The Ghosts of NASCAR: The Harlan Boys and the First Daytona 500

Epilogue

Epilogue The Playland track is gone. The asphalt oval became a grassy park; for many years the faint outline of the track remained visible.1 Looking over the grounds, those who remember the track may imagine they hear the roar of engines and cars banging and rolling. They may even imagine Johnny Beauchamp battling Bud Burdick. The track fell to the winds of progress. In 1964 a new bridge stretching across the Missouri River, part of the interstate highway system, replaced the Ak-­ sar-­ ben Bridge. To make room for the highway changes, the roller coaster was torn down. The amusement park property was condemned. All that remained were twenty acres, enough for the track, the stadium complex, and twelve amusement rides. In 1966 the track, like its drivers, fought back with a full schedule of racing. In 1970 Abe Slusky, the operator and owner of the facility since 1948, died at the age of 59 of a heart attack. What was left of the amusement park closed, but still the competition continued. The racing finally ended in 1977, a victim of progress and the loss of leadership.The scene of Beauchamp , Swanson, and Lund’s great beginning disappeared. Tiny Lund, Playland’s first champion, died on August 17, 1975. He had raced twenty-­ five more years after his first championship at the Playland track. Lund won his last race August 13, 1975, at Summerville, South Carolina . He was competing in Savannah, Georgia, two days later, when his car blew an engine. On Saturday night, August 16, he finished fifth at Hickory, North Carolina. The winner of that race, Butch Lindley, recalls that Tiny “was physically wore out, just really run down so bad that you wouldn’t believe it was Tiny.”2 Lund then went to Talladega, Alabama—the 2.6 mile super-­ speedway tri-­ oval. Lindley believed “Tiny needed the money. He was down there at Talladega trying to make money.”3 Lund told his mechanic, Roger Byers, “I do not want to go to Talladega.” But Tiny had promised the owner, A. J. King, he would drive the car, even though he believed the 1974 Dodge was not good enough to perform well.4 160 | Epilogue Forty-­ five-­ year-­ old Tiny Lund, his racing career in a downward spiral, was going to race the biggest and most dangerous track in NASCAR. He departed in driver Bobby Allison’s plane for Alabama after the Saturday night Hickory race. Lund started thirty-­ first out of fifty competitors, and on lap 7 he saw an opening to squeeze in between J. D. McDuffie’s vehicle and the wall. But his car went into a spin and stalled sideways in the middle of the track. Terry Link, a rookie, came out of the dust and dirt, spinning out of control and into the driver’s side of Lund’s car—a broadside or a “T-­ bone.” Lund died instantly of severe internal injuries. He won $620.5 Tiny Lund’s funeral at Saint Michael’s Lutheran Church at Monck’s Corner in South Carolina overflowed with mourners. Loudspeakers brought the service inside the church to the throng outside. They ran out of room to put the flowers and so the family finally told the florist to stop bringing them. Lund had touched many people, usually with fun, good times, and generosity. They remembered him on this day.6 Dale Swanson, always exhausted during the long racing seasons, finally found relief when doctors discovered he had a heart problem that was fixed with an operation. But there was no return to the glory days. As the motor magician’s later years swept by, hewas increasingly ignored and forgotten . Swanson dropped in more frequently to see his old friend Gussie, who owned the Chicken Hut restaurant and operated a tavern on the Harlan square. He had helped her father baling hay sixty years earlier. The new generation of race competitors rarely thought to consult Swanson about how to make their cars go faster. He had many tricks, but no one asked. Swanson would visit Randy Rath’s auto supply store in nearby Denison and reminisce about the old days and lament the minimum clout he now had. Rath recognized that Swanson had exceptional native intelligence and “the common sense to figure how to make a car faster.”7 Once, Swanson advised a young mechanic that the weight on his race car was distributed wrong. The mechanic ignored Swanson’s advice, and the car...