Atlanta Or Bust

    Atlanta's air space, always crowded, will have a lot more traffic during the next few days.

   This is because the NASCAR teams will be flying personnel into Georgia for the Golden Corral 500 at Atlanta Motor Speedway.

   Most of the drivers will wing in aboard their private planes.  Pit crew members and other  functionaries will arrive on aircraft owned or chartered by their teams.

   It hasn't always been so convenient.

   There was a time not so long ago that crews--and even owners--had to drive through the night to arrive at the Atlanta track to go racing.  Motorsports back then was a much tougher gig.

   The venerable Virginian, Junie Donlavey, can vouch for this.

   Oh boy, can he vouch!  His tale of one trip to Atlanta ranks among the most humorous in NASCAR's rich lore.

          

   Donlavey traces his participation at NASCAR's top level to 1950, or just a year after Big Bill France started sanctioning races on what then was called the Grand National circuit.

   Through the decades Donlavey has fielded cars for such drivers as Sonny Hutchins, Bill Dennis, Jimmy Hensley, Bobby Isaac, Fred Lorenzen, Dick Brooks, Jody Ridley, Buddy Baker, Benny Parsons, Ken Schrader, Ernie Irvan and Wally Dallenbach, Jr.

   Gentleman Junie, among the sport's alltime most popular figures, often wasn't blessed with big sponsorships.  Thus he couldn't afford a fleet of race cars or a great number of "boys at the shop" to maintain them.  Often his car that was being prepared for a particular race wasn't ready to go until the 11th hour.

   Such was the case prior to an Atlanta event in the early 1980s.

   Junie and the fellows working for him labored on their car until midnight on the eve of qualifying.  They loaded the machine into its transporter and sent it on the way from Richmond down I-85 to Hampton, Ga., and the race track.

   Then Junie and about a half dozen of his guys got in a large van to follow.

   Junie hadn't gotten much sleep all week in working so feverishly on the car, so he claimed the van's rear-most seat and stretched out to nap as much as possible while en route to Georgia.

   The other fellows in the van decided to pull into a rest stop near Henderson on the North Carolina-Virginia line to stretch their legs.  They left Junie asleep on the backseat.

   Junie awoke and decided that he'd stretch, too.

   He headed for the restroom.

   Through some strange twist, Junie and his crew guys didn't pass each other as they came out and he went in.

   Junie emerged from the restroom to see the tail lights of his van disappearing into  the night.

   "Those rascals are playing a joke on me," Junie recalled thinking in telling the tale.  "They'll be back laughing in a minute."

   Not exactly.

   When 15 minutes passed with no sight of the van, the awful truth dawned for Junie:  His team members didn't realize that he had awakened and got out of the vehicle.

   Junie was stranded.

   What to do?

   This was before the day of cell phones, remember, so Junie had no way of contacting the fellows in the van, which was clicking off the miles toward Georgia at a rather brisk clip.

   Donlavey in desperation began knocking on the doors of tractor-trailers parked at the rest area while their drivers took mandatory breaks.

   "They generally thought I was either a male prostitute or someone looking for a handout, and they shooed me away," continued Junie.  "It was pretty awful."

   Ladies of the evening working the rest stop even propositioned Junie.

   "Never have I been in such a hassle or embarrassing  fix," he said.

   Finally, Junie encountered a truck driver who happened to be a stock car racing fan.  The man was headed to Charlotte, and he was glad to give Junie a ride that far.

   Once in Charlotte Junie was able to contact fellow team owner Elmo Langley, who hadn't yet departed for Atlanta.  Elmo, naturally, was more than delighted to give his friend a lift to the track.

   Meanwhile, Junie's guys had arrived at the speedway.  Panic set in when they discovered that their team owner HAD NOT arrived with them.

   All kinds of theories raced through their minds as to how the man they thought was asleep had disappeared.

   "I understand that alien abduction was even mentioned," said Junie with a chuckle.

   Shortly, they figured it out.  Visions of lost jobs flashed before them.

   But that wasn't about to happen, not with a guy as good as Junie Donlavey.

   "As much my fault as anyone's," he said.

   Junie chuckled and shook his head.

   "The experience at the rest stop was bad," he said.  "But it wasn't the worst thing about this incident.

   "The worst was having to listen to Elmo Langley cackle about it all the way from Charlotte to Atlanta."