ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, September 28, 1996 TAG: 9609300123
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BOB ZELLER STAFF WRITER
AN ERA ENDS SUNDAY with the last Winston Cup race at North Wilkesboro Speedway, one of NASCAR's legendary tracks.
There are no cars in Junior Johnson's shop.
He stands at one end, casually sweeping with a push broom. He is relaxed, smiling. He is wearing overalls. He is alone.
He settles into a seat at a simple kitchen table set up in the easternmost bay of his shop. There are a few tools and shop machines scattered about, but the place is mostly empty.
This is not Junior Johnson's old race shop in Ingle Hollow, N.C. That is vacant now. This is Junior Johnson's new shop. It is next to his new mansion in Yadkin County, just across the line from Wilkes County.
Junior's shop also is an office of sorts, but the arrangements are as informal as the life he leads as a country gentleman farmer, father and retired NASCAR legend. Beans are boiling in a pot on the stove. A jar of honey and some homegrown tomatoes sit in the middle of the table.
There are no race cars in the shop, because he no longer races. The famous Junior Johnson race shop closed its doors for good after the 1995 season when he sold his team to Brett Bodine.
Sunday they'll be writing the last chapter on another NASCAR institution in Wilkes County - North Wilkesboro Speedway. They're calling it ``The Last Lap,'' the final Winston Cup race. North Wilkesboro was Junior's home track.
``I'm not going,'' he says matter of factly.
Going, going, gone
Outside North Wilkesboro Speedway, Nancy Mattade of Blakeley, Pa., and Judy Tuit of West Milford, N.J., have settled down in a small motor home parked on a grassy knoll outside the fourth turn.
``Of course we're going,'' Nancy says.
They're not only going, they arrived five days early just to hang around. It's part of their fall racing vacation with their husbands. Martinsville, North Wilkesboro and Charlotte, then back home for the winter. Their only question about North Wilkesboro Speedway is whether they will have anything to come back to next year.
The tide of progress has rolled over North Wilkesboro Speedway, and after 50 years of stock car racing, the black flag will fall on the facility as a major-league NASCAR track.
``I don't know what's going to happen,'' says Mike Staley, the track's president. ``As soon as the owners let me know, I'll be the first to let everyone know. I know what I'd like to do. This track still would be great for the Busch [Grand National] series and truck races and a lot of great events. But it's up to the owners.''
For 50 years, Staley's father, Enoch, took care of the place. For almost that long,North Wilkesboro has had two big NASCAR races - one in the spring and one in the fall. Enoch Staley started the track and was its only president until he died in the spring of 1995. His death set off a chain of events that led to the demise of North Wilkesboro as a Winston Cup track.
Johnson sees no reason to attend the track's funeral.
``Enoch is not there. That's part of it,'' Junior says. Former co-owner ``Jack Combs, he's not going to be there. It would be more of a sad deal for me to go out and just stand around and look at something disappear, something I can remember almost since I've been around.''
In a single year, the NASCAR pulse that used to beat so strongly in the region around North Wilkesboro has grown faint and unsteady. First, Junior retired. And now, North Wilkesboro Speedway has lost its Winston Cup identity.
Shifting gears
The stereotype of a dirt-poor county with bad soil, where residents were compelled to make moonshine in order to pull themselves up by their bootstraps simply does not wash here. It hasn't for generations.
There's a huge Tyson chicken-processing plant in Wilkesboro. Nearly all the country folk throughout the region raise chickens for the plant, which employs more than 3,000.
Industry goes back in Wilkes County almost as far as stock car racing. The Lowe's home-maintenance chain was founded in Wilkes County and has its headquarters here, providing jobs for another 1,600. The American Drew furniture plant employs more than 700, and Carolina Mirror has about 600 workers.
The race track is barely a ripple in the lifeblood of the Wilkes economy, at least as represented by the chamber's own 40-page guide to the county. It contains only one small photo of the track and this single, out-of-date mention: ``Grand National NASCAR racing is available at the North Wilkesboro Speedway.''
But any time you have a crowd of more than 30,000 packing an arena situated in a rural county of less than 60,000, there will be an impact.
