PHOTOS
Andy Heintzelman
It was the Friday before the Daytona 500 in 2007 and we were having lunch at the North Turn Restaurant, a popular race-week stop right on the beach in Daytona Beach, Fla., where it all began in 1948. Turns out Bobby Allison was having lunch at the North Turn, too, and I couldn't walk by his table without stopping to say hi.
Allison surely didn't know me. But I had snapped many pictures of him in my job as a newspaper photographer at Pocono Raceway and Dover International Speedway in the mid- and late-1980s and even upon his return to the track as a car owner in the early 1990s.
My heart was racing when I approached his table to say hello. I wanted to say more than that, and after an exchange of pleasantries, a story flashed into my mind.
"I have a picture of you at the drivers' meeting at Pocono in 1988," I started.
A smile was already creeping across Allison's weathered face, straightening some of the lines that the glorious highs and painful lows of life have produced over 70 years. The issue was a new curbing at the the famous Tunnel Turn.
I was quoting, and he was remembering. "You stood up and said, 'What if some (expletive), like Waltrip, runs you up on that curbing?'"
I'm not certain I finished the sentence. Allison broke in, his smile now as wide as Pocono's front stretch. I had his attention. He was laughing, but he was shaking a finger, about to correct me.
"I said, 'What if some (expletive),' but I never said his name," Allison told me with very deliberate delivery, evoking laughter from myself and those with Bobby, including his wife, Judy, and another couple. "I never said his name."
I had struck a chord. He remembered this? Wow. I was ecstatic, and I had yet to learn the real significance of that drivers' meeting on June 12, 1988.
The back story
I wasn't about to argue with a legend over exactly what he said. Besides, I had realized as I started my story (and apologized in the same breath) that the day I was discussing - June 12, 1988 - was the very day Allison was caught up in that first-lap wreck and was T-boned by Jocko Maggiacomo. Yes, right there at the very Tunnel Turn he discussed in the drivers' meeting a few hours earlier, life almost ended - and indeed changed forever - for Allison.
One of NASCAR's 50 greatest drivers. The 1983 champ. Third all time on the wins list (tied with none other than Waltrip). An IROC champ in 1980 and the most popular driver six times (1971-73 and 1981-83). Just four months before the crash, he was taking the checkered flag at Daytona ahead of son Davey, the only 1-2 father-son finish the in the history of the race.
I remember my view of the Pocono accident scene from the pit road tower, Davey pulling alongside his father's car, stopping momentarily on the track, aware it was serious. Geoff Bodine won that race, and Davey would finish an admirable fifth. But no doubt they, like the rest of us, left the track figuring Bobby Allison wasn't going to make it.
19 years later
So here I was, 19 years later, discussing a silly drivers' meeting that preceded a nearly fatal crash. Who cares about that? But it was OK. Bobby himself talked about that day "when I got killed at Pocono." No "almost" in his sentence. He said he was a goner, but "they wouldn't let me die. I had bills to pay."
He was fine with the topic. Plus, I already knew, thankfully, that the drivers' meeting wasn't simply a stupid moment that had escaped with so much of Bobby's memory. When he repeated my quote with the same first four words - "What if some ...," it was obvious - he remembered.
Following his correction of my recollection, Bobby was compelled to tell me what evoked his address at the meeting that day.
It went back to the race the week before. He was having another good day at Riverside, a track where he had much success, including wins in 1971, '73 and '79. He wasn't going to win that day, he admitted, but was running up front and expecting a good finish until "somebody spun me out." (This time I concur; he didn't say his name.) Records show Allison finished 22nd, two laps down. Waltrip was 28th that day, 10 laps down, with an overheating problem. From front-end damage, perhaps?
So, Allison told me, when the drivers' meeting was wrapping up in the open garage stalls of Pocono the next Sunday morning, and director of competition Dick Beatty asked if there were any questions, he had his chance to make a point.
Even Bobby will acknowledge everyone knew who he was talking about. I remember Darrell Waltrip himself, head cocked, bottom lip thrust out in aggravation, but saying nothing as Allison spoke, choosing to stare into the distance rather than confront one of the sport's patriarchs. Tense would best describe it.
The clincher
This wonderful, five-minute chat in the quiet dining room of a Daytona restaurant was a lifetime memory for a race fan such as myself in just the first few seconds. But there was more, a truly stunning coincidence about this certain drivers' meeting.
As almost an afterthought, Bobby Allison tells me that the "90 seconds" in which he addressed the drivers and crew members that day was the ONLY memory he had of the 1988 season.
What?
He didn't remember winning the 500 ahead of Davey? He had also won one of the qualifiers at Daytona that year. And the Busch race? He didn't remember that?
He didn't remember the crash? Apparently, even the Riverside spin lived only through his memory of what he said about it at the drivers' meeting the next week.
He repeated: His address at the drivers' meeting was his ONLY memory from the 1988 season. And it was the story I had cast up for conservation.
Wow.
Judy Allison was aware of the significance. She asked if I could send them a copy of the photo I had described. I said I'd be honored.
I did send the photo, the original 3x5 1/2 color print and an 8x10 reproduction. I sent an extra 8x10 and Bobby obliged my request to autograph it and send it back, producing yet another smile on my face.
I've been tempted since that day in Daytona to call Darrell Waltrip. He'd remember whether his name was used at that drivers' meeting at Pocono on June 12, 1988. But, I'm not going to bother. For the record, I'll go with Bobby Allison's story. If that's the only memory he has from that eventful season, and I was fortunate enough through a chance meeting to share it with him, I'd be, well, a you-know-what not to believe him.