Tom Higgins' Scuffs

The Thomas Clowns Affair

The list of charges against a young NASCAR hopeful was a long one.

Driving on a public street without headlights…Or taillights…Or a horn…Or an inspection sticker.

He was issued a pocketful of tickets and summoned to court.

This story is among an avalanche of auto racing anecdotes looming Sunday in Mooresville, N.C.

The tall tales will be told by approximately three dozen NASCAR-associated old-timers who are scheduled to take part in an event at The Memory Lane Museum.

The occasion is a tribute to Rex White, 1960 champion of the sanctioning body’s major series, then known as the Grand National Division.

Joining White to meet with fans from 11 a.m.-4 p.m. will be two other champions, Bobby Allison and Ned Jarrett. A passel of their peers are to be present as well, including Buddy Arrington, Richard Brickhouse, Neil Castles, Joe Frasson, Cecil Gordon, Jimmy Hensley, Little Bud Moore, Tom Pistone and Jim Vandiver.

Also Jabe and Ronnie Thomas, an amusing, fun-loving father-son duo from Christiansburg, Va.

During Jabe’s driving career from 1965 through 1978 he was the leading clown in the garage area and on pit road.

His favorite prank was to stick chicken bones in the pants pockets of unsuspecting rivals right before races were to start. Many a competitor suddenly experienced shap pain in the hip area once the action began as a broken wishbone had a similar effect to a porcupine quill.

Trace this to the foul (fowl?) fingers of Jabe Thomas.

“Jabe would distract us with some nonsensical statement,” remembers Buddy Baker. “And all the while he was sneaking chicken bones from lunch into our pockets.

“Jabe could have made a living as a pick-pocket.”

Driving cars he maintained himself, the elder Thomas did fairly well on the track.

Jabe, who will be 80 in May, started 362 races, posting three top-five finishes and 74 more in the top 10. He had a best finish of sixth in the point standings in 1971.

Ronnie, who turned 55 on Monday, wasn’t as nimble with chicken bones as his dad. However, he possessed the same down-home wit and sometimes the same sense of outrageousness.

Ronnie was the relative NASCAR newcomer who found himself in a load of legal trouble with traffic tickets in the late 1970s.

He and friends who helped prepare his car at the family shop in Christiansburg had worked far into the night getting the machine ready to go to a race track within a few hours.

Ronnie decided he needed to give the car a shakedown run.

He cranked up and pulled out.

Onto a city street in Christiansburg.

He hadn’t gone far before a siren wailed and a blue light blinked.

Ronnie blurted something like, “I know this is a race car, sir, but I swear I wasn’t speeding!”

Unamused, the cop started writing.

He wrote, and wrote and wrote, much to the chagrin of the younger Thomas, who raced from 1977-89, winding up with 197 starts, nine finishes from sixth through 10th and a best point standings showing of 14th in 1980.

“The policeman and judge were maddest about the ‘no muffler’ ticket,” Ronnie recalled later. “Woke up the neighbors, you know.”

Jimmie Johnson isn't NASCAR's first dominator

Jimmie Johnson and his Hendrick Motorsports team are spoiling Cup Series racing for some fans.

“It’s getting to where it’s not much exciting to watch,” Joe Burden, a NASCAR follower for 50 years, said this week. “Because if Jimmie doesn’t have bad luck, it seems he wins most of the time.

“No slam on him, because he’s obviously a great driver and has a terrific, smart team leader in Chad Knaus and a dandy pit crew.

“In winning, Johnson is just doing his job. But in doing it so well, he’s making things pretty predictable.”

Burden, 75, is a Sears retiree who now works as assistant manager in the pro shop at Mallard Head Golf Club in Mooresville, N.C.

His opinion about Johnson’s winning way is shared by quite a few of the course’s golfers, especially the seniors, who often “talk racing” while having beverages after playing 18 holes.

“Maybe our memories are fading,” Burden said after Johnson won Sunday at Las Vegas for his second straight victory in three races this season. “Maybe it has been like this before in NASCAR.”

Well, yes, boys, it has.

Johnson, 34, winner of a record four straight driving championships starting in 2006, is the present-day dominator and is favored to win again this Sunday in the Kobalt Tools 500 at Atlanta Motor Speedway.

Before him the role of ruling for stretches in stock car racing variously was held by Richard Petty, Bobby Allison, David Pearson, Dale Earnhardt, Bill Elliott, Darrell Waltrip, Cale Yarborough, Mark Martin, Jeff Gordon and Billy Wade.

Predictable?

That was the 1967 season when Petty won a stunning 10 straight while scoring an incredible 27 triumphs in 48 starts.

Included in the streak of 10 straight checkered flags was King Richard’s only victory in the storied Southern 500 on Labor Day at Darlington Raceway.

I covered that race 43 years ago as a member of The Charlotte Observer’s sports staff.

I remember a friend and fellow writer, the late Joe Whitlock, saying to Petty, “Damn, Richard, are you going to win them all!?”

Petty, who had just won for the 21st time in 40 starts to that point in '67, grinned through the grime that covered his face.

With a mock, quizzical look he replied, “What are you talking about? I’ve lost 19.”

