Brick by Brick
Excerpt - from Chapter 7 - "Road Kings"
With Al Sweeney calling, Joie and Virgil Graybeal hit the road, towing the Southern Star towards Des Moines, Iowa.
“Back then all you had were
two-lane highways, so it took forever to get there. I think we left around 8 or
9 p.m., so we got there at 1 or 2 o’clock the next afternoon. We pulled into
some little camp and that’s the first time I saw Frankie Luptow and Betty. Betty
was cleaning the racecar. So anyhow, Virgil and I go to our cabin and we decide
we are going to get up about 6 or 7 o’clock that evening and go to dinner. Well,
we woke up at 7 o’clock next morning. So it was time for breakfast.”
Des Moines was always one of the big dates on the IMCA trail, and with the fair
in full swing accommodations were easier to find. The rest of the trail was not
as easy, particularly on those all-night bends between Minot, North Dakota and
Bethany, Missouri.
“There were very few tourist cabins even if you had the money. Even drivers like Joe James were sleeping in the truck and everything. But one night Lawrence Montgomery and me were driving and my asthma was bothering me. So I got to coughing and wheezing and everything. I thought Lawrence had a driver’s license but he didn’t have no driver’s license. I said ‘Lawrence, take me to the police station, so we can get a doctor.’ He said, ‘The police station?’ But I just knew in a small town that’s the only place to go. So we find the police station and Lawrence explains to him that I was sick and got asthma and all that. So the policeman got on the phone, called us a doctor. He gave me a
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Joie Ray in the Southern Star |
shot and some pills. Looked like that shot he gave me knocked it like that, but I’m still wheezing a little bit. And he told me to be careful that next day and that if I started getting dizzy, don’t drive.
“Another time we didn’t have any place to stay and I was tired and I just didn’t feel like sleeping in the car. So we go to the police station. And I asked the policeman if any place here rents to colored people? He said, ‘Yeah, there’s an after-hours club.’ I said I’m familiar with after-hours clubs. He said that the lady that is running it, Miss Peaches, or whatever her name was, normally rents the rooms by the hour. But he said, ‘I tell you what, I saw you fellas race today, you got to stay all night, I’ll make Peaches give you all a room for the night.’ So we go to this after-hours place and I don’t think Miss Peaches liked that because we just paid about 8 or 10 dollars for a room that she rented by the hour. We could hear the music downstairs; this is nothing but a big old house, jukebox playing, and the people were real nice. I think we went down there and did a little drinking too. I think I gave her a tip or something.
“Another time I went to the
police looking for a place to stay and the guy said they would just put us in a
cell. And I said, shoot, why not? I mean, you know, there was no place in this
particular town we could stay.”
When traveling these narrow ribbons of blacktop it was
necessary to have some help. The road provided a special kind of education, and
as Joie was honing his skills as a professional racer, he was offering his
family friend Lawrence Montgomery some precious lessons in life.
“I asked Lawrence if he wanted to go with me, and I asked his mother and father. He wasn’t but 15, but he was big for his age. The deal was I would take care of him, I didn’t have much money to give him, but I’d take care of all of his expenses or anything. So they said yes. Daddy just shook his hand. He said Mr. Montgomery sure must like you to let that child go with you out there. But anyhow, Frank Luptow, Deb Snyder, and all of them knew he was a kid, and they would go out of their way to give him a dollar or two for one thing or another.
“I never will forget this…the first race we went to was at Aurora, Illinois. We left on a Friday or Saturday, and we stopped at Indianapolis and then went on to Chicago the night before the race. Even though Lawrence was 15, he could have passed for 18 or 19. We were someplace swimming, he could swim, but I wasn’t much of a swimmer. So we met some ladies down at the beach. One of them was very attractive, but older than Lawrence, I’d say she was 25 or 30 and I was about 24. The other one she had a nice personality, but her face was just all marks on it. I mean she was nice, but I didn’t want either one of them, I didn’t even want to hug them.
“But this girl Lawrence had, she would go out in the water and she would come back and give Lawrence some suntan oil and he would rub her down and everything. So the sun goes down and they go back to the car. When I see Lawrence again, he ain’t got but one shoe. I said, ‘Lawrence where’s your shoe?’ He started laughing and said, ’I don’t know. I lost it while we were in the car or something, or maybe in the woods.’ So we get back to the races. By then I figure it’s 10 o’clock on a Saturday and we’re gonna sleep in the car. So we get to Aurora, and Lawrence just got his one shoe. I tell everybody that story and they crack up. So they said we’re going to take up a donation to buy Lawrence a pair of shoes. And so they gave him $12 or $15, and the boy still couldn’t get any shoes until the next day when we got into town and everything was open.
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Frankie Luptow |
“So we’re leaving Aurora to go to some place in Nebraska or Kansas, I forgot where. So I’m kind of tired you know, so I say Lawrence, take over and he said okay. He didn’t have no license and he gets behind the wheel and he starts to zigzag. I said, ‘Lawrence, I thought you told me you could drive, haven’t you been driving?’ He told me he had only been driving cars from his dad’s garage to the front of the house. I said okay, ‘I tell you what, you’re going to be gone for six weeks, so what I’m going to do is let you drive 25 miles a day, and then I’m going to raise it.’ And this is what we did.
