Love the shots of Roy Bur**** pacing & wringing his hands in the pits as the laps wound down on for his Nebraska fielded Iowa driven 'T' Bird...
Lots of fifties and sixties Nascar stuff on YouTube now. Once you search out a few and watch them, the algorithm will flood your feed with them. Daytona, Darlington, Atlanta, Bristol, Martinsville. The shots of pit road with no barrier between pit road and the track, and steel guard rails that seemingly had posts spaced every eight or more feet made you think. Cars would tear up the guardrail and after they removed the carnage, they would go back to racing with giant gaps in the steel rail. Life was cheap back then, I guess. Also some real sketchy dirt track 16 mm footage on YouTube, and 8mm as well. The 8mm is pretty blurry though. Some was from Birmingham in the mid fifties, with demo derby footage at the end. I couldn’t watch the demo portion. It would have kept me up all night.
I don't know if I'd go as far to say that life was cheap back then, but these guys were definitely operating from a different perspective. Nelson Stacy, for instance, drove tanks for General Patton during the Second World War. To him, these races must have been a cake walk compared to that. I have no way to prove this since Mr. Stacy has p***ed, but he definitely has my respect for whatever it's worth.
The Jalopy Journal
