Tom Higgins' Scuffs

Battlin' Benny

   Alas, it's true.

   A NASCAR fan favorite, Benny Parsons, is battling lung cancer.

   I was in Lubbock, Texas, of all places, when I first heard the shocking news.  My daughter phoned from Mooresville, N.C., to say that she had learned of Benny's affliction via "a friend of a friend."

   I didn't believe it.

   "Aw, honey," I said, "rumors like this about racing people somehow get started every now and then."

   It was no rumor.

   Three days after I returned home to Mooresville from West Texas a statement was issued on Benny's behalf confirming his disease and revealing that treatment was beginning immediately.

   Benny, a non-smoker since 1978, expressed confidence that he will beat the cancer. 

   Those of us who  have known Benny since he returned to the South to go NASCAR racing 42 years ago are optimistic, too.  We're aware that within this friendly, people-loving man beats the heart of a very determined battler. 

   Otherwise, Benny never would have risen to the heights of his sport in the manner that he did.

   Let me relate the inspring story of Benny Parsons...   

   The oft-told tale that Benny drove a taxi as a young man in Detroit is not true.

   What is true is that Benny hitched a ride in the back of a pickup truck in Detroit to go watch a race in that area for the first time.  And he wound up driving in the event!

   The cab-driver story got started because Benny's father owned a small cab company that he operated out of a service station in Detroit.  Benny, who had grown up in his family's native Wilkes County in North Carolina, had gone to Michigan to work there after graduating from Millers Creek High School.

   As Benny recalls it, "Late one Friday afternoon some guys I knew came by the station and stopped for gas.  They were towing a jalopy of a race car with their pickup truck.

   "I said that I would like to go with them to a race sometime, and they told me to hop in the truck and come along right then.  My dad let me off early, so I tagged along.  I volunteered to drive their race car when the regular driver was a no-show."

   Even Benny isn't certain where he finished in the race.

   What is certain is that it was the beginning of a racing career that would lead to a NASCAR Winston Cup Series championship and, subsequently, to international popularity as a commentator on motorsports telecasts.

   "Hard to believe, isn't it?" says Benny.

   When Benny's father and mother moved North to find work during the tough times of the 1950s, Benny stayed behind in Wilkes County.  He lived with his great grandmother in the remote, sparsely-populated community of Parsonsville, deep in the Blue Ridge Mountains.

   As racing fans know, Wilkes County is rich in NASCAR lore.  It was there that a local businessman, Enoch Staley, carved out a race track atop a hill not long after World War II.  In 1948, Staley was a key associate in helping Bill France Sr. form the organization that became NASCAR.  Staley's North Wilkesboro Speedway became one of the first tracks with NASCAR affiliation.

   Wilkes County also produced Junior Johnson. a legendary driver and one of the winningest team owners of all time.

   Despite this environment, Benny didn't follow racing much as a teenager.  He was more interested in playing baseball and football on the Millers Creek High teams.  Benny was so devoted to the sports that when practice ran late, he would walk all the way home--about 10 miles--to his great grandmother's mountainside cottage.  She would greet him in the darkness, fretting that he'd not been able to have supper on time.

   "I rationalized that someday those long treks home would help me realize my dreams of playing college baseball and football," recalls Benny.  "Heck, they might even make my dream of playing for the Detroit Tigers come true.

   "But after that first jalopy race I competed in, I wanted to become a driver."

   Benny pursued this goal with burning passion, and he became champion of the Automobile Racing Club of America (ARCA), the midwestern-based sanctioning body.

   In 1964 he returned home to North Carolina to seek similar success in NASCAR.

   What developed was a hall-of-fame career that would endure until Benny's retirement in 1998, providing such memories as these:

   --His tears after winning the 1973 Winston Cup championship.  Benny, driving for an underdog team, needed to finish the season finale at North Carolina Motor Speedway, near his adopted home of Ellerbe, to take the title in a major upset.  When a hard crash early in the race essentially destroyed Benny's car, it appeared his hopes for the championship also had been wrecked.  However, volunteers from other teams scavenged enough parts from their own wrecked cars to get Benny back in the race.  In a car with hardly any sheet metal at all, Benny edged Cale Yarborough for the crown.