“After we had been out for about
five weeks Lawrence was getting homesick. I was too, even though I’m older. So
we’re coming out of St. Paul, Minnesota and we stopped at a White Castle. And
I’ll never forget, I said, ‘Lawrence how many hamburgers do you want?’ He said
twelve. He ate them all. So I would drive for 50 or 100 miles and Lawrence would
drive for 50 or 100 miles while the other one slept. What I would do, I would
have Lawrence drive and when he said he was getting sleepy I would say, okay
I’ll take over. Lawrence would get in the back seat and I’d drive until he went
to sleep then I’d pull over. By the time we got back to Louisville, he was a
good driver.”
Homesick or not, there were moments of pure joy, and as a race driver Ray loved the time he spent racing the fair circuit.
“When we would race in one of the small towns, all we had to say was with it. If you said with it, you could go to all the shows, you could make all the rides, you could play bingo all for free. We had the time of our lives. One day we were leaving, now I don’t remember what city we were leaving, but up the road we saw these race cars all parked around what looked like a Mom & Pop restaurant. The waitress met us at the door and said, ‘What do you all want?’ We said we wanted something to eat and she said, ‘We don’t serve colored.’ I just said, ‘Oh.’
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Bobby Grim |
“And at the first table were Frankie Luptow and Bobby Grim, and I don’t remember the rest of them. So they got up, came over, very quietly and said, ‘Would you mind sending for the manager?’ The lady put her hands on her hips and said, ‘What for? He’s going to tell you the same thing I told you.’
“Frankie said, that’s okay, and here comes a manager. He said, ‘What do you want, what’s the problem here?’ Frank said ‘Nothing. But I want you to look around. There are about twelve of us race drivers and car owners having dinner. We’re eating steak, fried chicken, spaghetti, but nobody has paid you yet, and we’re about through with our dinner. So now, if Joie and his partner can’t eat, we’re not going to pay you. So now you’ve got two choices. You can serve them, and we all pay you, and go on down the road. Or, if you don’t serve them, we’re going to finish our meals and we ain’t going to pay you a dime.’ That changed his tune. ‘Oh’, he said, ‘we didn’t know they were with you all. Hey, come on in, come right in.’”
Perhaps one reason Ray maintains his enthusiasm for racing is that he found a niche in life where he was treated fairly, where his peers were more interested in what they had in common than what made them different. One story tumbles after another, and his eyes light up with delight when he recalls circumventing another testy situation due to some quick thinking by a longtime pal. Ray was headed east from Terre Haute with Chick and Dorothy Smith when they realized they didn’t have the energy to travel all the way home to Kentucky.
“There were these tourist cabins outside of Terre Haute, they are still there on Highway 40, but they’re about to fall down. The Davis brothers, who owned the Davis Dreyer, were towing the car. Chick, Dorothy and I were driving together. So we pulled up to this motel and went in. The Davis brothers got a room, and Chick and Dorothy registered, and the guy looks at me and says, ‘What do you want?’ I said I’m with these fellas and I would like to get a room too. And he says, ‘We don’t accept coloreds, and plus, if we did, we don’t have any more rooms.’ So Chick says, ‘He’s not colored. He may have stood out in the sun too long, but he ain’t colored.’
“Now, you got to understand, at this time a white woman with a black man was a real no-no. So the guy looks at Chick and says, ‘Well, okay then, I wasn’t lying about no more rooms, and we won’t rent to coloreds, but I’ll give you a cot and he can stay with you and Mrs. Smith.’ He was just waiting for Chick to say, no, we’re not going to do that, but Chick says, ‘That will be just fine.’ The guy got real mad, and he threw the keys at us.
“Later Chick told me, ‘Joie, I want you to know the reason I said you had just stayed out in the sun too long. In life you can catch more bees with honey than with vinegar, and if I would have argued with the guy we wouldn’t have got any rooms.’ So here comes the guy, and he says, ‘I’ve got that cot’, and he looks at them, and looks at me, and slammed the door.”
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Chick Smith |
In spite of the perils the road presented, there was no question that it could become addictive. Yet, what motivated Ray to travel over 850 miles to compete at Ord, Nebraska is lost to history. Perhaps, as Joie Ray remembers it, Al Sweeney put the idea into his mind, but the gracious IMCA headman had no connections to the race. Then again, Ray may have rubbed shoulders with Clyde Barker, the man who had been the driving force behind races at Ord since 1929.
Barker wasn’t one to sit on his hands and hope that he would get a full field of cars and drivers at fair time. Instead, he would travel to the surrounding tracks and extol the virtues of racing at the Loup Valley Fairgrounds. More importantly, Barker delivered on his promises. In an era when plenty of unscrupulous promoters could be found, drivers were always interested in learning where they would get a square deal. Regardless of his ultimate motivation, Ray was desperate to find a way to get to Nebraska, and then drop down to the Belleville (Kansas) Highbanks as well.
