The Short, Intense Racing Career Of Lanier Englett


Billy Carden

Billy Carden had the biggest influence on Englett driving a race car.

“Billy Carden use to drive a 1936 Ford Convertible around town. I thought now this dude is sharp. And somewhere around this time Bob Thompson and Bill Reed opened a station in Mableton. Back in those days you found yourself hanging around the shops or service stations where the other guys were working on hot rods or stock cars. Next thing you know, your are either driving one or going to every racetrack around with them. And that was exactly how I met Billy. He was a good friend of Bob Thompson.

“Bob was a good guy and a would-be driver like myself. I know Bob and Bill decided to go into the racing business probably at Carden’s egging them on. I remember a fellow named Pete Henson helped build them a 1939 Ford that Bob bought at the junkyard for $50. It had a V8 engine with six exhaust pipes coming out the side.

Billy Carden (left) and owner Bob Thompson (right).

“I think the first race we took the car to was in Gainesville, Georgia in 1946. I went with Carden, and all I remember was dust, and the fact so many fans were lined up along the wooden guard rails as these cars would come sliding through the turns sideways on skinny tires, half out of control. And I was one of them standing there. We just didn’t think nothing about it. It was a couple of years later at Columbus, Georgia when Red Byron blew a tire and a little boy got killed that people started to think maybe that wasn’t a smart place to be. The infancy of stock car racing is all I can say.

“Billy worked at a Firestone store over in West End, (Southwest Atlanta) and your Dad (Ed Samples) had a garage next door to Firestone. So that is how those two met, and spent much of their racing careers together. And Billy met Raymond Parks because both used Atlanta Safety Brake Company for parts and such. So that brings in Red Vogt and Parks’ drivers,Roy Hall, Red Byron and Bob and Fonty Flock. His first driver Lloyd Seay was murdered five years earlier.

The legendary Sweetwater Inn still exists today. The Mableton/Austell area BBQ house was where Englett worked during his "leaves" with the Merchant Marine and Army, and was a favorite hangout for friends and race drivers such as Jack Smith and Charlie Marks.

“I worked part time out at the Sweetwater Inn in Mableton and met racing star Jack Smith, who lived in Roswell but liked to hang out with many of those guys over there. The Atlanta area was the hub of stock car racing in the late thirties and on into the forties. Urban flight ended all that years later.

“My days as a Seaman offered shore leave. We always had thirty days to be reassigned before falling vulnerable to the draft. During these ‘leaves’ I use to go to all the races with Carden. But like most boys our age, racing was fun. Little to no money could be made unless it was betting on the side.

“Bob Thompson as I mentioned had the service station out in Mableton where we would gather. Sometimes he would drive a race car. He really drove just to have fun. He was definitely classified as a car owner.

A wreck by Billy Carden at the old Birmingham Fairgrounds in 1947, driving the Hugh Babb-Al Dykes Special.

“Once at Lakewood he entered in a event and started clowning around thinking he was a real driver. He wrecked it down at the fourth turn and all we could see was dust and smoke. When we all ran down there his car was upside down, and he was up on this big ole rock, bowing to the crowd.

“Billy and I were at a race in 1947 at Birmingham when I was 19 years old. He had a year under his belt and had become quiet a good driver. Here he was driving the Al Dykes’ Ford that Hugh Babb was keeping up. Al had a service station out in Soutwest Atlanta. Hugh was a genius on engines and especially on fuel injections. But the track at Birmingham that day was real muddy.

Pass one more tree and Roscoe Thompson would have been on McCallie Ave. at Warner Park Speedway in Chattanooga.

“Somebody figured we could outsmart everybody else and put some mud knobs on the back. Well, one of caps came off and Billy went to flipping. He survived, but it knocked him silly. He was talking out of his head on the drive back to Atlanta. About the time we got to Mableton he started coming back around and acting like he had some sense again.

“I remember Roscoe was driving one of Hugh Babb’s fuel injected cars up there in Chattanooga. Hugh told him that he would have to let off the pedal early in the turns unlike he would a normal carbureted car, being that the injector cars didn’t react as quickly. Somewhere in the in heat of battle, Roscoe forgot. I watched him go near full throttle through those wooden guardrails and some brush and park trees saved him from entering McCaulee St, beside Warner Park.”

(Note: Most of Lanier’s racing friends were a little older than him back in the day. Gober Sosebee and Red Byron both born in 1915, Jack Etheridge 1916, Bob Flock 1918, Lloyd Seay 1919, Roy Hall, Ed Samples and Fonty Flock 1921, Roscoe Thompson 1922, Jack Smith and Carden 1924. So Lanier kinda fell in the kid-brother bracket for 1927. And in many ways treated as such.)

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