As I read over the press release put out by IHRA announcing the purchase, my mind drifted back to an interview I had 15 years ago with Vendaria Parker, widow of Dallas Parker, who first broke ground on this Benson, North Carolina dragstrip back in 1959. Ms. Parker was 82 years old at the time of our interview, and she entertained me with stories as we sat in rocking chairs on the front porch of her vintage frame house, located directly across the road from the track.“ The noise doesn’ t bother me, but that jet car can sure rattle the windows!” she laughingly told me.

Long before the track was known as GALOT Motorsports Park, or its previous moniker, Dunn-Benson Dragstrip, its original name was Broadslab Dragstrip. I couldn’ t imagine why, until Ms. Parker explained that many years ago there were hardly any roads in rural areas like this, so folks often traveled through paths in the woods, laying

slabs of cut logs in the grooves so their antique cars wouldn’ t mire up in the mud!

As you may have guessed, the dragstrip her husband built wasn’ t any more modernized than the rest of the town.“ They didn’ t even have a flag to wave, so someone would stand between the cars and drop a tin can, which would signal the start of the race,” she explained. It was quite an advancement in technology when Dallas rigged up some homemade timing equipment in 1961.

Early on, the name of the dragstrip was changed from Broadslab to Dunn-Benson, and it even featured a dirt oval track way back when. Dallas Parker’ s nephew, John Ray Parker, once showed me a blackand-white photo taken along the roadside in the early 1960s that read,“ Broadslab Dragstrip and Speedway.” Mr. Parker owned the track he built until his death in 1985, after which, a variety of managers operated the track.

In 2004, Roger Williams bought this fabled facility, becoming only the second owner throughout the track’ s first 53 years of existence.

It was Williams who gave this dragstrip its first real overhaul of upgrades, solidly improving the facility.

Roger telephoned me in the fall of 2009 and excitedly divulged what he’ d discovered in the attic of a little house he was renovating. This house was actually the Parker’ s first home, and it was located in the pits of the dragstrip.

Up in the attic, Roger stumbled upon a series of shoeboxes that contained all sorts of receipts, hand-scribbled notes and payout structures, flyers from a half-century ago, and all sorts of other neat things pertaining to the dragstrip.“ Check out this receipt,” Williams says excitedly, as he read to me the itemized invoice from the Carolina Telephone and Telegraph Company, which listed $ 6.92 as the balance due for“ Calls and Telegrams.” Another invoice was from the Cape Fear Broadcasting Company, which charged $ 2.00 per spot for radio advertising.

The invoice I remember most, however, was in the amount of $ 31.77 from the local power company, dated 11-03-73. Roger nearly

fell out of the attic when he realized that this was the cost of electricity to power not only the entire dragstrip for a month, but also to keep the lights burning inside the Parker’ s little house! It was a treasured piece of history Williams found in the attic.

Fast-forward nearly four decades to 2012, this month’ s column photo is how the track looked 13 years ago. I remember thinking at the time how far this humble dragstrip had come from its days of dropping a tin can on the starting line. Little did I know that this place was on the brink of a transformation that would render it unrecognizable!

The following year is when Earl Wells first came on the scene, buying the track from Williams and transforming it into the mind-blowing configuration it is today, complete with tower suites, stadium seating, LED scoreboards, and an on-site restaurant!

The total package of this facility is visually stunning, and definitely one of the finest eighth-mile dragstrips in existence. And while the jury is still out on how IHRA’ s ownership will impact the track’ s future, I’ m anxious to see what the future holds for this 65-year-old facility that has evolved far beyond anything most of us could have ever imagined. DI