grand National race at all. There are seven one-shot wonders that for a single fleeting day, or night, were the seeds of the mega-sport we know today. The top drivers knew about these races and showed up. Newspapers reported them and the spotlight shone briefly on Harnett Speedway in Spring Lake, N.C. (1953), Newberry Speedway in S.C. (1957), McCormick Field in Asheville, N.C. (1958), Salisbury Super Speedway in N.C. (1958), Spindle Center Fairgrounds in Gastonia, N.C. (1958), Hartsville Speedway in S.C. (1961) and Starlite Speedway in Monroe, N.C. (1966). All have a story to tell, but not all left a trace to see.

For some folks, like me, the former tracks just cannot be forgotten. Not yet. Not while a bony hand still reaches out of a dilapidated ticket booth to take your two-dollar admission at Harris. Not while you can still see the faint outline of the track where Bob Flock out-distanced Gober Sosebee at Occoneechee in the third Strictly Stock Car race ever held. Not while the guardrail in Columbia, part wood and part steel, still dares Buck Baker to push Lee Petty into it one more time. Not while the grandstands that once held thousands of screaming spectators are still protesting the roots of pine trees that are so big they must have started growing the day after the last fanny left. Not while bullet-riddled light fixtures still stare blindly down pretending to illuminate Herb Thomas in Victory Lane 50-plus years ago. Not while museums still house the actual Hudson Hornets, Olds 88s, Ford Fastbacks, and the uniforms of their brave chauffeurs. Not while one can remember how it was when stock car racing was a child. A wild child!

These are places of unimaginable extremes in emotion, from the sheer excitement of the spectators, the exaltation of the victors, the hilarity of the improbable, the amazement of the unbelievable, to the anger of the cheated and wrecked, the despair of the losers and the injured, and the grief of the friends and family who had their loved ones leave beneath a white sheet. The tales here were perhaps witnessed by you or your neighbors. Cherish the faint, fading arenas where Byron, Rexford, the Flocks, Roberts, the Bakers, Turner, the Pettys, Pearson, the Thomases, Isaac, Paschal, Jarrett, White, Smith, Johnson, Figaro and other great, fading names raced and bled and died.. I will not forget them, and I do not want history to, either.