Daytona Time....The Way It Used To Be

February 2, 2008

By Len Ashburn

Len Ashburn

It is getting to be Daytona time of the year. I know that because Fox Broadcasting runs trailers about dramatic undertakings in the wind in Daytona, trying to draw our attention to their annual broadcast of the Daytona 500. I think it's Fox again this year, I don't keep up much with all of that anymore.

Gober Sosebee was a driver with Native American Roots. Never a front runner he was alway there with good equipment.

NASCAR racing is sort of cookie cutter these days, same cars, same drivers, different colors, different grocery brands, but essentially when the chickens come home you can't tell one car from another if someone didn't tell you. About all we remember about a race nowadays is what the crashes looked like on TV and, doggonnit, that ain't racin' to me. But in the early days there were lots of makes of cars and all of them looked different.

I go back to another time when those dang cars came straight from the factory. Oh, they changed a little here and there. They changed the wheels and hubs because if they didn't the tires would be flying off in a few laps. Glen Dunaway won the very first Sprint, nay Nextel, nay Winston, Grand National race at the old Charlotte, NC Speedway on Wilkinson Blvd. It was not much of a track, three quarters of a mile dirt, with a big mound of dirt piled up so's people could see. If you couldn't afford a grandstand seat you could always go to the infield for $.50 or a dollar. I most always went to the infield because I might need that admission money to get back home to Norfolk.

Gober Sosebee is backing his '49 Olds up against the dunes which lay behind the pits along the ocean.

Sometimes, I'd wait by the gate for a straggler car to show up and walk next to it like I was part of that car's crew and get in free. Most times, though I'd get caught and waved away. I wasn't cheatin, just being practical and creative. I was 19 years old and my newspaper carrier earnings didn't go too far.

Some of us boys from Norfolk decided to go to see one of those Grand National races the summer of 1949. We heard they were having one down in Carolina, careful to say it right because the Tar Heels who came to Norfolk to work at the Navy Yard all called it 'Kalina like it was all one word. Down route 258 we went and found the right two lane roads that took us to the Raleigh area.

Bob Reuther of Nashville was fast qualifier in the Modifieds the year this picture was taken. Note how far back the seat is located.

The race was at a place called Hillsboro or Hillsborough, the first was the way they spelled it. The track was named for the county, Occonneechee Speedway. No one could spell it but I could because it had a lot of double letters. The oval was shaped like a paper clip. Believe me, that place was huge, built to the standards of the day but mostly with piled up dirt, concrete footers, and native oak board seats. Boy, did those things get warpy after being fresh cut and left in the sun. Of course, we took our place in the infield where we could wander in the pits until some official person shooed us out because we didn't have a dangly string tag they used for a pit pass.

I took my mother's Kodak Autographic 116 camera along and snapped quite a few pictures. I'm glad I did because they are a good record of the racing scenes of that day. One picture has been published here and there and is one of my most prized. It is Glen Dunaway's 1949 Oldsmobile Coupe, sitting in the pits, number whitewashed on, whitewalled tires, hubcaps still on, and Momma still sitting on the passenger side of the bench seat. I don't remember too much of the racing but I do remember the rattle of the rocks from the track hitting the undersides of the cars.

Reuther on the pole and one of the Flock brothers on the outside in Joe Wolf's #47 1939 Chevy called "the backseat bomber."

The winner was a pre-war driver and wartime pilot, Red Byron, of Atlanta, in a new 1949 Oldmobile Coupe. I went back to Occonneechee a number of years later and that same car, battered and bent now, won the last event ever held there. I forget who drove it that day, might have been Speedy or Jimmy Thompson.

Nineteen Fifty One, (1951) found me hitch hiking to Florida to see the races that were held there on the beach as they had been since well before WW2. I had heard about them and just had to give that 'specktackle' a look see. I found a place to stay in a boarding house near downtown for two or three dollars a night. I'd walk across the bridge over the Indian River that separated the mainland from the ocean front strip called Atlantic Ave. or A1A. There was always someone willing to give me a ride south to the race course.

A look from the south side of the course to the north turn showing the transition from dirt (Florida marl actually) to the asphalt of Highway A1A.

The pits at the Beach-Road Races, as they were known, were open to the public because they had no way to police it, no fences, etc. So we got to saunter right up to the race cars and get to talk with the drivers and mechanics. I was in hog heaven because most of them were the bright lights of racing at the time, people like Fonty Flock, Bob Flock, Speedy Thompson, Marshall Teague, and Frankie Schneider.

The cars qualified in straightaway runs on the flying mile. Besides the race cars they had trials for other types of cars, sports cars, hot rods, and run-what-you-brung. They learned early on that airflow over the bodywork was somewhat critical to speed. Those old prewar styled cars were wide and high and they punched a pretty big hole in the air when they got above 100 MPH. I remember one car in particular owned by Bob Reuther of Nashville, TN was pretty slicked out, had moon type covers on the wheels, and every crack and crevice taped with masking tape. He took the top speed for the race cars at over 150 MPH. We were mighty impressed.

A typical modified stock car around which Bill France formed the organization NASCAR which dominates motorsports in America today.

The format was time trials Monday thru Thursday, a Modified race on Friday, a Sportsman race on Saturday, and the Strictly Stocks on Sunday. There was no practice on the beach-road course whatsoever. When the green flag fell everybody was the same except the ones with experience on the course from a prior year. I had made my way to the south end of the 4.1 mile course because it was not as crowded down there and I could see more. I heard the cars get the green flag over on the beach and the first time they came into view over a slight rise about a mile up the backstretch I saw Bob Flock at great speed doing slight S-turns under braking to slow down for the south turn. It was almost a 90 degree turn but the corner had good banking on it. I didn't think there was any way he could make that turn, but he did, followed by some 70 rattledy modifieds. What a storm! What a thrill!

Racing on the beach was something really special. I really loved it and returned most every year until the very last event in 1958. The following year Bill France's new 2 1/2 mile speedway opened and the romance of beach racing was gone forever, killed by the encroachment of houses, people, and land values. I went to that first race on the big track but Daytona was never the same for me.

In recent years the romance of the beach trial racing has been reprised by Ormond Beach's Birthplace of Speed celebration. That cavalcade of steamers, and other antiques captures the flavor of early bygone years, and is something I try to go and see. But, alas, I could find no word of it this year in 2008, so it's back to the couch for the Daytona races. Perhaps another year.

* All photos from the Len Ashburn Collection

The thoughts and ideas expressed by this writer or any other writer on Insider Racing News, are not necessarily the views of the staff and/or management of IRN.

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