Benny And Banjo

   When Benny Parsons was trudging 10 miles home after football practice at rural Millers Creek High School in Wilkes County, N.C., during the 1950s he didn't dare dream of someday being in a hall of fame of any kind.
   "It never entered my mind," Benny once told me.  "The only thing I was thinking about was having enough strength left to make it across the next hill."
   It was a somewhat  similar challenging situation with Edwin Matthews.  His eyesight was so poor growing up--first in Ohio and then in Florida--that it appeared his future might be  limited.  Matthews' vision was so restricted he had to wear very thick glasses.  Cruel classmates  joked that  his  glasses were "as big as banjos."  They nicknamed him "Banjo-Eyes."
   This later was shortened to Banjo, which he good-naturedly accepted.
   Turns out the future held great things for both Parsons and Matthews in the field of motorsports.  They are members of several halls of fame, and next week they'll  be inducted into another.
   The ceremony for the N.C. Auto Racing  Racing Hall Of Fame  is set for Oct. 7 at the Citizens Center in Mooresville.

   Sadly, both Parsons and Matthews will be honored posthumously.
   Parsons passed away at age 65 in early 2007 after a battle with cancer.  Heart and respiratory disease took the life of Matthews at 64 in 1996.
   Parsons will be inducted as a driver.  Matthews will be honored with the Golden Wrench award that goes to great engineers and mechanics and crew chiefs.
   Parsons posted 21 victories in 536 starts on NASCAR's big-time circuit, now the Sprint Cup Series, in a career spanning the 1964-88 seasons.   He also sped to  20 pole positions.
   His biggest victories came in the 1975 Daytona 500 and the 1980 Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte.  He also won races at Atlanta Motor Speedway and Darlington Raceway, two of NASCAR's other major tracks.  He also scored twice at Ontario Speedway, a magnificent California track that failed due to poor financing and now longer exists.
   Parsons DIDN'T triumph in perhaps the most  memorable event of his career,  the 1973 American 500 at N.C. Motor Speedway near Rockingham.  But he won the Winston Cup Series championship in miraculously, touching fashion..
   Parsons, who had moved with his family to nearby little Ellerbe to drive race cars for local trucking magnate L.G. DeWitt, held a 194.35-point lead toward the title over Richard Petty under NASCAR's previous scoring system.  However, disaster struck on the 13th lap when Benny was swept into a crash with Johnny Barnes.
   According to stock car racing historian Greg Fielden, "The entire right side of Benny's car was stripped away.  Parts were strewn all over the track.  Wheels were torn out of their sockets.  The axle was broken.  Bluntly, the car was wiped out."
   Said Parsons, "I was lower than the gutter when I got back to the garage area and saw how wrecked the car was."
   Then, a heartwarming thing happened.
   Not only Parsons' crewmen, but members of other teams swarmed over the No. 72 Chevrolet.  They scavenged parts off a car that had failed to make the field and went to work.  Parsons rolled back onto the track 136 laps later, his car minus most of its sheet metal.  Because of high attrition among other drivers, he was able to finish 28th in the season finale, good enough to beat Cale Yarborough for the championship by 67.15 points.
   Benny never was known as a hard-bore qualifier, so it was somewhat of a surprise when he won the pole for the Winston 500 at Talladega Superspeedway in Alabama in May of 2002 at 202.176 mph.  The torrid lap in a Harry Ranier-owned Pontiac engineered by Waddell Wilson  enabled Parsons to become the first NASCAR driver to exceed the 200 mph barrier in time trials.
   How did self-proclaimed "mountain boy" Benny Parsons get into motorsports?
   After graduating from Millers Creek High he went to Detroit to join his parents, who had moved to Michigan some time earlier  to escape the recession and poverty that was wracking the Appalachian Mountains.  He worked at a taxi company owned and operated by his father.
   However, according to Benny, he never drove a cab.  "For fun, I just listed 'Detroit Cab Driver' on my entry blanks," he said.  "Mostly, I pumped gas at the station that served as the taxi company headquarters.
