Robert Edelstein - Full Throttle: The Life and Fast Times of Nascar Legend Curtis Turner

Full Throttle: The Life and Fast Times of Nascar Legend Curtis Turner — read online for free the complete book (whole text) full work

Below is the text of the book, divided by pages. System saving the place of the last page read, allows you to conveniently read the book "Full Throttle: The Life and Fast Times of Nascar Legend Curtis Turner" online for free, without having to search again every time where you left off. Put a bookmark, and you can go to the page where you finished reading at any time.

Light

Font size:

↓

↑

Georgia Tahoma Arial Verdana

Reset

Interval:

↓

↑

Bookmark:

Make

1234567...95

Table of Contents

For Rachel, Nellie and Jake
Bailey,
from your loving, grateful
Daddy

and for Loren, always

I go from this to that, and why be ashamed of it? It seems to me this is the human experience.

LARRY RIVERS,

artist

So, seize the day! hold holiday!
Be unwearied, unceasing, alive
you and your own true love;
Let not your heart be troubled during your sojourn on earth,
but seize the day as it passes!

Let your heart be drunk on the gift of Day
until that day comes when you anchor.

From The Harpers Song for Inherkhawy

I was raised in the country, I been workin in the town
I been in trouble ever since I set my suitcase down

PROLOGUE

July 23, 1967

I dont really think Id be happy if I wasnt in some sort of trouble.

Easley, South Carolina, about ten miles west of Greenville as the crow flies, is a town where everyone knows everybody else. On this hot July Sunday in 1967, with the mercury having hit ninety for the second day in a row, folks are greeting neighbors while giving thanks for each bit of breeze as they head into church for the evening service. There are 5,000 people living in Easleys eleven square miles, and about a hundred area churches serve the faithful. Nearly half of these are Baptist churches. G. B. Nalley has just built Town and Country Plaza, the first mall in the area. Its doing a good bit of business.

There is an old saying in town: You can easily do better in Easley.

One thing Easley doesnt have is an airport, but it doesnt need one. Greenville-Spartanburg Airport is only twenty-five miles to the east.

This fact of geography is relatively inconsequential on most days. On July 23, however, it matters a lot.

At first, the few folks walking at dusk near the Southern Railroad trackswhich run right behind where Main Street turns into Highway 123hear only an odd, insistent buzz. But the volume reaches that of a swarm very quickly as a large, loud twin-engine Aero Commander grows in view in the near distance. There is nothing strained about its approach; the pilot seems to be holding the crafts line steadily without wavering in the orange-gray sky, and his path continues with confidence. The only problem is, if the plane keeps this course, it will touch down in the heart of Easley.

Inside the Glenwood Baptist Church and the Faith Missionary Baptist Church, which both sit along the same stretch of Saco Lowell Roada stones throw from the railroad tracksit is getting harder to hear the organ. Parishioners have given up trying to sing over the din of the plane. Many are wide-eyed with fear that they may be under attack.

None of this concerns the pilot of the Aero Commander, whos busily searching for the right place to put his plane down. He is Curtis Turner, a handsome, self-assured, baritone-voiced forty-three-year-old businessman; he is also an entrenpreneur, legendary party animal and arguably the most popular and daring stock car racer of his day. If NASCAR is the only other religion followed as rabidly in the region, Turner may be its most worshipped, beloved and bedeviling practitioner. He quietly smokes a Camel and adjusts his aviator shades and trusty Stetson. The open seatbelt dangles off his lap.

For Turner, this will be an emergency landing: he and his three passengers are dangerously low on whiskey, and the Easley resident on boardMr. Nalley of the Town and Country Plazahas suggested they land in town and maneuver through the streets to his house so he can jump out and refuel.

For most people, such a suggestion will inspire little more than an appreciative chuckle. But the time it usually takes Curtis Turner to consider all the drawbacks of such a startlingly odd idea is equal only to the few seconds that a sly little grin forms on his face. Yes, he thinks, were goin in.

Turner has landed in rougher spots than thissmall grassy fields, backstretches of raceways, parking lots, tiny single-engine landing strips on chicken farms, icy banks near the edges of cliffs, places no one would even consider touching down for reasons he cant quite understand. Hed once gotten into trouble trying to land his plane at an airport socked in by terrible weather. The tower commander told him to turn around and land elsewhere. Turner made one last pass and radioed the tower, saying, Pop, I think I can make it. Then he switched off the radio and came on in anyway. Mans gotta land his plane, after all. Much like he is behind the wheel of a race car, Turner, when up in the sky, is a master of control who always understands his limitations. There arent many.