   --Benny's grin of disbelief after he won the Daytona 500 in 1975.  David Pearson appeared to have NASCAR's biggest race in hand that day.  As the 500 wound down, Benny trailed well back in second place.  Then, Richard Petty, a lap down, came zooming by.  Benny latched onto Petty in an aerodyanmic draft and began to cut into Pearson's advantage.  Pearson very seldom made a mistake, but with two laps to go he spun coming off the second turn, leaving Benny first to the checkered flag.

   --Benny's dramatic duel with Darrell Waltrip in the 1980 World 600 at the track then known as Charlotte Motor Speedway.  With darkness falling and heavy rain threatening, they swapped the lead seven times in the final 30 laps.  Benny held the front spot for the checkered flag in what many observer's rate the most dramatic finish in the track's great history.

   --Benny's look of astonishment after becoming the first NASCAR driver to officially break the 200 mph barrier in time trials when he qualified at 200.176 for the 1982 Winston 500 at Talladega Superspeedway in Alabama.

   --Benny's jubilation at giving the Jackson Brothers, Leo and Richard, their first superspeedway victory at NASCAR's major level in the 1984 Coca-Cola 500 at Atlanta Motor Speedway.  The victory was so appreciated by the team's sponsor, U.S. Tobacco, that company officials treated Benny, the Jacksons and their other two drivers, Harry Gant and Phil Parsons, Benny's younger brother, to a week-long fishing trip to Alaska.

   The Atlanta triumph marked the last time that Benny would go to victory lane before retiring with 21 big-time triumphs.

   I have equally warm memories of Benny away from the race tracks.

   Not long after he moved to the hamlet of Ellerbe, Benny was elected president of the Parent-Teachers Association at the local elementary school his two sons attended.  One day his boys came home very glum.  They had become upset on learning that some of their classmates weren't going to receive presents or have anything special to eat on Christmas Day.

   Benny checked with teachers and learned that the poverty in the area was much worse than most people realized.

   Benny, known for his soft heart, began calling in favors from his many friends in racing.  Winter jackets, shoes, gloves and other clothing began flowing in.  So did toys, food and Christmas candy.

   A big party was scheduled at the school, and the legendary Wood Brothers, Glen and Leonard, even arranged for a chartered bus to bring a church choir down from their hometown of Stuart, Va., to sing the carols.

   The eyes of youngsters who never had experienced much of a joyous Christmas popped when Santa Claus started calling their names to receive gifts. 

   One little fellow of probably 6 or 7 made his way over to where Benny was standing.  He had a bright toy truck under one arm and a new, warm jacket under the other.  He tugged at the leg of Benny's trousers.  "Mr. Benny," he said, "what am I supposed to do with these."

   "Take them home, son," Benny replied.  "They're yours."

   "To keep?!" the amazed kid said, prompting a lump the size of a baseball to develop in Benny's throat.

   To benefit the PTA, Benny once even gussied himself up in drag for a "Womanless Wedding Contest" at the school.  Judging was "reversed," with the least attractive entrant taking the crown.  Benny looked absolutely hideous, and because he didn't win--er, lose--I've always contended that contest was fixed.

   After Benny joined ESPN and began winning major awards for his television work, proud relatives and friends began holding cookouts in his honor when he came back home for the fall races at North Wilkesboro Speedway.  The dinners were held at the site of his great grandmother's old "homeplace" overlooking the magnificent Parsonsville Valley.  Tables sagged to overflowing with fried chicken, barbecue pork, filets of fish caught that very day, home-grown vegetables and enough freshly-baked cakes and pies to fill a bakery.

   One autumn the "menu" included a deep-fried dish that looked something like chicken nuggets.  When I asked why this food didn't seem to be appearing on a lot of plates, a friend answered in a whisper and I wasn't surprised any more.

   But the kids playing tag in the idyllic setting had no reservation about partaking of this particular food, and every time they ran by the table, they'd grab some of the nuggets and pop them into their mouth.   Then, some of their moms saw what they were doing and shrieks echoed up the hollow and over the ridges.

   What the kids were devouring like M & Ms were "mountain oysters," or sheep testicles.

   A blushing Benny apologized profusely, although he'd had no way of knowing that a mischievous cousin had slipped those "oysters" onto the table among the meat balls and mashed 'taters and chocolate  chip cookies.