Petty’s sensational streak began on Aug. 12, ’67 in a 100-miler at Bowman Gray Stadium in Winston-Salem. The Darlington win was the midpoint. The final victory in the stretch came on Oct. 1 in a 250-mile race at North Wilkesboro Speedway.

Buddy Baker’s victory in the National 500 at Charlotte Motor Speedway, the first of his career, snipped the Petty string. Petty was swept into a crash on the 41st of the race’s 334 laps and his car sustained heavy sheet metal damage.

“It wouldn’t run after that,” said Petty, who finished 18th. “It felt like there was a parachute hanging off the car.”

Both Petty and Allison won five straight in 1971,

The other drivers listed earlier put together streaks of four straight triumphs, some more than once. Johnson won four in a row in 2007.

While dominating victory streaks understandably are a turn-off for some fans, they’re a turn-on for other followers, including me.

I think there's drama in seeing how long drivers can keep them going.

Richard Petty's first win? In Charlotte, 50 years ago

Among NASCAR fans, maybe Feb. 28 ought to be considered a holiday.

That’s the date in 1960 when Richard Petty won for the first time.

The triumph came at the old Charlotte Fairgrounds, which included a half-mile dirt track at a location on North Tryon Street, now the site of a shopping center.

Petty, 22 at the time, got the lead on the 183rd of 200 laps and drove a Plymouth to the checkered flag six car-lengths ahead of runner-up Rex White, who was in a Chevrolet.

Many in a crowd estimated at 7,900 felt that White would have won except for an “assist” that Papa Lee Petty gave his son on the 187th lap.

The elder Petty had dropped out of the race on Lap 38 because of spark plug failure in his Plymouth. He then took over another Plymouth in relief of driver Doug Yates.

White rallied to challenge Richard for the lead on the 187th lap, but was nearly spun out when Lee Petty gave him a pop (pun intended).

The triumph came in Richard’s 36th big-time start.

“That being my first win, naturally I remember it pretty well, considering that it was 50 years ago,” Richard recalled recently.

“I remember Daddy starting from the pole (after qualifying at 62.11 mph). I started seventh.

“I didn’t think I was going to be able to get around Rex, but the track was real rough and he hit a bump and bobbled.  This enabled me to get under him.”

Petty grinned at the mention of his papa relatively “punting” White.

“Bump and run goes back a long, long ways,” said Richard.

The late Lee Petty never was a man to mince words.  After finishing third in the race he had this to say of the contact with White: “Well, I didn’t really hurt Richard’s chances, did I?”

Richard might have scored his first victory about eight months earlier except for a controversial finish on June 14, 1959, at Lakewood Speedway, a one-mile dirt track near Atlanta.

Richard was flagged the winner in the 150-mile event, but the runner-up protested.  And the objection was upheld.

The protester in an incident that has become a rich part of NASCAR lore?

Lee Petty!

“Because of all the dust Daddy thought the scorers couldn’t see and had docked him a lap,” said Richard.  “It took NASCAR an hour to find the error, but turns out Daddy was right.

“He told me the biggest reason he did it was that he needed the extra points toward the season-long driving championship.”

Lee Petty did indeed win the title in ’59, his third and final championship.

“To me, being able to recall that race at Atlanta and the one in ’60 at Charlotte Fairgrounds is a strange sort of deal,” continued Richard Petty. “I remember things from that time span pretty well.

“But later on?  Not so good. They all sort of run together. I guess the earlier races made more of a lasting impression because I was younger and new to it and awfully excited.”

Richard’s first win came in the last race at the Charlotte Fairgrounds track. The Fairgrounds date was transferred to the new Charlotte Motor Speedway, a 1.5-mile paved track where the inaugural World 600 was held on June 19, 1960.

As stock car racing followers know, Richard Petty was destined to go on from that win on Feb. 28, 1960, to triumph a mind-boggling 200 times, a record very unlikely to be broken.

Along the way he won a record seven driving titles, a mark matched by Dale Earnhardt.

Petty's final triumph came in the Pepsi Firecracker 400 at Daytona International Speedway on July 4, 1984.

Hey! That IS a national holiday!

Jake Elder: A racing original

Tom Higgins, a veteran beat writer for the Observer, stock car racing historian and ThatsRacin.com contributor, on Jake Elder:

“In all my years of covering stock car racing, Jake Elder was among the very most colorful characters I met and wrote about.

“His comment to rookie Dale Earnhardt at Bristol’s spring race in 1979 was and will remain a NASCAR classic. Jake, the crew chief for Earnhardt in his rookie season, told Dale on the eve of the race, ‘Stick with me, kid, and we’ll both be wearing diamonds as big as horse turds.’

“Jake’s eye for talent obviously was as good as his ability to make a car handle. Dale won the race the next day, his first victory in a career that produced seven Cup crowns.

“As Jake had foreseen, Dale won enough money to encrust all these crowns with diamonds.

“Jake loved getting something on NASCAR officials, some of whom he suspected had a vendetta against him.

"I think the happiest I ever saw him was a time in the 1970s at Talladega when an official told Jake a car he was fielding for Benny Parsons had failed inspection because it didn’t fit the template.

“ ’You dummy!’ screamed Jake.

“ 'You’re using the template for another make of car!’ ”

And he was right.