He determined that his best chance of making the tour rested with his old pal Lowell Todd. Soon after he broached the idea he realized that Lowell was lukewarm on the idea at best. Ray knew it was a stretch, but he found a glimmer of hope in his friend’s response. Todd said, ‘Joie, I’ll be truthful with you. The only way we can go is if you do good Sunday at Bloomington.’ Ray was nonplussed, in fact, “I was so sure I was going to do good, and instead of me driving over there, I caught a bus to Bloomington.”
Like all Dizz Wilson-promoted races, Ray knew there would be cash on the barrelhead after every event.
“He paid you right on the spot.
When you qualified, he reached into his pocket and paid you right then and
there. When the first heat race ended he paid $30, $20, $15 depending on where
you finished. He came over and had you sign that you had been paid on the
clipboard, and for the feature, it was the same thing.”
Signing the clipboard was a pleasant experience on this day. Ray won his heat,
and then ran second to Leon Hubble in the feature.
“I got $450 for finishing
second, and that was pretty doggone good for a six cylinder Ford. So Todd was
happy. And we went to his house and spent the night and went on down to Ord.”
If Ray was indeed lured to Ord by the indefatigable Barker,
his experience mirrored those who had made the journey before.
“I have fond memories of Ord, it was one of the friendliest towns I’ve ever been to. You registered at the Chevrolet dealership or at a garage. I recall getting at this garage and Barker was there with a clipboard. Now, Ord is a small town, and on this clipboard he had a list of families that would take the racing fraternity in. I never forgot this; you got a place for seven bucks a night and that would include your breakfast. So, we got a house from some elderly widow for Todd, his mechanic and myself for $7 a night.
“This lady and Todd, they were talking while I got my little asthma pipe out and was working on that. She had told Todd that I was the first colored person she had ever seen. And Todd said, ‘Yes, and he’s a very nice fellow.’ The lady said, ‘Yes, I think so too.’ But another thing that sticks out in my mind, Chick Smith was there, and I’m not a mechanic so Chick had to work on the car. And so he said, ‘Joie would you mind escorting Dorothy to the VFW club for dinner because we don’t have time to go.’ I said I would be glad to, and there was another lady who came with us. You would have thought we were kings the way they treated us. I mean from the lowest mechanic, to the top car owner, they treated us like kings. They put an armband or something on us and gave us free food and drinks. In the morning, we would walk down the streets and little kids would pass and stop and ask for your autograph. I mean, we got just royal treatment.”
The two-day show would begin on August 31, boasting a strong field that included Chick Smith, Bobby Grim, Don Carr, Al Fleming, Fritz Tegtmeier, and Red Bales. Bales, the 1947-1949 Interstate Racing Association champ, would take both feature events driving the W.H. Myles Riley-powered car, in what could be deemed a mild upset. Meanwhile, Ray, still tilting windmills in his six-cylinder Ford, acquitted himself nicely with fifth and seventh place finishes.
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Joie at Topeka, Kansas |
It was at Ord that Ray met Al Fleming, and in time he would offer Ray a seat in his car.
“Here is another way they made us feel welcome at Ord. They would pay us in checks at the track, and even though everything was closed they would open the banks back up between six and seven just for us to cash our checks. Al was driving for Cliff Denney; so after the race, Cliff, me and a bunch of us go down to the bank. Cliff and I are sitting on the curb, and here comes one of the Silverstream house trailers, and he said ‘Joie, you know what? There ought to be some doggone way a person could figure out how he could get a house trailer that could tow a racecar too.’ And we laughed, but now stop and think about that. Forty years later, here comes motorhomes.
“So I made connections with Al Fleming, who took my address and everything because he had a car at home. So then I started driving for Al, so he had money coming in for his driving, and from his car too. You know, there was very little black attendance at Midwest races, but when I raced for Al at Topeka, Kansas there were more black people there than I had ever seen at a race. Afterwards, they came around to see the car and everything. I got a picture of 10 or 12 young black kids just standing around the car.”
While the circumstances have been long forgotten, after a tow south to Kansas, Todd and Ray decided to leave Belleville and make a madcap rush to Jungle Park to race on Labor Day. They reasoned better success awaited them. Even today, this drive seems unfathomable. In the end it was a lot of work for little reward.
“We hightailed it back to Jungle Park, and I’m going real good, and then broke a right front spindle. I went off the track in turn one and went between the trees, but I never got hurt. If you check the records, I don’t remember how I did in my car when I went there in 1947, but after that race there in Lowell Todd’s car, or in the Southern Star, which were the only two cars I drove there, I always finished in the first three in the heats, and between second and fifth in the feature.
“I think the reason I did so well at Jungle Park was the track. Now with the six-cylinder Ford, or four-port Riley, when the oil would seep up on a hot Sunday afternoon it got real slick. Here would come Bobby Grim in an Offy and he would spin the wheels while I could be flat on the floor and gone. I read later that Speedy Helm would always disconnect one spark plug at Jungle Park, and he didn’t tell anyone his secret. So I loved Jungle Park. Most drivers hated it.”
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