   "How embarrassing was it?" I asked Benny later.

   "At the time, it felt worse than hitting the wall on the first lap, which I have done," asserted Benny.  "But I laugh about it now."

   Benny also got a chuckle a day or so after the revelation that he has cancer.

   Charlotte sports broadcaster Jim Celania, a cancer survivor, phoned to offer encouragement.  Cracked Celania, whom balding Benny had worked alongside on a local TV show, "On the bright side, Benny, you don't have to worry about your hair falling out."   

   Benny maintains confidence that treatment will lead to his being fully cured.

   Considering his record as a battler, that optimism seems well-founded. 

       

The Greatest? Hardly...

   During the taping of a racing-related TV show several days ago three expert panelists were asked to rank Tony Stewart's standing among NASCAR drivers in an alltime listing.

   Two former star drivers from what I consider stock car racing's golden years--the two decades from 1965-1985--gushingly declared Stewart to be the best ever.

   The show followed by only a couple nights Stewart's fine performance in winning the Pepsi 400 at Daytona International Speedway, and perhaps this impressive victory influenced the duo's judgment.

   And what did the third member think of his fellow panelists' assessment?

   "I almost puked," said the man, a legend as both a driver and a team owner.  "Stewart is good, but he ain't close to being the greatest, and he never will be."

   The oldtimer shook his head.

   "It was pretty stunning to me to sit there and listen to that," he continued.

   "It was like Richard Petty, David Pearson, Bobby Allison, Darrell Waltrip, Cale Yarborough and Jeff Gordon had been forgotten.  What they had accomplished meant nothing.

   "And that's just among the drivers from the past 30 or 40 years.  There were some mighty good ones going further back.

   "Stewart has won just barely one-tenth the races that Richard did and not one-third the championships that Richard and Dale Earnhardt did.

   "He has been in senseless incidents more times, it seems to me, than he has been in victory lane.  This ain't no mark of greatness.  Just the opposite.

   "There's no denying that Stewart has some talent.  In fact, he's very good.

   "But they rated Stewart ahead of Dale Earnhardt?! 

   "Hell, Tony Stewart couldn't carry Dale Earnhardt's helmet to his car.

   "They say, 'Oh, Tony, he's tough.'  He's a rough driver, not a tough driver.  There's a helluva difference.

   "Tough is what you call drivers like Cale and Bobby Allison.  Like Buck Baker, Tim Flock, Fireball Roberts, Herb Thomas and Curtis Turner.  Like Dale Earnhardt and his daddy, Ralph."

   And Junior Johnson, who epitomized the role that Stewart seemingly aspires to, the hardest charger of 'em all.

   Sorry, Tony, that part has been taken and permanently retired.

   Stewart is at the epicenter of controversy once again--conflict seems a constant with him--for his bonehead move that wrecked Clint Bowyer and Carl Edwards in the 500-miler last Sunday at Pocono.

   This follows by six months a reckless maneuver by Stewart, "Mr. Safety," at the season-opening Daytona 500 that only through the intervention of the benevolent Racing Gods spared Matt Kenseth from serious injury or worse.

   Tony Stewart, the greatest NASCAR driver ever?

   That's laughable.

   Tony Stewart, the biggest NASCAR hypocrite and jerk ever?

   That's probable.   

The Terrible Tunnel Turn

   NASCAR drivers take a lot of tricky turns.

   Literally.

   All over the country.

   There's "Calamity Corner," the fourth turn at Daytona International Speedway in Florida.

   There's "Humpty Bumpty Dumpty," the fourth turn at Lowe's Motor Speedway in North Carolina, a corner humorously nicknamed for the track president, Humpy Wheeler.

   And there are all four turns at Darlington Raceway in South Carolina, "The Track Too Tough To Tame."

   But "the turn for the worst," in my opinion, is the infamous "Tunnel Turn" at Pocono Raceway in the mountains of Pennsylvania, which the Nextel Cup tour visits during the coming weekend.    

   The list of drivers who have experienced trouble and suffered injuries in accidents in The Tunnel Turn at Pocono looks like a list of the sport's "Who's Who."

