The human element?

 Every time I wrote anything that could be considered illegal, immoral, or fattening, that could corrupt our youth or give adults ideas about how to see the humor of a situation, I'd hear from the puritans of this world. I'd get letters every time I dangled a participle because there are a whole bunch of retired English teachers who subscribed to the newspaper for only one reason. They would sit down with grease pencil every morning and read from cover to cover, drawing bit circles over anything that was the slightest bit away from the norm. 

Well, I don't have to worry about these buttholes any more.

If i want to write about someone taking one too many drinks and driving, I do not expect to get letters telling me how I am single-handedly corrupting the youth of our lfair to middling community.

If I take a notion to write about LeeRoy Yarbrough racing through rural Florida with a parade of police trying to catch him I can, and if anyone doesn't like it, that can just quit reading.

When I signed on at the Greenville Piedmont, just as the 60's were winding down, the Sports Editor looked u pone day and asked, 'Do you know anything about stock cars?', the assistant sports editor almost choked. "He may have driven one to work," he said. "He's been around racing his entire life. His uncle Charlie built and promotes Anderson Speedway, and the whole family works out there. His Grandma Robie takes up tickets at the main gate. Charlie is the promoter and race director. Uncles Howard and George are the tech inspector and flagman, respectively." Then he looked over at me and said, "Any other family members work out there?" 

There were several. I ran the Pit Gate, and any time a fight broke out, I was expected to get to the scene in a hurry to protect my kin. We didn't have to worry about Howard, who was much man and could defend himself. One time at the Toccoa track someone ran up to Howard and hit him across the top of his head with a hammer handle. A few days later, a lawyer friend of our  family  found out and said, 'Whoever hit him  was extremely lucky it knocked him out' and my daddy said, 'But it didn't knock him out. When the policle got there, Howard was standing there with his head cocked sideways to keep the blood from running in his eyes while he had both hands wrapped around the guy's throat, just watching him strangle to death. The deputies grabbed both arms and pried them apart enough for the man's body to fall, and he started breathing again. They asked Howard what he was trying to do, and he saie he was trying to choke him to death. Howard just didn't play. He was much like the state of Texas. There, if you kill someone, the state will kill you back. You hurt Howard, and he would see to it you hurt for days and days.

But the rest of the family were smaller people and when trouble broke out, it was up to Howard and that Fant youngun to get there as fast as they could to jump in the middle of whatever was going down.

Yeah, I knew a little something about stock cars. I knew how to move engines back in the frame for better weight distribution, I know how to cheat up engines. I knew how to mix fuel. I knew how to offset weight to the left side for better handling. I knew a  little something about stock cars.

So the Sports Editor said, 'Well, you are going to be our racing writer.'

I tried not to laugh outloud (lol). (Is outloud one word, or two? I don't care) The funny part, to me, was, I was the third man in a three man sports starff. .The Editor was in his supper 50's and he would come in every morning and write his column. And go home. His assistant would lay out the pages, make sure everything w as where it should be, then he would start listening to Big Band mucic. He was in his upper 50's, too. I was 27, and I was hired to cover everything.

They told me rigiht out of the box that I would go to the games and write the stories. That's it. I didn't have any extra special office duties. Back then we had a room full of Western Union machines where stories came in. I would tear these rolls loose tear the individual stories, and put them in order. The news side, and the sports side. I'd have everything sorted, and a list of what had happened overnight all ready when someone else showed up to go to work. 

Then we would 'put out' the pages, and about 9:30 in the morning, my day was over unless there was some event happening that night. I'd cover that.

So when I was told I would be the racing writer, I just added it to my list of things to cover, like football and basketball and baseball, dog shows, horse shows, tennis matches, and automobile racing.

I didn't know the rules to half of these things, and cared less, but I knew how to  talk to people, and ask questions, and get quotes, and  that's where my stories came from. I didn't care about the event so much, but I wrote about the people in the event.

I seem to have drifted far away from My Yarbreough. LeeRoy was a good race car driver. And a heavy drinker. He was in a Daytona bar, either Mac's or the Paleface Harbor, and he took drunk.

When LeeRor took drunk everyone knew it and tried their best to stay out of LeeRoy's way. So when he decided to leave, nobody suggested he was too drunk to drive. Nobody tried to get the keys to his rental car. Nobody said a single word. Everybody just hoped he wouldn't kill himself or a busload of other peole before he got where he was going.

When LeeRoy hit the street, he hit it wide open. If you have heard the expression, Wide Open, Drunk, and On Fire, well, LeeRoy wasn't on fire. But he had the tires smoking on the rental car, and drew the immediate attention of Daytona's finest polie officers.

With sirens wailing and lights flashing, they headed off to show LeeRoy the error of his ways. Only LeeRoy didn't want to know the error of his ways. LeeRoy ran from them.

The police cares were faster, had bigger engines and heavier suspensions, but LeeRoy was a professional race car driver. Even drunk, he had talent. They couldn't catch LeeRoy. They could stay in sight, and talk all about what he was doing and how he was driving on their radios, but they couldn;t get him stopped. Finally, way out in the middle of nowhere, LeeRoy went into a wide, sweeping turn of the highway that was covered with gravel. LeeRoys rental tires had taken all of the abuse they could stand, and LeeRoy went sliding out into a corn field. Afrer harvesting about a half acre of corn, LeeRoy came upon a drainage ditch -- sideways. The rental car every so gently rolled over into the ditch and came to rest on it's top.

The police had seen the whole thing and were rushing to see if anyone was still alive. When the policeman looked in the window of the upside down vehicle, there was LeeRoy, hanging upside down by his seat belt, trying to get a wet cigar lit, and every tim ehe tried to light it, the flames would come back onto his hands. Leeroy didn't really realize he was upside down.

The officer gasped a couple of time and stammered, "Why, You Are DRUNK!!!"

LeeRoy looked over, smiled his upside down smile, and said, "Of course Im drunk, you idiot! Do you think I was a friggin' STUNT CAR DRIVER?

That was almost 50 years ago. I am sure the facts of the story are nothing like what I just related, but the meat of the thing is right there.

I don't care if it is right or wrong. It's entertaining. 

If I tried to put such in the newspaper, I'd get letters telling me how terrible it was to give young people such ideas.

Now, here, these people can fly up my drawer leg. I can write anything I want, and do not have to worry about corruption of any kind.

Foks that don't like it can qjit reading. I'm writing this to entertain myselfll. If you care to, read along. Otherwise, kust keep negative opinions to yourself.