Of Snakes, Chicken Bones And Voodoo

   Walking up the stairs toward the Grand Ballroom at the old Robert E. Lee Hotel in Winston-Salem,  I could hear the laughter from perhaps 100 feet away.
   It was early December of 1958, and  officials from Darlington Raceway were hosting one in a series of off-season dinners they scheduled in cities around the Carolinas and Virginia to help maintain interest 
through the winter months about NASCAR Grand National racing, a series now known as the Nextel Cup circuit.   
   Lee Petty, the 1954 and '58 driving champion who was to take the title again in '59,  was there, along with his 21-year-old son Richard, a future seven-time title winner.  Several other drivers and press members from the area were at the gathering of about 100.
   As I signed a guest register, something suddenly was writhing around my neck.  It was a snake!  I hate the critters, but somehow I relatively kept my cool and took hold of the thing to throw it to the floor.  From the feel, I immediately knew it was a phony.
   Everyone got a laugh at my expense, including Joe Weatherly, who was to win championships in 1962 and '63 before losing his life in a crash at Riverside (Calif.) Raceway in early '64.   Weatherly  had thrown the fake snake around my neck and was whooping louder than anyone.
   A bit later Weatherly tossed the faux snake around the neck of a waiter carrying a tray of champagne glasses up high on his fingertips.  The waiter screamed and hurled the tray.  I vivividly remember the tray spinning through the air and the glasses breaking all over the floor.
   Weatherly was known as "The Clown Prince Of Racing" at the time, a nickname he richly deserved.
   There is no "Clown Prince" in big-time stock car racing anymore, and hasn't been for some time.
   The sport has become devoid of colorful characters.  Perhaps this is among the reasons its popularity appears to be slipping, if TV ratings are believable.
   Their demise is too bad.

   
   

