Don't forget the fabulous Flocks

By Gaylen Duskey, Special to Turner Sports Interactive
June 27, 2001
9:24 AM EDT (1324 GMT)

COMMENTARY

Sears Point, Calif., where the Save Mart 350 was held, is one of the newer tracks on the Winston Cup circuit. Yet the winding and hilly California track may go back to the roots of NASCAR racing more than any other track, if one considers the roots of NASCAR racing to be the bootleggers of many rural parts of the southeastern United States since those bootleggers drove many winding and hilly roads.

Gaylen Duskey

And, many do consider this whiskey running to be the genesis of stock car racing. If that be the case then Sears Point is like a return to yesteryear.

Much has been written or romanticized about those drivers. Robert Mitchum in Thunder Road is the image conjured up to many.

One NASCAR great, Junior Johnson, has always been considered the mold for such romantic road warriors. He has even been the subject of a book by Thomas Wolfe, 'The Last American Hero' that even further romanticizes both the man and the image of the man.

And as great of an example as Johnson is as a bridge from bootlegging to NASCAR racing, he may not be as good an example as were the Fabulous Flock Brothers -- Bob, Fonty and Tim.

They were bootleggers. Actually their uncle Peachtree Williams was the bootlegger and the two older Flock boys -- Bob and Fonty -- were his drivers. They came from their home in Ft. Payne, Ala., to make moonshine runs in rural Georgia back during the prohibition era.

When they were not making runs they talked with other drivers about which car was the fastest. And that talk led to NASCAR ... if you follow the progression.

According to the story the drivers would find a pasture field somewhere and drive around in circles -- about a half mile circle -- until they had worn out a path in the grass. Then they would race.

The Flocks were among the instigators of this racing. And the racing grew by word of mouth as a small crowd got a little larger and larger until some entrepreneurial people started building race tracks. It is from those tracks that NASCAR grew.

The Flock family as a whole was a very interesting family. There were eight children born to Lee and Maudie Flock and many of them were colorful, to say the least.

Carl, the oldest boy, was a speedboat racer. Reo, one of the girls, was a wing-walking daredevil. She also was a stunt parachutist. Another sister, Ethel, was a race car driver with more than 100 races. She had one Grand National (the precursor of NASCAR's Winston Cup) start and finished 11th.

Then there was the trio of Flock boys that actually made it onto the NASCAR circuit -- Bob, Fonty and Tim.

Bob, the oldest, and Fonty got into racing first. They were competitors in the 'moonshine' races held in pastures in Georgia, which probably was the genesis of what is now NASCAR. They both drove those circuits in the years before NASCAR came along in 1949.

Bob, who was born in 1918, had the shortest career in NASCAR. He started when the circuit was founded in 1949 and raced until retiring in 1956. He had 36 career starts and won four races.

Fonty had a pretty good NASCAR career. He started 154 races and had 19 wins and 33 poles during a career that lasted from 1949 through 1957.

But the star of the family was Tim, the baby. He was one of the most colorful NASCAR drivers ever.

During his career he:

-- Raced with a monkey in his car.

-- Lost a race because of an in-car fight with the monkey.

-- Raced in a car with the number 300 painted on it.

-- Won a Grand National (Winston Cup) title driving a Hudson Hornet.

-- Won NASCAR's only sports car race driving a Mercedes-Benz 300 SL Gullwing.

-- Quit NASCAR racing altogether over a race ruling and opened a gasoline station only to be talked back into racing while watching time trials as a spectator and then going on to win that race.

-- Was banned from racing for life.

And on top of it all he was quite a driver winning 40 races (in 187 starts) and two Grand National titles in a career that started in 1949 and lasted until he was banned in 1961.

Quite a story? You bet.

Had Tim's older brothers had their way he may not have been a race car driver. They wanted him to stay away from racing and go to school. It did not work out that way.

He tagged along with his older brothers to the race tracks and in 1948 he ran into a man, Bruce Thompson from Monroe, N.C., who had a car but no driver. He asked Tim to drive and before the year was out he was outrunning his older brothers.

The following year NASCAR started a 'strictly stock' circuit which eventually led to Grand National and Winston Cup. Tim competed on it and by 1952 had won his first championship in a Hudson Hornet, giving Hudson its only championship.

The way he won the title was actually rather interesting since going into the last race of the season all he needed to do was to start to beat Herb Thomas, who he had waged a season-long battle with. He did more than start but on the 64th lap he rolled his car over. He later jokingly said "I bet I am the only guy who ever won a championship while on his head."

He had an affinity for laughing and for clowning around. