The Charlotte Observer from Charlotte, North Carolina • 43

The Charlotte Observer charlotteobserver corn RACE WEEKS COCA-COLA 600 Sunday May 24 2009 15C FIRST RACE from PIC -44ttt 4 A1 '4143 I 901re rV41 141s 6 001 '1 tizt 0 uvEr4) A71 02e TrrxrrTrrtrrmr7---1--f-r vatir vt illt 4 11 :) 4 1 ly re le at- eq i 'r' I- 41 E' tf Irv1-: t-Y 1(1 i' ''4417 -i Atrwitit-x et! -tti 1- t41Ili 4 1441 4) A 0 C' I V''! h4 1: i 'l 1: 'I i 1: 1 -frk? trN a '4 :1 f' lc' '1 10'-i: i 'f 0'' 41 i rl -'i 1 4 -t 4i: gi il -f i-4' 4-o- -6-4 4 04 it- i si''f I''4 104 ''1 'I' t1: I as '7' 04: 41 4' k4'--irit "1 4 ilF 4 1 '1: l'- folk 1 or vi I 4 ''t A 11 Is'104 iti "11-0ik' '''10 '4 le -1-" '''A1 441 i 1 bt' 17''''''c- 44-- I 41 041 r't i t' IN: t8A i it -I 7: 4- 1 (01 1 i ive 14iT 071 4 4r o' I r' 1 'g 1 0- 414 '1 i4'- -4 lksfr'f 4 Ifr--JA I I ti 0 11 z- 4 r' i I I 'il if Itle Pit "11 l'I' VA Alp 1: 1 4 ''41 tiT' kk': if 1 i' 4 --k IF --44141- 't 3 Jr '1t----- 4: IL) ti i-- i 1 t' 4'''ti 4 atl k- '4 'i i -a i 1 a lat! Ill 1 )1 i- i 0 ii4: it It Ik' 1 1 A 4 lf4 2 i i0 1 A 1" to AA tk tt 1 4 i I 7" 4- 4 -7: it' -0 es 4 4 ta 4 Pi' Lti a 1 1- 114ifkgii 'i '-1 5 1 -04no 1 ziy-: i -00 -1 'Ir'7- '7 i 7 'i It Ito 716 Iia 14- i''l 4 1 -4 ri -k r144 1 4' i L''' i 1 I- 1 ill 'f i t-- X- ''YA I Mk 1 ''1 '7'L fi: 1 1 'I 4: lotoo v- '1Y' k44 43 ii --t- i I -'i 4 13 4 "-faitaa fr 'er 1" A 4 "ai Vt 4 io 4: 1' 4aa- N-- i loft i ow --i I 1 0--' 11 41 11 ilio 13 -ow PHOTO COURTESY OF LOWE'S MOTOR SPEEDWAY ARCHIVES Souvenir row at Charlotte Motor Speedway in the 1960s The track was saved during that decade by investor Richard Howard endured the thin years of the 1970s and roared back as Lowe's Motor Speedway i- 7 -k i 'YV 't it! I-Ve'p 1 TY c' "'Ici a a- 73-- i ItY (IF I 'l tir 4:1 A Sr''' 7 ar tyi er" '7 Ire 1 74 7 44 V9' ik kA 4 fi 1 1 ili 1 14gg' 1'4'-'c'd: 1:: i '444011z44 0 1 -4 i 4 5 I T4 'H ii 4 4ei 40 1 A14 g- ce i 0 2 ik i t)) 'i 11: -k Attoneoe ITT iti ref '4 to od I qi "r-I ir It--Ji i itik it-: 4 I 7' ki 1 ''4 1 1 44 41 OBSERVER FILE PHOTO OBSERVER FILE PHOTO ASSOCIATED PRESS FILE PHOTO Fireball Roberts took the pole for the World 600 with a speed of 133904 mph He spun out twice on Race Day as asphalt crumbled beneath the drivers Junior Johnson tore up the homestretch fence at the race "You'd be running along and big chunks of asphalt would fly up" he remembers Joe Lee Johnson a 30-year-old mechanic who lived most of his life in Spartanburg got his only superspeedway win in a 7-year career He collected $27330 tona they said Problem was Daytona had taken more than three years to plan and 15 months to build Bruton and Curtis wanted their first race in May 1960 just 10 months away Remembering the people About a week before David Poole died he sat at speedway-area restaurant with three former racing writers Torn Higgins and Bob Moore of the Observer and Bob Myers of the News They were the Mount Rushmore of NC racing journalists Higgins and Poole alone covered the Observer's NASCAR beat for the past 47 years The gathering was supposed to be a lunchtime thing but the afternoon slid past 3 o'clock before the men began to think about pushing away from the table They talked some about the usual NASCAR topics best drivers best races Mostly they talked about the people the good guys and the characters and the tales that'll never find their way into a family newspaper "Those people always fascinated me" said Higgins "and they did David too" Perhaps that's because David remained very much like them easy to reach quick to speak his mind unafraid to offer a peek at his heart He was in his columns and radio work a very intentional bridge between today and the NASCAR he grew up with It was a sport often frowned upon in more polite circles in those early years with brawls in the bleachers often rivaling wrecks on the dirt "You sure as heck didn't let your kid go to a stock car race" remembers Wheeler "It just wasn't the thing to do" But racing was if anything accessible Mill folks couldn't afford much but you could go to the junkyard for a '48 Mercury flathead engine and a Lincoln radiator and if you could weld a decent roll cage you'd have yourself a race car for $150 Those cars raised dust at places like the Charlotte Fairgrounds or Rock lull Fairgrounds or Robinwood in Gastonia where David Poole grew up It was a time where most anyone could plow a field and have themselves a dirt track At least two believed they could build themselves a fine asphalt superspeedway in about eight months They couldn't of course Charlotte Motor Speedway's first big speed bump showed up quickly as workers discovered large slabs of granite not far under the soil As the late legendary engine builder Smokey Yunick later said: "Bruton and Curtis made a giant mistake If they'd have searched North Carolina for the worst possible place to build a racetrack that's where they built it" Contractor Owen Howe upon finding the granite decided on explosives as the solution Each day at noon they'd shake some granite up with a blast often aided with some fertilizer to increase the bang "We started drawing crowds every day to witness the blast" Smith said "You'd think a minute after the blast everything would be fine About two minutes after the blast this rock about twice the size of your fist came back down That would have killed somebody" The blasting caused such delay that by January crews were hired and lights erected for round-the-clock construction shifts In March an II-inch snowstorm put the brakes on work Two more snowstorms blew in during the next two weeks It was says Edelstein "almost biblical" Smith who Was at the track most every day blames Turner for some of the delay "He caused me a lot of problems because I was having to put out fires all the time" Smith said "I le'd be out drinking and he'd hire somebody to come and work at the speedway They'd show up and I'd have to explain to them you don't have a but no blood" wrote the Observer's Herman Helms "Miraculously there was no blood" There were however 20000 cars an estimated 60000 fans all going to the same place "No one had seen anything like it" Wheeler remembers The story of Charlotte Motor Speedway had begun and the story of racing was changing Bruton Smith would lose control of the track then eventually get it back Curtis Turner would get voted off the speed7 way's board and get kicked out of NASCAR for trying to form a union The track itself would get saved in the 1960s by investor Richard lloward then endure the thin years of the 1970s then come roaring back as Lowe's Motor Speedway David Poole would graduate from UNC get his first newspaper job in Gastonia then eventually come to Charlotte where he spent 12 loud years as the Observer's racing voice About a month ago David called Rob Edelstein about Charlotte Motor Speedway Edelstein considered David a mentor and they shared a mutual Nvorry about NASCAR that in the sport's perpetual search for growth something important was getting lost NASCAR David believed always was and always should be about regular folks driving cars fast and regular folks watching them "For them" David once wrote "racing is one of their celebrations of life" And so he began to report the story of Charlotte Motor Speedway because the beginning matters and maybe because it was the beginning of his story too On Thursday 49 years after the first big race and three days before this next one track officials and journalists gathered in the infield media center at Lowe's There they unveiled two plaques including a gold-plated rectangle above the entrance "David Poole Deadline Media Center" it read now attached to his hometown speedway now a part of its tale OBSERVER STAFF WRITER DAVID SCOTT AND RESEARCHER MARIA DAVID CONTRIBUTED with Charlotte's first race Scheduled for Memorial Day 1960 the World 600 was postponed to June 19 because of construction delays Even that wasn't enough time for the proper curing of the asphalt which was poured only about a month before the new race date At the first race practice on June 15 it was clear that everyone was in for an adventure "Four gravel-deep holes grew out of the asphalt in the groove on the second turn" wrote the Observer's George Cunningham who added: "Practically the entire surface on the third and fourth turns resembled an old lady's wrinkled face" On Race Thursday June 16 Fireball Roberts took the pole with a speed of 133904 mph and drivers fretted about the ocratering pavement beneath them "The people want blood and I'm afraid we'll give it to them" said "Tiger" Tom Pistone On Race Saturday June 18 drivers were told they could install wire screens over the grills to protect radiators from the inevitability of flying pavement Finally on Race Day workers hustled to put up the final 400 feet of fence on the back of the track Bruton Smith wished for the 600 to last at least 300 so he wouldn't have to give customers their money back Also he remembers: "I really wanted it to be something" It was Tires blew frequently in the 60-car field Fireball Roberts spun out twice Junior Johnson tore up the home- 'stretch fence "I'd say there was a chunk of asphalt that weighed 5-10 pounds that hit my windshield" Johnson remembers "Nobody knew if they'd run the race to the end" Jack Smith led much of the race in his 1960 Pontiac but his five-lap lead was erased when a chunk of track put an irreparable hole in his gas tank Joe Lee Johnson a 30-year-old mechanic who lived rnost of his life in