D.I. COLUMNIST
On the Road
with Van Abernethy
O
n a warm spring day in
1960, twelve-year-old Ed
Swearingen was riding
around the family farm with his
father as they drove across the
rolling hillside in a 1955 Chevrolet. “We were checking on our cows,”
Ed vividly recalls. Right about then
young Eddie had a brilliant idea. “I
told my dad that I thought we had
enough room to build a mighty
fine drag strip.” Ed’s father replied,
“Son, don’t ever bring up that subject again.”
So, within the silent confines of
his colorful imagination, the youngster just glanced out the window
once more as he visualized race
cars roaring across what was then
a cotton patch and pasture. It wasn’t
until many decades later - years after his father passed away - that Ed
seriously even entertained the idea
of building a drag strip on the family
farm located in the central Georgia
town of Reynolds. In 1993, however,
he actually put his plan in motion
and broke ground on what would
become Silver Dollar Raceway, a
NHRA sanctioned quarter-mile
facility that is indeed located precisely where he imagined it when
he was a kid.
Unfortunately, though, Swearingen’s grand opening in April 1994
was unpredictably horrible at best.
I mean to say it was unbelievably
bad – and that doesn’t even scratch
the surface of doing it justice. The
opening weekend of this beautiful
new facility was to be kicked off with
the running of a NHRA Winston
divisional meet, and as expected
race car haulers began pouring
though the gate on Thursday and
by the following afternoon the place
was completely packed. On Saturday, however, it was unavoidably
clear that a powerful storm named
Hurricane Roberto was going to
slam directly into central Georgia.
Evacuation measures were being
exercised and many racers elected
to leave their race cars and haulers
right where they were parked in the
pits, and hastily travel to the nearest
airport to buy the first plane ticket
out of Georgia.
One racer in particular who did
exactly that was Alcohol Funny
Car racer, Tony Bartone, who flew
home to his native New
York to escape the storm.
A few days later Swearingen received a memorable call from Bartone,
who told Ed that he was
coming to get his race
car. “I told Tony that he
couldn’t come down here
just yet and he says, ‘What do you
mean I can’t come down there?’”
Ed described the disastrous scene
to Bartone as best he could. He
spoke of how the roads had been
completely washed away. He told
of how the area stores had no bread
on their shelves. He even gave Bartone an eye-witness account of the
eerie scene down at the local funeral
home, which had been flooded and
their inventory of coffins were now
floating all over town. “I said to him,
no, Mr. Tony, you simply can’t come
down here right now.”
Yes, it was a phenomenally bad
situation, but the way Ed Swearingen tells
the story of
this particular telephone
call could
potentially
have anyone
laughing uncontrollably
at Ed’s playby-play abilities. No one
could ever
tell this story
quite like Ed
Swearingen
tells it. Well,
as you may
have guessed,
central Georgia was declared a disaster area
and Ed darn
near lost the
track before
he even got
started. The
weekly bracket program that he was anticipating
went to practically nothing because
the area racers suffered such a personal loss from the storm. From
there things got tough - really tough.
Ed ended up having to liquidate
some assets that he really didn’t intend to part
with in order to keep the
track in good standings
with the bank. It wasn’t
until maybe 1997 that
things begin to stabilize.
In time, though, the town
did recover and the racers
started showing up in large numbers. Years after his ill-fated grand
opening, Swearingen eventually
had the opportunity to operate the
bustling drag strip that he always
imagined - a track that he himself
enjoys racing at as much as anyone. He even placed a $50 bounty
on himself since, after all, he is the
track owner. “I appreciate my racers allowing me to participate, so
anyone who beats me gets an extra
50 bucks,” he says with a smile.
He’s made friends all over the
country and beyond, both in his
personal expeditions as well as
racers who travel to Silver Dollar.
When he and
wife, Dorothy,
were married
in 2001, they
went to Alaska on their
honeymoon
and wouldn’t
you know it,
Ed simply had
to visit the local drag strip.
“We walked
through the
pits handing
out business
cards, telling
racers that
if they ever
found themselves in central Georgia
to come visit
us.” Remarkably, someone walked
up to Ed and
excitedly proclaimed, “Hey,
I’ve been to your track!” The gentleman spoke of how he was in the potato peeling business for Frito Lay,
and was transferred to nearby Perry,
Georgia, to work in a brand new facility. He was there for 6 months and
spent every single weekend at Silver
Dollar Raceway.
Ed’s wife, Dorothy, also plays a
major role in the activities of the
track, most notably by cutting the
80-acres of grass - mainly because
she says it doesn’t look good when
Ed cuts it. “I bought Dorothy a
brand new tractor for her 60th
birthday and she’s quite fond of it,”
says Ed. “It looks like the greens of
a golf course when she cuts it, but
when I do it, it looks more like the
fairway.”
Ed has a way with words and
he can communicate some truly
hilarious thoughts, even when it
wasn’t his original intention. Take
the time he and Dorothy were in
Orlando, Florida, at a track operators convention. They gave Ed the
podium for a few minutes and he
excitedly told those in attendance all
the good things he had going on at
Silver Dollar with regards to various
updates and improvements. Things
were going pretty well in his speech
until Ed decided to tell them about
the local radio DJ that was coming
to announce for them - “just as soon
as he gets out of the federal penitentiary.” People nearly spewed their
beverages at this news. “The crazy
part was, I didn’t even mean for it to
be funny when I said it but people
just roared with laughter.”
Immediately after Ed made the
now-famous announcement at the
NHRA black tie affair, someone
came up to Dorothy and laughingly inquired, “Is Ed for real?” Those
who know him just smile and nod.
Ed is very much for real. You might
even say he’s “genuine realness dispensed in a pure, free base form.”
He’s also 68-years-old now, and
he seriously wants to retire from
track ownership and experience new
adventures. He declares he’s found a
buyer for Silver Dollar Raceway and
he’s going to sell the track this very
summer. “I want to travel,” he told
me over breakfast just recently. He
very much wants to show Dorothy
those “iconic landmarks” she sees
on television. He also ponders the
excitement of visiting other tracks
and racing his 1967 Camaro more
than he ever has previously. Most
assuredly the stuff dreams are made
of. DI DI
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58 | D r a g
I l l u s t r a t e d | DragIllustrated.com
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Issue 110