Riot at the Race Track
On Sunday, August 13, 1961, hundreds of fans stormed the track after the WNC 500 race ended only halfway through because part of the A-W Speedway’s asphalt track started to come apart. Pandemonium ensued as angry spectators demanded their money back by holding hostage some 4,000 fans for almost four hours after the race was called.
While the race was red-flagged on Lap 208 following a crash in the pits were a car hit a pothole crashed into a truck in the pits and injured a spectator.
(I was talking to Dick about an article telling the story about this race and he told me that "they left some thing out of the story". Dick said "I was driving the car that crashed, the truck was my own ***** truck and the injured spectator was your Mama, she was seating in the back of the truck")
NASCAR executive manager Pat Purcell told competitors that the race would be stopped for good in another 50 laps. That would put the race at just past the halfway point, thereby making it "official."
Riot After The Race:
Johnson was flagged the winner. Joe Weatherly was credited with second place, three laps back. White was third, Jarrett fourth and Emanuel Zervakis fifth, all four laps down to Johnson. Those are the facts that have remained through the years, although a few details concerning what happened next have become a little hazy.
A truck of some variety -- some remember it as a pickup, others as a two-ton, flat-bed logging machine -- was placed on the pathway out of the infield, blocking anyone from leaving. Just how big was Pop Eargle, the man who almost single handedly broke everything up? Various estimates from those there put his size at about six feet, six inches to seven feet tall and weighing anywhere from 285-300 pounds all the way up to 350-400.
How long did the confrontation last? Twenty minutes to as long as an hour or more, until darkness was beginning fall, depending on the source.
Fielden wrote that NASCAR officials removed their black-and-white uniforms to beat a hasty and unnoticed retreat. Others remember NASCAR official Johnny Bruner sticking around and trying to negotiate some sort of peace. There are those who claim Sluder was nowhere to be found, either. Johnson, though, says that he was around for a bit, but once the law starting poking around, Sluder split due to his side business as a moonshiner.
No one remembers much, if any, public announcement being made of the decision to end the race early. Regardless of such minor details being lost to history, trouble was in fact brewing near the infield's only exit in the first turn. Fielden's estimate put the remaining crowd at some 4,000.
"They called it a race and man, them spectators just went damn wild," Bud Moore recalled, eyes bright with the memory. "Three or four of them had a pickup truck, and they backed it up across the road at the entrance going into the infield. We couldn't get out.
"They said, 'We come here to see 'em run [500] laps, and we're gonna see 'em run. They was about half lit. Aww, man ... they got into it hot and heavy. All the people standing around ... you just wouldn't believe how bad it was."
Local law enforcement was all but helpless in the growing riot, leaving those in the infield to fend for themselves. A security guard of some variety -- Higgins called him a "Barney Fife type" -- ran toward the crowd, blowing a whistle and trying to restore order. The poor guy was promptly pitched into a nearby pond. At some point during the confrontation, Richard Petty got whacked in the head with a thrown bottle.
Petty, Moore says, immediately exacted no small amount of frontier justice.
"This guy threw a Coca-Cola bottle and hit Petty right upside the head," Moore said. "I seen him when he threw it. I told Richard, 'You know who that guy was? See that guy standing right over there?' Richard went over there and nailed the daylights out of him."
Petty remembers the impact of the bottle all too well, although he's a little fuzzy on the payback. Selective memory, maybe?
"I think I went over and had my mother check my head to see if I was bleeding," Petty laughed. "I was right out in the middle of that, where I didn't have no business, either. I was eggin' 'em on from the infield.
"It was a big, big deal. If you had 10 people there, you'd have 10 different stories --` which you're finding out."
Jarrett was accompanied to the race by his wife, Martha, and their three children -- Dale, Glenn and Patti. Parked in the infield, Jarrett stayed with his family and they tried to wait out the sparring over in Turn 1 by eating leftovers from lunch. Sooner or later, surely it would take care of itself and be over. Yet the longer it went, the more concerned Jarrett became over the safety of his family.
