All About Old Bristol...

   Imagine going to a NASCAR Nextel Cup Series race at Bristol Motor Speedway and the grandstands being only half-filled.
   It's difficult to believe that ever happened at the .533-mile track in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Tennessee, where approximately 160,000 fans are expected to jam-pack the place Saturday night for the Sharpie 500.
   That's about 16 times as many as attended the Volunteer 500 on July 28, 1963.  The turnout was estimated at 20,000, too generous a guess by perhaps 10,000.
   I was there that Sunday 44 years ago, along with my father and three friends.  Unsolicited, an official of the track then known as Bristol International Raceway had mailed a press credential and four prime tickets for seats near the start/finish line to the small weekly newspaper I was running at the time just across the state line in my tiny hometown,  Burnsville, N.C.
   Unsolicited complimentary tickets to a Bristol race!?
   Again, that's unbelievable for the speedway that claims a waiting list of thousands hoping to secure seats for its two NASCAR big-time shows each season.   

   Turns out it was the only race ever attended by  my dad, M.B. "Pappy" Higgins, a lean, lanky, N.C. Wildlife Commission game warden.
   Pap was spooked, and fled the grandstand, when superstar Fireball Roberts hit the wall in turn four on the 312th of 500 laps and flipped end-over-end down the fronstretch almost to the first turn, sustaining a wrenched back.
   I left the press box to head Pap off and asked where he was going in such a hurry.
   "Tommy," he said, his face pale from fright, "if these fellers are damn fool enough to kill themselves, I ain't damn fool enough to watch them."
   Pap, then 61 (he was to live until age 92), went to our car and had a beer or two, and missed seeing Fred Lorenzen motor to a 3-second victory over Richard Petty.
   The Bristol speedway's popularity boom started in the 1980s when nighttime racing began under mobile lights and ESPN televised the action (translation: lots of  wrecks) to a national audience.  More and more grandstands have been added annually, it seems, and now Bristol Motor Speedway ranks among the country's top arenas in seating capacity.
   The place  is totally unrecognizable from the facility that opened in 1961.
  More favorite Bristol Motor Speedway memories and thoughts:
  --The track’s then grassy infield was the site of a National Football League exhibition game on Sept. 2, ’61, matching the Washington Redskins and Philadelphia Eagles.
   The Redskins were the darlings of Dixie at the time, but the game drew poorly and afterward the players complained loudly about the playing surface being studded with small rocks.
   The Eagles, incidentally, won 17-10 as former Duke star Sonny Jurgensen threw touchdown passes of 10 yards to Tommy McDonald and 34 yards to Pete Retzlaff.  Ralph Guglielmi passed 41 yards to Dick James for Washington's only TD.
   Jurgensen later starred for the Redskins and after retirement became a member of their radio broacast team.
   The NFL never has scheduled another game at a race track, at least that I know of.
    --The Bristol speedway has become noted for several things, high among them blistering speed on its 36-degree banking and lots of beating and banging among the competitors, leading to rashes of wrecks.
   Three races at the track have produced a whopping 20 caution flags each, most recently in August of 2003.
   Thus, it strains credulity to see the record book shows not a single yellow displayed in the Volunteer 500 of 1971.  Chargin' Charlie Glotzbach won the event--with relief-driving help from Friday Hassler--in a No. 3 Chevrolet fielded by Junior Johnson.  Despite the lack of caution periods, Glotzbach/Hassler lapped the field 3 times, completing all 500 laps to 497 for runnerup Bobby Allison.
   Glotzbach credited Johnson's chassis setup for the car's superiority, which enabled him to average 101.075 mph, still a track record after 36 years.
   But from zero cautions up to 20?
   Trace the difference to the drastic increase in speed at Bristol.  Richard Petty won the pole in '71 at Bristol at 104.589 mph.   The qualifying record  has jumped to 128.709  mph,  Ryan Newman's  lap when he won the pole in March of 2003.
   Newman's clocking was a dazzling 14.908 seconds for the .533-miles.
   Such a sizzling pace means that even drivers with great reflexes have little time to react when there's trouble ahead of them, resulting in a lot of badly bent-up cars.
   --Prior to one race in the '70s at Bristol the entertainment included a jump by local parachutists.
   Track officials had no idea how wildly entertaining the jump was destined to prove.
   Despite a relatively strong breeze, the 'chutists decided to leap from their plane anyway, planning to alight on the infield.
   However, the wind carried them over the front grandstand and into a mountain ridge about a half-mile away.
   Veteran Motor Racing Network anchorman Barney Hall remembers it well.
   "There were parachutes hanging from trees all over that ridge," recalls Hall.  "It took a local rescue squad most of the rest of the day to get all the jumpers down.
   "Thankfully, none of them were seriously hurt."   
   --Cale Yarborough, driving for Junior Johnson, won the Food City 500 of 1977 at Bristol by a whopping seven laps over second place finisher Dick Brooks.
   As Yarborough steadily pulled further and further away from the field, radio anchorman Hal Hamrick of the old Universal Racing Network kept trying harder and harder to inject some excitement into the   broadcast.  He was talking non-stop.
   One of my media pals remarked about that, and I was inspired.
   Hamrick's radio booth was separated from my seat in the press box only by a thin pane of glass.
   I printed a note in large letters on a sheet of copy paper, pecked on the glass and held the message up for Hamrick to read.
   I had written "This race is as exciting as artificial insemination!"
   Hamrick became so choked he was unable to speak for several moments, then blurted, "Tom Higgins is trying to break me up...And he's doing a good job of it!"