   Included are seven-time champions Richard Petty and the late Dale Earnhardt.  Others are all-time great Bobby Allison, whose illustrious career ended there, and also his late son, Davey.  Now-retired Harry Gant rode through a wild wreck at the tunnel, too.

   The cursable corner is the second of three turns at the triangular track, a 2.5-mile layout situated atop a mountain near the remote hamlet of Long Pond.  The turn got its name from being located directly above the tunnel leading to the infield and the garage area.    

   It's situated at the end of what is known as "The Long Pond Straight," a stretch of the track that is 3,055-feet long and very, very fast.  There's only eight degree banking in the turn and it's extremely narrow, creating significant challenges for drivers approaching it at approximately 185 miles per hour.

   Add to all this a sharp dogleg to the left exiting the corner, and The Tunnel Turn turn presents drivers with a maneuver, time and again throughout a race, that must be made expertly and delicately to avoid losing control of a 3,500-pound stock car.

   Dale Earnhardt once said, "It's simply a bad ass turn."

   The worst accident I ever saw at Pocono was the wreck in June of 1988 that ended the storied career of Bobby Allison and almost took his life.

   On the parade lap one of Bobby's tires started going down, but he wasn't in position to get onto pit road.  Bobby took the green flag, planning to nurse his car around and get into the pits for a new tire without losing a lap.  However, the low tire caused Bobby's car to loop nearing The Tunnel Turn, and he was hit hard in the driver's side door by another car.

   It took rescuers a long time to get Bobby out of his smashed vehicle, and he was hospitalized for weeks with critical head injuries.  Allison recovered after spending months in therapy, but never drove a race car in competition again.

   In 1979 Earnhardt sustained fractures of both collarbones and a bruised heart when he blew a tire while leading near the midway point of a 500-mile race at Pocono.  His car spun and slammed into the retaining barrier driver's side first.

   A year later, "The King," Richard Petty, experienced a wicked crash in The Tunnel Turn that left him with a fractured bone in his neck.  Petty kept the full nature of his injury secret from NASCAR officials for fear they would sideline him for the next few races.

   Richard vividly recalls what happened.

   "My car broke a wheel going up the straight toward the tunnel," said Petty.  "I was left with no control.  I couldn't turn the car and that corner is so sharp that I knew I was going to hit the wall in spite of everything I could do.

   "I hit it a ton!  Two tons.  The back of the car got up in the air and I almost went out of the track."

   Petty describes why the turn is so darkly ominous:

   "You build up terrific speed on that Long Pond straight, reaching maybe 185 miles an hour or a little more.  Then, suddenly, you're in a corner with little banking and only one good groove.  If you get the least bit out of whack, you're in big trouble.

   "Plus, that turn is so sharp, if trouble breaks out ahead, you can't see it.  You're coming up to go into the turn and WHAM!  There's a wreck you didn't even know was there."

   Davey Allison barrel-rolled violently off The Tunnel Turn at Pocono in July of 1992 while battling Darrell Waltrip and making contact that sent him out of control.  Davey suffered fractures in an arm and a broken collarbone.

   "When I came back around the track and saw how torn up Davey's car was and how the emergency team was working frantically to get him out, it almost made me sick to my stomach," said Waltrip.

    In July of 2002 Dale Earnhardt, Jr., Steve Park and Rusty Wallace became entangled in The Tunnel Turn and Park barrel-rolled similarly to Davey Allison, essentially destroying his car.  The machines of Junior and Rusty were heavily-damaged, too.

   Among the most enduring images of racing at Pocono is that of Junior leaping from his car and sprinting several yards to the battered car of Park to assist his teammate, who was badly shaken, but not seriously hurt.

   "The Tunnel Turn is by far the toughest in NASCAR," said Waltrip.  "In degree of difficulty, I rate it a 10."

   Even drivers who have raced themselves into commanding leads at Pocono and appear en route to victory remain apprehensive until they're two-thirds of the way through the final lap--and past The Tunnel Turn.

   Forgive me for this, but only then do they see the light beyond the end of the tunnel.         

         

Catch A Striper For Me

   Once again, NASCAR's top teams are returning this week to New Hampshire International Speedway.

   And, as always at this time of year, the memory of what happened during the track's inaugural big-time race on July 11, 1993 and the next few days thereafter come flooding back, bringing with them a lump in the throat and misty eyes.