"You can't blame fans for being upset, but that was a little bit ridiculous," Jarrett said. "There was a lot of shouting and scuffling going on up there. I didn't get too close to it. It wasn't that I was necessarily scared, but I was concerned for my family. I just didn't want to stir up anything that could possibly cause harm to them."
Once the race was called, Higgins left Caroline in the stands and made his way to the infield to talk to Johnson for his story in the next day's paper. Like Jarrett watching over his brood, the uglier the situation grew, the more apprehensive Higgins grew over his wife because "she was a very good-looking woman," he says, almost a double for Jill St. John. He shouldn't have worried. Caroline was a grand time.
"I looked up there, and she was standing on the top row of the grandstands laughing like hell," Higgins recalled. "She was enjoying the hell out of that. She later said that was the best show she'd ever seen."
Leave it be
Finally, Moore and three others -- Eargle, a member of Moore's pit crew; driver Jack Smith, who'd finished ninth; and a fellow by the name of Coker, who worked for Cotton Owens -- formed a posse to get things straightened out. As it turns out, Eargle, Smith and Coker were not to be trifled with. Johnson recalls seeing Smith about to wade into the fracas with a chain wrapped around and swinging from his hand.
And then there was Eargle. The dude was big, Goliath big. The riot's ringleaders didn't stand a chance.
If and when Eargle's name is remembered, it's usually in connection with the Asheville-Weaverville brawl. He made at least one other contribution to the sport, this one a very important one in the field of safety. According to White, Eargle designed the first check valve for fuel tanks, which prevented gas from spilling out in the event of a turnover. He made and sold the very first ones out of White's shop in Spartanburg, S.C.
"We got over there and they had two-by-fours in their hands, gonna knock us out of the way," Moore recalled. "Pop sorta laid his arm up on the side of the truck bed. When he did, this guy swung at him with this two-by-four. When he did, Pop caught that two-by-four and jerked him off the truck. He popped him right in the back of the head. When he come off the truck, he caught my shirt and tore my shirt about halfway off."
Then, it was Coker's turn.
"This one big guy, he just started swinging," Moore said, warming to the tale with a chuckle. "He turned around, and Coker had his knife and he just went choo, choo right across his rump. Blood started flying, and the guy went down through the field just a running."
"Pop Eargle, he said, 'I'm tired of this crap,'" White continued. "He found him a two-by-four about four feet long, maybe five. He started up in that crowd and he started cleaning them out, I mean, knocking the heck out of people. There was another guy, Coker. He was working for Cotton Owens. He was jabbing this one guy in the butt with his knife, and the guy was going up through there just yelping every time he'd stick him."
Moore and a few others very helpfully cleared the infield exit of its debris -- truck, wounded bodies, whatever.
"We picked the truck up, turned it around sideways and pushed it off to the side of the road," Moore said. "This guy that Pop knocked out with a two-by-four, we just threw him up in the back of the truck."
Just then, more law enforcement showed up. By this time, Moore is in full humor and fully enjoying telling the tale from days gone by. He recalls distinctly Weatherly standing on the back of the truck, waving his arms and yelling for folks to clear out -- but still safely out of the line of fire.
"It wasn't but a little bit, but here come the sheriff from up there," Moore said. "He says, "Where's that big guy and all the ones that beat them boys up like they did? I want to see that guy!' Johnny Bruner said, 'I don't think you want to see him ... he'll probably just tear your head up as bad as he tore him up.' The sheriff said, 'Well, we'd better leave it be then.' "
The riot was over, a colorful chapter in NASCAR history closed.
Johnson won the next two races on the 1961 Grand National schedule, while Jarrett would go on to capture the first of his two NASCAR championships that season. White wound up victorious in the circuit's next trip to Asheville-Weaverville in November of 1961. The track hosted Grand National races through 1969, and ultimately ceased operations in the 1970s.
Share with others
Donate in memory
