Going Racing

Charlie is congratulated in victory lane by David Pearson after a victory in a Shriner's race later in his career. Photo courtesy Charlie Barrett

Charlie told us how he got started in racing.

“My brother-in-law carried me to a race at Looper Speedway (Gainesville Speedway),” he said. “I was probably 12 years old and I knew that day right then that that was what I wanted to do. But I could never afford it. I got an old ’36 Ford and put a single roll bar and seatbelt in it. I could get up front but I had a ’49 through ’53 engine in with a back crack. I didn’t have a windshield in it. The hot water would push the radiator cap up so I made it where it wouldn’t and it blew the top radiator hose off of it.

“A guy named Earl Jones had a 1951 Chevy he drove to work and back. He also had a ’56 Ford for his Sunday car. He was up at the store one night and I told him, ‘Let’s make a race car out of your Ford. I’ll furnish the tires and shocks and we’ll split the money. He said,  ‘Okay. When do you want to start?’ I told him, ‘Right now!’ We went to taking chrome off. He said, ‘be careful taking the windows out. When we are through, I may want to make a street car out of it again.’ After the first race, it was beat up so bad you could hardly tell it was a Ford but we won a lot of races with that car.

“When we ran that Ford in the street class, we welded two wheels together and ran dual tires. You weren’t allowed to run anything but street tires but there wasn’t anything about running two street tires in one spot. We ran it that one race and got first place. It would get gone with those two tires. But they changed the rules and to this day the rulebook at Toccoa says you can’t run dual tires.

“I turned one car on its side but I never rolled one over. That ’56 Ford street car had the accelerator spring break and cut the engine off. I slammed on the brakes but I still ran up the number one turn wall and laid the car on its side at Banks County.

“Then I got a ’55 Chevrolet asphalt car and ran at Banks County. I bought an engine from Wendel Roach. Probably would have run with them but it didn’t handle. But I never changed a spring or a shock on it and I don’t reckon I ever had the front end aligned on it. I just tried to drive it. I bought that car from Leon Sells. The reason he didn’t run it anymore was that there was damage on the A-frame. We took time to put a real slick body on it. But we didn’t know enough to fix it, so I just had to drive it and do the best I could. One day when Bob Leach had something go wrong with his car, I let him drive it and he couldn’t do any good with it either. I let Bill Irvin drive it one Sunday but he couldn’t either. I ran second with it one time but mostly I ran third or fourth with it. I didn’t win a lot of races that year.”