   That week was record-sizzling hot in New England, with temperatures touching 100 degrees on the thermometer.  Few folks in New Hampshire had air-conditioning--normally they didn't need it--and some died of the oppressive heat.

   As a precaution, Bob Bahre, the fan-concious founder/owner of the track near Loudon, had pipes emitting a fine, cool spray installed under the stands so fans could get in the shade and find relief.

   It was a grand event for a section of the nation that had long supported stock car racing with weekly shows at area short tracks.

   To paraphrase, the great sports editor/columnist Bob Ryan of The Boston Globe observed, "We've dedicated more coverage to stock car racing this week alone than we did in the paper's first 100 years." 

   It was a coup for Bahre, a long-time NASCAR promoter.

   He had carved the track from a rocky, pine-thick rural area two years before, gambling that he'd get what was then a Winston Cup Series date.

   During a chilly winter day meeting in Boston, Bahre and NASCAR president Bill France, Jr., were walking down a midtown street for lunch.  A homeless man sat on the sidewalk, begging for money.

   "Bill, if you don't give me a race I'm going to be down there with him," cracked Bahre.

  He got the race.

  The chase on the 1.058-mile track proved relatively competitive, with six drivers swapping the lead 13 times.

  Quick pit service during a final stop under a yellow flag put Rusty Wallace back onto the track in the lead, and he never relinquished the front spot.  Wallace took the checkered flag 1.31 seconds ahead of runnerup Mark Martin, with Davey Allison finishing third.

   The race had appeared to be Davey's until the pivotal caution flag .  He had taken the lead on the 245th lap of the 300-lap race, and was comfortably ahead when the yellow showed on Lap 270.

   I will remember forever the sight I saw an hour after the race's conclusion.

   After freshening up in the drivers' lounge, Davey stood in line with fans at an infield helicopter pad, awaiting his turn for a short flight to a nearby airport where his private plane was parked.

   As he flew away, I wondered if I could make good on a lighthearted promise I'd made two days earlier during a break as Davey and other drivers prepared for qualifying.

   Davey and I had fished together a couple times, and we talked about fishing a lot.  I told him that following the race I was going to remain in New England for a few days and go casting for striped bass on the rocky coast of Maine.

   "Catch a striper for me," said Davey.

   "I'll do my best," I promised.

   Upon arriving at Higgins Beach, Maine, the day after the race, I found an urgent message awaiting.  My sports editor at The Charlotte Observer was calling.  I phoned the paper.

   The news was chilling and almost beyond belief.

   Davey Allison had been critically injured in the crash of a helicopter he was trying to land at Talladega Superspeedway in Alabama.  Subsequent phone calls to friends in Talladega and Birmingham indicated there was little hope he would survive.

   This revelation was especially numbing because only mere weeks earlier--on April 1, 1993--the reigning Winston Cup champion, Alan Kulwicki, had lost his life along with four associates in the crash of a private plane near Bristol, Tenn.

   I arose from a restless sleep early on July 13 and walked across the street from the bed-and-breakfast where I was staying to meet a new-found friend who was to guide me on my first fishing trip in Maine.

   "Tom, it just came across as a bulletin on CNN...Your young friend Allison is dead," the man said.  "If you want to pass on the fishing today, I will understand."

   I thought for a moment, then said, "No, let's go."

   I wanted to get out there on the rocks where the surf was splashing softly in a slight wind.  Maybe out there I could make some sense of the tragedy that had happened.

  And maybe catch a striper in memory of Davey.

  My friend and "guide" and I saw plenty of stripers, but they wouldn't strike.

  Maybe they wouldn't hit because I wasn't working the lure well.  My mind and heart were in Alabama, with Davey's family, especially his dad and mom, motorsports hall of famer Bobby Allison and his wife Judy.  They had lost Davey's brother, Clifford, only a few months earlier in a crash at Michigan International Speedway.  I couldn't imagine the agony all the Allison family was feeling.

   After about 45 minutes, I told my Maine friend I needed to go and start filing columns about Davey and his Robert Yates Racing team.

   Following July 13, 1993, I didn't go fishing for striped bass for a long, long time.

