Greener Grass
Willavene, J.B. and Louise Smith share a smile at the Dawsonville Mountain Moonshine Festival.
Louise Smith, who was inducted into the prestigious International Motorsports Hall of Fame last year, still lives on the grounds of her and her late husband’s old junkyard. She probably sums up Jimmie Day the best.
“Back during those war days we would have our share of less fortunate people hanging around the place,” she said. “Some became part-time workers and such, but J.B. was more childlike than the rest and my husband had a big heart. Today, J.B. has an awful big heart himself, and I honestly think he got that from being around Noah. Jimmie’s daddy was a hard worker with a slew of kids, and Jimmie had a wildness to him and used the junkyard as his escape from chores. I have no doubt it would have been different if his mother had been around.”
“But one has to give him credit,” she continued. “The kid owned nothing but a pair of overalls and a bike, but through the years has worked, gotten back much of the family land, and has a fine family of his own. J.B. may have been a wild young’un, but he never left his roots to find greener grass. It’s right here where he was raised, and he’s made the rest of us realize the good on our own side of the fence.”
Jimmie Day and his family in a photo from a few years ago.
Besides the two racing sons, who are now themselves knee deep in concrete, J.B. and Willavene have three daughters. April and Cheryl are bank officers, while Janice runs the family tire company.
For someone who turned down higher education for the good life at a junkyard, Jimmie Day didn’t do badly.
“I never have been the greatest reader, so maybe I should have stuck it out through the third grade,” he said. “But I know my math. You don’t stay in the concrete business very long without learning your numbers.”
And what about brother Maurice, who took his ‘stay out of jail’ money and bought his own self a car 50 years ago?
“I went by his house the other day and Maurice wasn’t at home,” J.B. said. “I did leave my business card in the screen door. My brother’s children are too sweet not to talk to him again.”
Jimmie Day’s second grade teacher, Mrs. Keith, would have been proud. So would his mother.
Editor’s Note: This story was originally published in the September 2001 edition of the Pioneer Pages magazine.
Eddie Samples is a racing historian and writer, and is the son of champion stock car racer and Georgia Racing Hall of Famer Ed Samples.
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