Peach Bowl Winner

Jack Smith and Harvey Jones after a win at the legendary Peach Bowl in Atlanta. Smith dominated the track in the early fifties.

When NASCAR came to the Peach Bowl in Atlanta in 1950, France held 30 weeks of Wednesday night racing.  Jack won exactly one third of them.

I was racing there during the week, then wherever the NSCRA was running on weekends,” Jack told me.  “The money was good and the track was close by, so I had a good time.  Billy Carden, Roscoe Thompson, Gober Sosebee, Bob Flock, Harold Fryar, Jerry Wimbish and Lamar Woodall were all winning down there.

Also in the fifties, Jack raced a car with Hugh Babb helping as a mechanic.

“I’ve worked with Vogt, Smokey Yunick and even Harvey Jones out of Atlanta, and they were all great mechanics, but Babb was a genius,” Jack said.  “He knew everything about a car’s running performance, whether it be with a super charger or fuel injection or whatever.  Fonty Flock, Billy Carden and Bo Fields won many a race with Babb.

Jack Smith mastered Hugh Babb's Studebaker at Birmingham in the mid-fifties.

“I drove a Studebaker for him out of Birmingham in the mid-fifties and the thing would fly.  Anyway, the man could do anything whether it was to build a car or build a clock or camera or what have you.  He helped Ed Samples and myself set up our transmission shops after we quit racing.  He invented all kinds of machinery to rebuild torque converters and such.  If he needed something, he would just invent it.”

Smith’s two favorite car numbers were 2B and 47.  I asked him why.

“Well, after the war I drove 2B,” he said.  “That was just a saying.  People would ask me if I was going in the service.  I would say no, I’m going to be here when you leave and plan to be here when you get back.   I put it on my racecar.  To be in front or to be in the pits, I was going to be somewhere.

“The number 47, well, four plus seven equals 11, which is a winning number.”