Lady In Black Goes Topless.... Film at 11.

Now that I've gotten your attention let's get down to business. When Darlington decided it needed another race to go with its Labor Day event promoter Bob Colvin picked a real winner. The new convertible division supplied everything needed for an instant classic. Ask any young southern boy back then what he wanted most and the answer would probably be a new convertible. Well maybe the second choice would be a new convertible to ride his first choice around in.

Colvin's new brainchild started a history of craziness from the very beginning. The First Rebel 300's tickets didn't have a rain date on them as most tickets do. It had "next clear day", and that's where the fun started. Because of South Carolina's blue laws a number of things were forbidden on Sunday. One of these things was "bull baiting" which sounded enough like early stock car racing to apply to our water-logged racers, So sure enough, when Sunday rolled around bright and sunny, so did the local police. When faced with thousands of screaming race fans who thought he was going to ruin their day he backed off long enough for Colvin to get in the pace car and get the race underway. But he was waiting on Bob when the pace car rolled back in and served the papers anyway. He must have been pretty shook up because when Colvin checked the papers they were for a bad-check warrant for some one else.

Colvin was just getting his legal affairs in order when his new race blew up in his face. Jim Paschal had just taken over for Ken Rush in his Mercury for what turned out to be the last pit stop for that car forever! Jim spun the car in the fourth turn and collected Buck Baker in the process. Both cars spun to a stop at the exit of the turn, almost completely blocking the track. Buck decided that he would rather be anywhere else and climbed the fence to safety. The caution flag comes out and it's alright---WRONG!!!!! The practice in those days was to keep 

racing until you got to the accident and then slow down. The only trouble with this is the wreck is in the narrow fourth turn and can't be seen until you are right on top of it. The collectible dealers of today would have gotten rich with the sheet metal collected that day as almost the entire field, including the stars, got caught up in one of the biggest wrecks in Darlington history. After the dust settled two things became clear. First, and most important, no one was injured and second, the crash took out most of the factory-backed front runners. One very notable exception was the blue and white Sunliner Ford of Fireball Roberts. He told later that he had slowed and headed for the grass at the first sign of trouble because following the practice of the day to wait until you came up to the wreck to slow down seemed to always put him in the middle af whatever was going on. After the restart Fireball held the lead, with the exception of a stop for fuel, to win the first super speedway convertible race. A lesser known fact is that Fireball just missed winning the very first super speedway raced for stock cars when he finished second to Johnny Mantz in the first Southern 500 in 1950 at same Darlington Raceway where the Rebel 300 was held.

 With the precedent for wackiness set, the topless speedsters converged on "THE LADY IN BLACK" for another 300 miles of mayhem called the REBEL. This time it was the "Gold dust Twins", Turner and Weatherly who put on such a show of close racing (spelled "beatin' & bangin') that their boss John Holman treated the grandstand crowd to a very R-rated exchange between him and the two maniacs that were about to give the race to the third place man by knocking each other into the infield. Cooler heads prevailed and Little Joe backed off, Pops had his second Darlington win in two years and Holman gave up the pit board.

The third running of the Rebel continued Turner's antics but since the other car didn't belong to the Ford camp, Holman's pleas fell on the deaf ears of a hard charging Buck Baker. Buck led the first lap until 'Ol Leadfoot moved him out of the way. This went on for enough laps to turn the car owner's hair grey and to make the cars thirsty enough for the first round of pit stops. Paul McDuffie, Fireball's crew chief, got Roberts' Chevy out of the pits in front where he stayed for most of the rest of the day. It was Fireball's second win in three starts in the Rebel.Here is where we skip around a little and go to 1961 for the birth of a new star in stock car racing. You know, for all the grief us southerners give Yankees, we have been blessed with some really great guys from up-north. There was Southern 500 winner Jim Reed along with hardtop and convertible stand-out "Tiger" Tom Pistone. But it was in the fifth running of the Rebel 300 that I was introduced to the one that I would be pulling for until he retired (after all, when asked my sign I always said "powered by Ford). By now the Darlington spring event was the 

You would think after all Bob Colvin had been through to get his race in that now his troubles were over. So did he until a few weeks had gone by and he was pulling out of a store in a southern state famous for sunshine and speed on sand. He was stopped by a man wearing a badge and very official-looking uniform and accused of doing ninety in a thirty mile per hour zone. Now Bob had just pulled onto the highway and hadn't gone but about a couple hundred feet. He said , "Surely you've got me mixed up with someone else." The trooper said, "I don't think so. This is the Darlington pace car and you drove it at the Rebel 300. You were doing over 90 when you should have been doing 30 on those yellow flag laps . That cost Fireball the race and me the 25 bucks I had bet on him. So now you're gonna post a $25 bond or you're goin' to jail !" Colvin, left with no choice, paid up and hoped that the longest race for convertibles was finally over. 

I hope you have enjoyed the first of what is planned to be a series of articles on drivers, race cars, tracks or anything else that comes to mind that may entertain or interest the race fan who is looking for something a little different. So feel free to e-mail me with your comments or story ideas but please remember that this column resides in a time warp and things get a little fuzzy when you go past 1967. Thanks for the visit and "Y'all come back now ya'hear.

the Ol' Redneck