But a man can go only so long without a shooter of Canadian Club and Coke, especially with a close friend and two women in your plane on a lazy, dusky Sunday evening.

Turner has his gaze fixed: his runway will be a field adjoining the Faith Missionary Church, right across from the new Stayon Products Inc. plant on Saco Lowell Road. By now, both churches have begun to empty as the noise grows to an alarming volume. For Turner, the landing presents its challenges: trees, telephone lines and cars being highest on the list. The Aero Commander swoops in as nearby churchgoers scatter for cover, and the plane makes several low passes, buzzing the crowd from one hundred feet in the air, before coming in for a bumpy landing, cradled finally in the grass. Turner whips the craft around and points it toward Saco Lowell Road with tiny tree branches rattling in the wings.

He moves up to the road; cars careen out of the way, vexed by the sudden sight of a twin-engine plane in the rearview mirror. Turner is stuck behind a young woman driving a sedan. Trying to obey logical traffic laws, the woman nervously puts on her right directionalbut then turns left. Turner, already moving left to get around her, has to pour on the gas to arc around the car, and still cannot avoid clipping the womans radio antenna with his wing.

With some damage already done, Turner senses the need to quicken his pace. In order to get to Nalleys, he heads back for the gap between the two Baptist churches. Congregants are racing off, jumping for cover. Looking through the windshield of the Aero Commander, Turner catches sight of a preacher in collar and black robe, moving toward him slowly, as if preparing to take on a vampire. With his flock shouting behind him, the preacher points a menacing finger at the pilot.

It was then, Turner will later recall, that we got to decidin wed made a mistake.

He steers back around toward Saco Lowell Road, now accepting the idea that no liquor will be had this Sunday in Easley. Watching the scene unfold, Nalley is insistent that, given his standing in the community, he cant possibly be caught in such a situation. Pop, I got this thing inhere, Turner tells his good friend and frequent business partner, but I cant get it out the same way. Heading for the highway, he impulsively gives the craft a bit of gas, getting up to flying speed and taking the wheels off the ground; that way, he can jerk the plane all the way into the air at the next convenient location.

Cars continue to surrender the right of way but Turner is forced to hedgehop the ones that dont. Up ahead, a deputy sheriff for the Easley Police Department has moved onto the road. Turner bounds over the lawman who, later on, will tell federal aviation officials, I was driving along, minding my own business, and I looked up and here comes a goddamned

Next page

1234567...95

Light

Font size:

↓

↑

Georgia Tahoma Arial Verdana

Reset

Interval:

↓

↑

Bookmark:

Make

Similar books «Full Throttle: The Life and Fast Times of Nascar Legend Curtis Turner»

Look at similar books to Full Throttle: The Life and Fast Times of Nascar Legend Curtis Turner. We have selected literature similar in name and meaning in the hope of providing readers with more options to find new, interesting, not yet read works.

Robert Edelstein

Nascar Legends

Diandra Leslie-Pelecky

The Physics of Nascar: The Science Behind the Speed

Jay Busbee

Earnhardt Nation: The Full-Throttle Saga of NASCARs First Family

Jay W. Pennell

Start Your Engines: Famous Firsts in the History of NASCAR

Humpy Wheeler

Growing Up NASCAR: Racings Most Outrageous Promoter Tells All

Turner Nathan

Nathan Turners American style: classic design & effortless entertaining

Beck

Daisy Turners kin an African American family saga

Chaplin Mike

How to Paint Like Turner

Engle

The Nuts and bolts of NASCAR: the definitive viewers guide to big-time stock car auto racing

Branham H. A.

Big Bill: the life and times of NASCAR founder Bill France, Sr

Robert W. Creamer

Babe: The Legend Comes to Life

Menzer

The great American gamble : how the 1979 Daytona 500 gave birth to a NASCAR nation

Discussion, reviews of the book Full Throttle: The Life and Fast Times of Nascar Legend Curtis Turner and just readers' own opinions. Leave your comments, write what you think about the work, its meaning or the main characters. Specify what exactly you liked and what you didn't like, and why you think so.