Early Racer, Early Winner
A familiar place for Charlie Mincey - victory lane at Atlanta's Peach Bowl. Photo courtesy GARHOFA
Charlie Mincey was born on November 19, 1931, and was raised in Northwest Atlanta in the Bellwood community. He readily admits that it was the roughest neighborhood in Atlanta.
He was not old enough to serve in World War II, so he did a man’s job – driving. Having been born during the Great Depression, Charlie found a way to make a living during the war and just afterwards by working for his father. Roy Mincey ran a paint and body shop, and Charlie’s job was to deliver cars throughout Atlanta as they were finished. This started when he was 10. This also gave him the ability to later make runs from North Georgia to downtown Atlanta with moonshine when he was 14.
During his tenure as a tripper, Charlie found the Peach Bowl Speedway in Northwest Atlanta. Billy Hester, owner of the famed Cherokee Garage, said that he talked Gene Stegal and “Bad Eye” Shirley (the brother in law of legendary NASCAR car owner Raymond Parks) into providing a car for Charlie to race to get him off the streets before he wound up in jail or worse.
“This was 1950 when I was 19 and it was probably the only race car Billy ever built by himself,” Charlie said.
Mincey won the first two races in the jalopy class at the Peach Bowl, so the track graduated him to the next division – sportsman. The first night he beat a veteran driver named Jack Smith.
This is the Ford 5-window coupe that Billy Hester built and maintained for Gene Stegal and "Bad Eye" Shirley which Charlie ran at the Peach Bowl.
“Jack took a lot of ribbing in the pits because this ‘kid’ beat him,” Charlie said. “That was probably the reason Jack Smith and I never really got along.”
There were never any fistfights but on the track, the action was rough and tumble.
“Jack was a clean driver, but if you wanted to play rough, there was none rougher,” Charlie said.
What Smith probably didn’t realize was that the ‘kid’ had been racing from Dawsonville to Atlanta almost on a nightly basis for five years. Generally, they ran about 75 miles per hour down the highway, but as Charlie told us, “whenever a set of headlights came in your rear view mirror, you just took off.”
The route was old US Highway 9 that ran through Cumming, Alpharetta and Roswell. They went through Roswell so fast that by the time the police woke up (it was generally two or three in the morning) and got to their squad car, Charlie was in Atlanta.
Charlie (pictured right) in victory lane with his wife Carolyn, his father Roy and young son Kenneth.
“Jack Smith was one of the best of the original drivers at the Peach Bowl,” Mincey said of Smith, who would go on to become one of the leading veterans in NASCAR. That group of original Peach Bowl pilots included guys like Gober Sosebee, Billy Carden and Roscoe Thompson.
“But you have to remember, Jack raced for a living,” Charlie said of Smith’s driving style and abilities. “We would have run for nothing in the beginning…just for fun.”
In 1951, Charlie met his wife of 51 years when she was 16. Carolyn was warned by all her friends about the wild driver. Two weeks later, they got married.
Shortly after that, Charlie retired from hauling moonshine. He went back to work for his dad at the paint and body shop. To this day he and Carolyn are still together and Charlie does paint and body work for his paycheck. He tried to retire but found sitting at home too boring.
They have raised two sons, Kenneth (born in 1952) and Chuck (born in 1959). Only Kenneth tried to follow in his father’s footsteps but found racing had changed so much that he wasn’t interested in continuing.