Welcome to Sunday Matinee, where we highlight classic car reviews or other longer videos I find on YouTube. Kick back and enjoy this blast from the past.
One of the most common and overwrought criticisms of NASCAR from people who don't really know the sport is that it's all full of rednecks who are from the South and they're all driving stupid American cars with pushrod V8s and that must mean something.
With drivers like Juan Pablo Montoya and Danica Patrick regularly doing well and millions being spent every year, however, it's a little bit different from the old tropes. Where the old tropes weren't wrong, however was the 1950s.
At first you might think that the overlaid bluegrass music (of which I am a fan), or the dirt track, or the old pre-war Fords would make this seem like a NASCAR stereotype. You, my friend, would be wrong. The best and most stereotype-y part about this race are the drivers, and more specifically, the driver's names. Here's a sampling:
- Fuzzy Clifton
- Shorty York
- Pee Wee Jones
- Slim Rominger
- Perk Brown
- Spider Stultz
- Toots Jenkins
- Whitey Norman
- Burley Myers
- Peanut Brown
And, of course, Chicken Boggs. Yeah, a guy was actually called "Chicken."
Now normally I'd see all those aliases and think that this was some sort of Mafia gathering, and everyone was some sort of "made man." Considering the fact that most of these guys were probably bootleggers, though, you wouldn't be far off.