Updated 01/16

A couple of days ago, Ruth was doing one of her Clean Out The Junk projects and said, “Look what I found.” She had a small box containing six photo envelopes crammed with 5×7 glossy prints and negatives developed from 1993 to 1995!

Lo and behold, they were images from when we frequented Dixie Speedway just north of Atlanta.

Brief background: Dixie is a 3/8th mile clay (dirt!) race track in Woodstock, GA that has been runnin’ races since 1969. Lots of the Big Names raced there: Bill Elliott won his first race at Dixie, we saw both Awesome Bill and Dale Earnhardt Sr. there.

This ain’t your fancy Nascar Cup racing; Southern Saturday Night Bullring Racin’ at its best. The boys come in late afternoon hauling their cars, mostly on beat-up trailers. Fans sit on concrete bleachers or, in our case, pull a truck up to the fence surrounding the track. Lawn chairs, grills, lots of food and coolers containing an “assortment of beverages” are the rule of the night. Off the track, behind the parked vehicles, kids run around playing and people get together for chats. The racing was fast, noisy, dirty (mud flying everywhere) and up close; the fans were noisy, friendly and family- oriented.

They are still running at Dixie but these pictures are from 1993-1995. Before digital so they are all scanned from negatives or from the print itself. For the photo geeks, I was shooting a Nikon FE2 and Mamiya 645 back then. All but three of the pix are 35mm and, if memory serves, a lot were shot on a tripod at night with 400 speed Kodak film… long exposures.

So crank up the Wayback Machine, here we go:

Panorama through the fence. We parked right beside the track so the racing was up close and personal

Saturday night at the track. They would run until all events were done or the mandatory curfew, around midnight I think, came around.



The flagman. Not up in the flagstand: a brave man ON THE TRACK with cars flying around him
Dirt is much more forgiving than pavement, but this was still beatin’ and bangin’ racing
Tow them off, throw some dirt on the oil, occasionally break up a driver’s fight and get back to racing
Beatin’ and bangin’ took its toll. Hammer out the worst of the dents and race again next weekend.
Not the nice clean racing that is on TV (no windshield: the drivers looked as dirty as the cars after a race)
One of the “high-dollar” teams. They actually had uniforms. Most guys were in dirty jeans and faded shirts.

January 15, 2011