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ARNESON: History Recorded
I’d heard the names before... NASCAR greats who were long gone by the time I found my way into motorsports...
Erik Arneson  |  Posted February 11, 2009   Charlotte, NC
Helluva Ride: How NASCAR Swept the Nation written by Washington Post reporter Liz Clarke’s very personal and well-written account of NASCAR’s dash onto the American sports scene. (Image: OneHelluvaRideBook.com)

I’d heard the names before. Curtis Turner. Fireball Roberts. Joe Weatherly. Tim Richmond. Smokey Yunick... NASCAR greats whose stories are a muddy collection of statistics, newspaper clippings and Paul Bunyan-like folklore. Many of whom were long gone by the time I found my way into the colorful world of motorsports in the mid-90s.

But while recently enjoying One Helluva Ride: How NASCAR Swept the Nation, Washington Post reporter Liz Clarke’s very personal and well-written account of NASCAR’s dash onto the American sports scene, some of those names popped up again, as did more contemporary names like Earnhardt, Gordon and Wallace.

But it was Clarke’s skill at humanizing the sport’s larger-than-life legends that inspired me to hit the library (OK, I haven’t actually stepped foot in a library since college, but I do know how to spell A-M-A-Z-O-N.). The epiphany was perfectly timed, as one of my New Year’s Resolutions was to balance my reading between fiction and non-fiction in 2009.

Next on the list is Rob Edelstein’s Full Throttle: The Life and Fast Times of NASCAR Legend Curtis Turner. This one, however, is more of a classic “do-over.” Edelstein and I are friends and, in fact, Rob encouraged my first book project, a biography of drag racer Darrell Gwynn. I started reading Rob’s book in the summer of 2005, but switched to a Michael Connelly Harry Bosch novel while on vacation and unfortunately never went back – to the book and non-fiction in general. It’s time to go back. The New York Times says of Edelstein’s effort, “… an impeccable biography of Turner, Full Throttle, kicks up dirt on NASCAR's juiced-up early days.”

“I was inspired to write Full Throttle: The Life and Fast Times of NASCAR Legend Curtis Turner because I was shocked that nobody else had ever written a complete biography of the man, and there seemed to be a need for it,” said Edelstein, whose next book NASCAR Legends, is due to the publisher in April. “I'm not sure that the sport has ever produced a character as wild, unconventional and charismatic as Turner. He co-built Lowe's Motor Speedway, was a millionaire timber broker, was the master of the dirt-track powerslide, ran in the first-ever strictly-stock race, and won the first Rockingham race in grueling heat while driving with broken ribs.

“He and his best friend, two-time Cup champ Joe Weatherly, would fly their private planes and play "tag" by trying to knock out each other's wing lights,” Edelstein continued. “And he was the first NASCAR driver ever banned from the sport for life, and the first reinstated primarily because the fans demanded it. That seemed reason enough. As Smokey Yunick told me, "There never would have been a Dale Earnhardt without Curtis Turner.

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“What intrigued me most in my research was the fact that many of the reporters, friends, fellow drivers and businessmen who ran with him were utterly scared out of their wits by the things he'd do,” Edelstein added. “But they never said ‘no’ when he asked them to come along -- for fear that he'd never ask again. Everyone who knew him understood that he was a person who came along, at best, once in a lifetime. So doing the interviews and research, I never failed to utter ‘Wow!’ at everything I read and heard. Let that be said for anyone spending years on a project.”


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