   "One late afternoon some guys towing a race car to a local dirt track came by and stopped for fuel.
They asked if I wanted to go to the race with them, and since I was getting off, I said, 'sure.'  I crawled in the back of their pickup tow truck.  We got to the track and the regular driver didn't show up.  They were debating what to do and I said, 'Ill drive it!.'"
   Thus a star and a future hall-of-famer was born.         
   Upon retiring as a driver, Parsons was hired as a motorsports analyst for ESPN telecasts.  He was so well-spoken and informative that he won an Emmy in 1996.
   The "Banjoman," as Matthews came to be known, drove in his first race at age 15 in Florida.
   In 1952 he relocated to the Asheville area in the North Carolina mountains to race modified and sportsman division cars.  He soon became a legend across the Blue Ridge and Great Smoky Mountains counties.
   I first saw him drive in  1958 at McCormick Field, a minor league baseball park in Asheville, where I was a rookie reporter for the Asheville Times.
   The city had lost its Dodgers farm team, and a savvy promoter laid a strip of asphalt down around the perimeter of the field and started holding weekly races there.  Matthews was the star and big draw.  Driving a black 1940 Ford with "Mr. X" as its number, he won 15 straight heats and features.
   Then, Ralph Earhardt came to town.
   The two, well-known arch rivals and maybe even enemies, qualified for the front row.
   Fan expectation was high that something controversial and exciting would happen quickly .
   It did.
   On the second lap Ralph Earnhardt turned Banjo Matthews over in center field at McCormick Field.
   "Mr. X" lay on its roof, steam pouring from the engine.
   Banjo, his fans and a protege named Dicky Plemmons were fuming, too.
   The race was red-flagged in the area of third base.  Plemmons bounded from his car and charged Earnhardt, the leader.  Wagging his finger in anger, he stuck his head in the window.  Bad mistake.  With a punch, Earnhardt whiplashed him.
   All that action was so intense I can't remember, 50 years later, who won the race.
  I do recall, however, that another driver in the event was Ned Jarrett, a future champion on NASCAR's major tour, a hall-of-famer and distinguished broadcaster on both radio and TV.  Ned had a fancy hairstyle--a crew cut on top, duck-tails on the sides.
  Banjo Matthews  started 53 big-time races, winning none but taking 3 poles.
  However, I recall watching as Banjo drove in a relief role for his Florida friend Fireball Roberts at Asheville-Weaverville Speedway on Aug. 17, 1958 in a convertigble race.  It was an incredibly hot, humid day in the mountains and Roberts gave out on the 370th of 500 laps at the half-mile track.  Matthews took over the car and drove it to victory by more than a lap over runnerup Bob Welborn.  It looked to me and others that Matthews drove the car just as hard and masterfully as the far more famous Roberts.
   Matthews give up the steering wheel in 1963 and started fielding cars for other drivers, including Roberts, Junior Johson and A.J. Foyt.  Perhaps his biggest victory came in the National 500 at Charlotte Motor Speedway on Oct. 12, 1969 with Donnie Allson driving.  Matthews won 8 times as a team owner.
   He also became arguably one of the greatest car-builders in NASCAR history.
   According to the Mooresville hall of fame's records, from 1974-85 cars constructed by Banjo's Performance Center near Asheville won 262 of 362 Winston Cup races, including all 30 in 1978.  Cars built by Matthews won four straight titles in the 1970s.
   "There was a time there for several years that if you didn't have what we came to call a 'Banjo Car,' you might as well not gone to the race," recalled Matthews' friend and customer, the legendary Junior Johnson.
   Added Waddell Wilson, himself a former Golden Wrench honoree, "Banjo sressed driver safety in his cars.  No driver ever lost his life while driving a Banjor car."
   Ticket information for the Parsons/Matthews induction ceremony is available at (704) 663-5331.  Proceeds benefit Stop Child Abuse Now and the Stocks For Tots program.