Spartanburg took over first for his only superspeedway win in a 7-year career Ile collected $27330 "There were some mangled automobiles some snorting drivers some tears job and please go away" Said Edelstein of Turner who died in a plane crash in 1970: "Curtis may have been at times an absentee father of the speedway but I don't think he loved anyone or anything more in his entire life And he did work on it" The delays contributed to an already swollen bottom line close to $2 million in costs instead of the planned $750000 That's what led to the gunplay Let's go to David's notes: "Contractor Owen Howe in an effort to collect money he believes he is owed orders his crews to halt work immediately He places bulldozers and earth-movers on the last short strip of the track surface that remained unpaved and his operators stay on their machines refusing to move Turner and Smith brandish weapons and force the machine operators to leave The bulldozers are hot-wired and moved out of the way and the paving is completed" Did it happen? Smith says no Well sort of no Turner did have a shotgun he remembers "He went over there acting like he was somebody A guard went up to him and took it away from him" The Charlotte Observer reported it a bit differently on June 10 1960 quoting Howe as saying Turner Smith and a group of men held guns on his watchmen "1 told my men to go on home and not get killed" Howe said to the Observer The men left the track and the paving was completed Smith will say this now: "I thought it was really great" The race A moment for contradiction please What drove David Poole most batty on his beat NASCAR's situational governing the molding of rules to the moment is part of what charmed him about racing's early days Haphazardness as much as NASCAR tries to avoid it now is the trait that links it most to its past That might never be more true than Poole's last story was a history he so loved EDITOR TOR tory published in Thursday's Observer were in his laptop Ile was on Smith's schedule for an interview that week Peter St Onge took David's reporting combined it with his own and 0- some by the Observ- t-' er's David Scott and fk- 4 put it together to tell of Charlotte's birth as NASCAk's hub From the strugSt Onge gles for financing the difficulties during construction and the rush to run the first race in 10o0 David's last story is the first chapter in 50 years of history Ile would have loved that May He would tell of the drivers the races and the controversies He would chronicle the speedway's history and not always the version told by the winners He would start appropriately with the story of the Vrfit'irl track's construction 4- 1 He would tell how 'r Bruton Smith and i' Curtis Turner built 1 4 in 10 months what il had taken four years i in Daytona: an as- Poole phalt speedway in Charlotte where the best racers could put on a show Usually May is a grinding month at the Observer with two weeks of racing in town David cantankerous most of the time was particularly on edge when NASCAR came to But this project energized David This May would he different David sat down for a lunch with his predecessors at The Observer and the old Charlotte News to talk about that story and others I le called me on his way home to Stanly County to tell me how well that had gone of the stories he had heard These stories he said will be great Ile couldn't wait to tell them I le never got the chance He died April 28 of an apparent heart attack at his Stanly County home He was 50 born a month before the news conferences announcing Charlotte Motor Speedway's construction The story of the building of the speedway and that first race in today's Observer was the last major piece David reported Transcriptions of many of the interviews as well as the timeline of speedway his ing NASCAR for The 'I Observer chroniclin l'': history as it happened tie saw his job as a way not only to understand the what but to explain the why I le wanted to help NASCAR fans understand the present but also the sport's history to remember its roots This May Lowe's Motor Speedway celebrates its 50th year of racing and David had a plan Ile would let the speedway's history unfold over 25 days 600 hours in David Poole loved SPORTS history 1 he'd visit historical sites as he traveled around the country covering NASCAR for The Observer Ile loved the MICHAEI intricately carved stat- PURSING ues in the cemeteries of New Hampshire We often discussed the military history classes we both took in college I le could cite ACC basketball history with the best And he couldn't wait to tell someone about what he knew This was David's 13th season cover SPORTS MICHAEL PERSINGE Michael Persinger: 704-358-5132 mpersingeracharlotteobservercom.