``For me, the loss of these two races means as much as one month's income,'' says Eric Williams, pausing for a few moments from the task of fixing a broken toilet in a guest room.
Williams is the owner of the Williams Motel, which has 34 rooms. His dad built the place in 1953, and he took over in 1978. Every spring and fall, the track has rented the entire motel for the Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights of the race weekend. It's been that way since the 1950s.
Williams undoubtedly would lose more than one month's income but for one fact that makes him unique among motel and hotel owners on the Winston Cup circuit: The Williams Motel does not raise its rates for a race weekend.
Prices are $24 and up. And at the Williams, $50 is well beyond the upper end of up, even on the Saturday night before the race, when you couldn't scare up a room for any price within 50 miles in any direction.
The departure of the Winston Cup series won't kill business at the Williams Motel. For one thing, if the track lands dates for Grand National or truck races, the motel undoubtedly will sell out for those events.
The motel will carry on. But it's more than an economic loss. It's an emotional loss.
``I'm just like everybody else around here,'' Williams says. ``I grew up with these people comin' in here. I know 'em all by name. I know their wives by name. I know their kids by name. They know me and my family. It's going to be sad if they don't come here, because I won't see them again. So it's not just the money.''
And it's not just that Wilkesboro will be losing the Winston Cup series. The Winston Cup series will be losing Wilkesboro.
You can stay at Hampton Inns and Holiday Inns across the country, but it is special at the Williams. It has character. Personality. It is real America, unburnished by corporate sheen. And by goodness, it has an owner who doesn't think it's fair to jack up the prices when the races come to town.
There is a sense of time standing still in Wilkes County.
Willie Clay Call, an old moonshiner who lives just a couple of miles up Speedway Road from the track, recalls that in the years before his death, Enoch Staley used to slip out of his box during the race and ride over to Call's home, where they would watch the action live on television.
But business must prevail over sentimentality.
``I hate to see it go, but I reckon the whole world's for sale if you've got the money,'' Call says.
Business is business
After Staley's death, the family of Charlie Combs, Staley's founding partner, sold its half of the track to Bruton Smith and Speedway Motorsports, Inc. Smith wanted the other half, but the Staley family sold that to Bob Bahre, the owner of New Hampshire International Speedway.
That did not sit well with Smith, who won't communicate with Bahre, at least directly.
Still, they managed to agree on the most important issue - the future of the track's Winston Cup dates. Smith agreed to take the spring date for his new speed palace in Roanoke, Texas. Bahre took the fall date for a second Winston Cup race at his New Hampshire track.
But as of now, there are no plans for North Wilkesboro Speedway, even though it is light years away from more than 98 percent of the short tracks around the country, with luxury suites and more than 30,000 seats.
As you might expect, folks around here are not particularly fond of Bruton Smith or Bob Bahre.
``I've got Bruton Smith and Bob Bahre over here on the wall,'' says Harold Call, owner of Harold's Restaurant. ``See the picture of the two hogs?''
``Bruton Smith has angered so many people around here, it's unreal,'' says Lin Brooks, president of the Wilkes Chamber of Commerce.
``That's wrong,'' Johnson says. ``They don't have a real reason for not liking Bob or Bruton.''
Junior Johnson is nothing if not pragmatic, and in this case, business is business. For the same reason, he sees North Wilkesboro Speedway as a viable business for years to come, if not at the level of the Winston Cup series.
``When the race is over, I think you'll see North Wilkesboro Speedway shake itself out and continue on in a smaller capacity,'' he says. ``I think you'll see the Busch Grand National series upgrade to North Wilkesboro from other smaller tracks, just as you're seeing the Winston Cup series upgrade out of North Wilkesboro.''
LENGTH: Long : 160 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: 1. AP NASCAR fans will leave North Wilkesboro afterby CNBSunday's final Winston Cup race with souvenirs and memories. color
2. Winston Cup fans watch the First Union 400 in April at North
Wilkesboro. The track's 1997 Cup dates belong to the new Texas
speedway and New Hampshire International Speedway. KEYWORDS: AUTO RACING