   From the 1950s through the mid-1980s seldom a week went by, especially during the season, that someone in NASCAR didn't do or say something either funny or outrageous, or both.
   The principal perpetrators included Weatherly's running mate and best buddy, Curtis Turner.  Also Buck Baker, Tim Flock, Jabe Thomas, Tiny Lund, Buck Brigrance, James Hylton, Buddy Baker, Neil Bonnett, Cale Yarborough and Darrell Waltrip.
   Here's a sampling of the many, many tales oldtimers who trace their NASCAR days to the 1950s still tell about  them:
   Fifty or so years ago NASCAR issued a bulletin decreeing that all competitors had to wear "driving suits."
   Turner showed up for a 100-miler at a short dirt track in Columbia, S.C., wearing a spiffy dress suit and tie.  Officials at first declared that Turner couldn't run.
   "Your orders were to wear a suit  to drive in, and that's what I've got on," said the legendary Turner.
   NASCAR and track officials had promoted heavily the fact that the great star Turner was going to race, and a big crowd had turned out to see him.  Fearing a riot if Turner didn't start, NASCAR backed down.  He ran the race in his suit and tie.
   Also in the 1950s, Buck Baker, a two-time champion, once started a Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway with what he said was a jug of tomato juice in his car.  He planned to sip on the juice for sustenance during the long, hot Labor Day event.   Some suspected the concoction actually was a vodka-laced "Bloody Mary."
   Whatever, Baker was involved in a crash on the backstretch and his car rolled over.  The red liquid from the jug splashed all over his snow-white driver's coveralls.
   Upset over wrecking, Baker refused to ride an ambulance back to the garage area/infirmary to be checked out.  Instead, he trudged through a packed infield.
   "Some fans thought Buck had been badly hurt and was bleeding to death," remembers a friend who was there.  "He left a trail of nearly-fainting women in his wake."
   Flock drove a few races in the '50s with a companion strapped in alongside him.  It was "Jocko Flocko," a monkey.
   NASCAR finally banned the animal after it worked free in the car during a race and placed its paws over Flock's eyes, nearly wreaking havoc.
   Thomas, who raced from 1965-78, was a happy-go-lucky sort who would have made a fabulous pickpocket.  Many drivers, crewmen and members of the media were greatly surprised to find chicken bones and other items in their pockets.  They deftly had been slipped in there by the nimble-fingered Jabe.
   Tiny Lund was a 6-5 giant of a man with a bigger-than-life personality.  He loved playing practical jokes, like secretly swimming under Buddy Baker, who was taking a dip to cool off during a summer fishing trip to South Carolina's Santee-Cooper Reservoir.  Tiny grabbed Buddy by his privates, causing a horrified scream.  Buddy went under three times.
   "Why didn't you just swim to the boat?" I asked when a shaken Buddy got back aboard.
   "When you think an alligator has you by your manhood, you go where the alligator wants to go," replied Buddy.
   Buck Brigance was a seven-time Southeastern  motorcycle racing champion in the '50s.  Upon retiring from the two-wheelers, he decided to try stock car racing.  Buck did not fare well.
   After a 500-lapper at Asheville-Weaverville Speedway, Brigance was towing his car back home to Charlotte when he saw a sign indicating a junction with the Blue Ridge Parkway.  Brigance decided to take the scenic highway to Little Switzerland, N.C., to drop in on his weekday employer, who had a summer home in the mountains.
   Buck had gone only a few miles before he was pulled over by a National Park Ranger.  The officer started writing a ticket.
   "Whoa, whoa, whoa!" shouted Buck.  "What are you doing?"
   "You're being cited for having a commercial vehicle on the Parkway," said the ranger.
   "What's the definition of a commercial vehicle?" asked Buck.
   "It's any vehicle with which you make money."
   Buck pondered a moment and then declared, "Then this damn race car IS NOT a commercial vehicle!"
   The ranger laughed and tore up the ticket.
   Hylton was known to abhor a certain aspect of amour.  Playing a prank while en route to a Riverside race on Interstate 10, Hylton's pal and fellow race driver at the time, Richard Childress, stopped at a boulder alongside the highway west of El Paso and with bright paint sprayed a risque message on the rock saying just the opposite about Hylton.  It read, "James Hylton loves..."  Following a few miles behind, Hylton, saw the message that glowed like neon on the boulder.  Horrified, he turned around, returned to El Paso, bought some paint the same brownish gray color as the rock and covered up Childress' words.
   Hylton subsequently  got even by secretly lacing a soft-drink of Childress with salt peter.
   Late in the '70s Hylton bet some other drivers and crewmen that he was going to see how slow he could qualify at Pocono Raceway.  Not enough cars were present to fill the field, so there was no danger of Hylton not making the show.  He creeped around the 2.5-mile track at 45 mph.  Unamused NASCAR officials had a stern warning and a $500 fine awaiting him.
   Buddy Baker, Buck's son, was known throughout his long career for being quick with a witty quip.
   During the late '60s Buddy became involved in a dispute with a local guy at Florence, S.C., while at Darlington for a race.  The two began scuffling.
   "The other guy was nicknamed 'Mule' because he was so big and strong," said Buddy.  "He hit me so hard it untied my left shoe."
   Describing the big, two-waves-of-cars crash at Talladega in 1973, Buddy said, "It was like opening a closet door and having a tiger jump out on you."
   Like Lund, Bonnett loved playing practical jokes, especially on his best-friend, Dale Earnhardt.  Bonnett, fishing alone, once pulled a 10-pound largemouth bass from Earnhardt's favorite lake in his hometown of Kannapolis, N.C.  Bonnett waited 'til the middle of the night, then went to Earnhardt's home and left the lunker on the mat at Dale's front door.
   Despite being badly injured at Darlington in April of 1990, Bonnett declared he wasn't going to miss deer season in his home state of Alabama.  He had Earnhardt and others winch him up to a tree stand and then strap him in.  Neil had a new, specially-made rifle that was overly powerful in order to bring down bucks at long range.
   "I saw one several hundred yards away, took aim and fired," said Bonnett.  "That rifle had such a kick that it caused the relatively limber tree I was in to begin rocking back and forth really hard.  I looked like Wily Coyote in a cartoon."
   Back to the '70s...Yarborough, a three-time champion, mentioned to crew members on his Junior Johnson-owned team that he would like to have a pet black bear.  A few days later the colorful Henry Benfield phoned Cale: "Come up here to North Wilkesboro and get your bear."  The guys had live-trapped a 150-pounder in the Blue Ridge Mountains.
   Yarborough, unbelieving, flew to Wilkes County in his plane from an airstrip on his farm near Timmonsville, S.C.  He and the crewmen tied the bruin with plastic rope and put it in the plane's back seat.
   The bear-in-the-air eventually began gnawing rope and Yarborough began flying as fast as his two-engine plane would go. 
   "I barely landed before that bear was almost free," said Cale.  "I thought I was going to have to bail without a parachute."
    Waltrip, in a tight points race for the Winston Cup Series championship with Richard Petty, showed up for a fall race at Charlotte Motor Speedway in a chauffered Rolls-Royce.  Waltrip, who enjoyed playing psychological games with rivals, was dressed in a top hat and tails.  He had along with him a black man wearing a black derby and a tuxedo.
   Waltrip introduced the fellow in the garage area as a "Voodoo Master" from Haiti who was going to hex King Richard.
   Petty's tough, no-nonsense crew chief, Dale Inman, was not amused.
   "Get that guy out of here, or I will" he told Waltrip in a stern tone.  "And it ain't going to be pretty.  You and him ain't going to like it."
   The "master" eyed Inman's Popeye-like muscles and hustled to the Rolls-Royce, speeding away and trailing a cloud of dust.
   It's going to take NASCAR and its current rather bland cast of competitors, who usually play pranks and are amusing only in TV commercials, a lot of voodoo to regain the color of the past.