   Then, in December of 1999, I ventured to the Outer Banks of North Carolina, where great schools of stripers were feeding in the surf.

   Early one morning near the famous Cape Hatteras Lighthouse I cast a bait of cut mullet out beyond the suds, and soon afterward there came a strike.  Within a few minutes I pulled a striper of around 20 pounds onto the sand.

   I admired the silvery, line-sided fish for a bit, amid flashbacks of Davey saying, "Catch a striper for me."

   Then I tagged that beauty of a bass in memory of Davey Allison, gently slid it back into the water and watched it swim away.

   

Cale The Courageous

   A pal and I were waiting out a rainstorm in a golf course shelter the other day and started talking racin'.

   "Who is the toughest, bravest driver you've seen and known in all your years of covering NASCAR?" he asked.

   I replied that there have been plenty of super-tough, daredevil drivers.

   I named some examples:

   Seven-time champions Richard Petty and Dale Earnhardt drove several time while suffering a variety of broken bones that were excruciatingly painful.

   Bobby Allison competed through a stretch of one season with so many multiple injuries that he had to be lifted in and out of his race car by special handles sewn onto his uniform.

  Buddy Baker and Sterling Marlin both ran events while recovering from painful burns.

  "But overall," I said, "I've got to rank Cale Yarborough as both the toughest and most courageous." 

   

   "Tell my why," said my friend.

   "Well, because both in his youth and then as a race driver, Cale experienced a number of life-threatening incidents that would have cowed a lesser person.  But they never caused him to shy away from danger.  Not once that I know of."

   "Wow," said my golfing buddy.  "Looks like it's going to be raining a while.  Tell me the story of Cale The Courageous."

   Okay...

   Cale Yarborough once flew over the railing and out of Darlington Raceway.

   He was swept into the midst of a grinding, horrific 23-car crash at Alabama's Talladega Superspeedway, an accident in which he saw cars sailing over his head "high as a telephone pole."

   He rode through a stunning flip in the midst of a run that made him the first driver to qualify at more than 200 miles per hour at Daytona International Speedway.

   However, Cale, a three-time Winston Cup champion, winner of 83 races, including four Daytona 500s, doesn't consider any of these his closest calls.

   "I can tell tales that make a lot of peoples' hair stand on end," Cale once recalled.  "Tales that make driving a race car seem like riding a merry-go-round."

   Yarborough then readily reflected on these terrors.

   "Personally,"  said Cale, "I feel the closest I ever came to you-know-what was in my late teens down at Jacksonville, North Carolina.

   "It was 1958 and I was working with an air show as one of the skydivers.  I jumped out of the plane at about 5,000 feet and did my diving number down to about 2,000, the altitude where I always deployed the parachute.  I tugged the ripcord and nothing happened.  For some reason, the dadgum 'chute had become fouled.

   "I told myself, 'Don't look down.'"

   Cale kept pulling and pulling on the ripcord, but nothing happened.  Finally, at about 200 feet above the ground, his parachute billowed.  But by now he was going so fast the force of the wind blew half the canopy away!

   "Even so," continued Cale, "there was enough of the 'chute left to slow me down a little bit.  Luckily, I landed in a patch of high grass in a muddy field, which provided some cushion.  I came out of it with only a chipped bone in my elbow."

   How did a self-described farm boy from tiny Timmonsville, S.C., come to be a skydiver?

  "Pretty funny story," said Cale.  "Me and another ol' boy, a buddy, bought us a used airplane, an old J-4 Cub.  We kept it in a barn near the cornfield on my folks' farm.  One day a neighbor who had been a paratrooper in the military came by with a parachute and convinced us that jumping was a really enjoyable thing to do.  We started trying it and found that, sure enough, it was a lot of fun.

   "Usually, we only jumped when the ex-paratrooper was around to oversee things.

   "One day he wasn't there and I decided to make a jump.  I spread the 'chute out in a cotton patch and folded it into the pack--crammed it in, actually.  When I jumped out of the plane and pulled the ripcord, it looked like a tornado way up there in the sky.  Cockleburrs, pieces of stalks, cotton leaves and dirt came flying out of that parachute.

   "It was some sight."

