A person says something and it sticks forever. The individual can pass on, but the stories and words stay.
Frankie Cole and I opened cans of beans and unwrapped sandwiches. We were deep into the Montana wilds on four-wheelers, and it was time for lunch. Looking over a valley below and a mountain we crossed, a thought occurred to me.
"Frankie," I asked, "what happens this far out in the wilderness should a person have a heart attack?"
Frankie, a veteran of the Montana backwoods, looked up from the huge log he was straddling and using for a table. "You see this big old log?" he asked. "Well, if you feel you're about to have a heart attack, come lay across this log with your head off one side and your feet off the other. Lay right on your chest."
OK, I thought, and had another spoon of beans, wondering all the while how the heck this would help. Finally, I asked.
"It won't help you," Frankie said, "but it'll sure help me load you when I bring a horse in here to haul your body out."
This story is similar to so many stories one remembers from old-timers in racing.
* "What's happening?" many a writer asked Lee Petty during his career as a driver. He would peck a little tobacco from his pipe and reply, "All I know is what I read in the newspapers. Can't be too smart now, can I?"
* Petty enjoyed giving big city executives his telephone number. "It's 4551," he would say. "Dial the area code and 4551. You'll get me." Honestly, telephone numbers in Randleman, North Carolina, had only four digits at the time. The Detroit types would look at the number, look at Petty, and shake their heads.
* As a driver, Bob Welborn was cold to the media. Once he retired, he was as friendly as Santa Claus and among the best of storytellers.
"Jesse James never held press conferences, did he?"
* Here is another one from the Welborn library. It was raining that day in Daytona several years ago, a few days prior to the 500. Welborn and Jim Paschal, both retired as drivers, asked me to go along. They were going to ride down to the old beach road course and reminisce about their days racing on the sand.
As we were leaving the speedway, Jim Foster, a NASCAR executive, stopped us and said he had a couple of New York-type writers who would like to talk with Paschal and Welborn. "Why don't I bring them and meet you for dinner at 5 p.m.?"
Welborn and Paschal spent most of the day telling old stories. Then we met Foster and his party of three. During the course of the evening the subject of moonshine and its role in the early days of racing became the subject.
The three Yankees talked about Junior Johnson and others known for their involvement in the illegal trade. Then one remarked: "I guess about everybody in racing at one time or another was involved in making, hauling, or selling whiskey. Everybody, that is, except Lee Petty."
Welborn, hardly speaking above a whisper, turned to me. "Maybe so, but I used to haul him 30 gallons every Monday night. Heck, I don't know, maybe he drank it, but I don't think so."
* Team owner Cliff Stewart, one of the most colorful individuals ever involved in the sport, walked out of a heated meeting with NASCAR officials at Daytona subsequent to a 500. "This is the only circus in town where the clowns pay to be in the show."
* Pat Purcell was executive director of NASCAR in the early years. I had Pat cornered and was giving him heck about increased ticket prices.
"You are ripping fans off," I remarked. "You are charging more for everything, and it isn't worth their money."
"Phillips," he said, "you will never understand the mentality of a true race fan. He and his buddies arrive at the track on Wednesday. They go to all the qualifying and preliminary events. Then they go to the race on Sunday. Sunday night they count their money. If they have $3 left among them, they figure they didn't have a good time."