   Cale went on to jump 214 times, but the failure of his 'chute that day at Jacksonville was in no way his first encounter with the Grim Reaper.  He'd already escaped the swipe of the scythe.

   When Cale was a kid, one night beneath a full moon he was walking barefoot through the yard at his family's home when he suddenly encounted a snake coiled before him.

   "I tried to jump away," recalled Cale.  "But the snake struck and hit me right behind my big right toe.  My stepfather opened the wound up, put a tourniquet on my ankle and rushed me to the hospital."

   For the next week Cale was "about the sickest" of anytime in his life.  Upset stomach.  Headache and soreness.

   A few days later, they found the snake, dead in the hedges near the house.  "It was a rattler," said Cale.  "We figured we ran over it heading to the hospital and it crawled into the shrubbery and died."

   Not too long afterward Cale and a bunch of his buddies were down at a creek on the Yarborough farm, taking a dip.

   "There were no swimming pools around Timmonsville in those days," he continued.  "So we swam in the creek.

   "A bad storm was brewing, so all of us went home.

   "I was standing at a window, watching as the wind and rain swept across our fields.  Suddenly, a bolt of lightning hit at the edge of the yard and what looked like a fireball bounced up, broke the panes out of the window and hit me in the chest.  It threw me backwards across the room and knocked me out.  I'm not sure for how long.  When I came to, I smelled smoke.  But there was no fire."

   A year or so later Cale went raccoon hunting one night with his uncles and some friends.  Their hounds treed a 'coon and Cale volunteered to shinny up the tall tree and try to shake the critter out.  But when he shook too hard, it was Cale that fell, not the raccoon.

   Back to the hospital, where several days and nights of recovery were necessary for the concussion Cale suffered.

   During his senior year in high school, Cale, a star running back on the football team, again found himself being registered in a hospital emergency room.  He had a leg injury, but not from football.

   "I was out on a date with Betty Jo," he said of the childhood sweetheart who would become his wife.  "We went to a drive-in for burgers and soft drinks.  A guy got out of a car and started acting ugly.  I told him to watch himself, that a lady was present.

   "Danged if that rascal didn't pull out a pistol and shoot at me.  The bullet ricocheted off the pavement and went through the calf of my leg, then out the bottom of my boot.

   "It just as easily could have hit me in the head or the heart."

   Ironically, despite the hundreds of thousands of miles he drove in a career stretching from 1957-1988, Yarborough never spent a night in a hospital bed because of a racing injury.

   "It they hospitalized you for being shook up, it would have been a different matter," he said with a laugh.  "I've been shaken a lot by racing accidents, especially that big pileup at Talladega."

   Cale admitted to experiencing still another close call that has become a colorful part of NASCAR lore.

   "In 1977 I did something very dumb that involved a twin-engined plane I'd bought," related Cale.

   "I was driving for Junior Johnson at the time, and I happened to mention to some of the crew guys, who were mountaineers from Wilkes County (N.C.) that I would like to have a pet bear.  A few days later I got a phone call from the race shop and was told I should come up to Wilkes County immediately to pick up my bear.

   "I thought the crew boys, Henry Benfield and Bud Green and Mike Hill and that crowd, were playing a practical joke on me."

   Even so, Cale flew to Wilkes County.  He found it was no joke.

   The crewmen had enticed someone to trap a young bear weighing about 150 pounds for them to give to Cale.

  "I wondered how I was going to get it back to Timmonsville," said Cale.  "Henry and Bud said it was no problem.  They tied the bear up real tight with plastic rope and put it in the back seat of my plane."

  About halfway through the flight home to South Carolina, the bear wiggled free enough to start gnawing at the rope.

   "I started sweating," conceded Cale.  "By the time I managed to land the plane and taxi it to where people were waiting with a cage, the bear was down to the last strands and almost free!

   "Can you imagine having a wild bear loose in the cockpit of an airplane?!  I was wishing I'd brought my old parachutes along!"

   Yarborough surviving so many escapades certainly is testimony to his toughness.

   But Cale, who still farms the family fields among many other businesses he owns and oversees, said he feels there's another reason he has come through so many close calls on the race track and off.

   "The Man Upstairs intervened on my behalf," he said.  "I really believe that.  Otherwise, about any of the incidents I was involved in could have gone the other way."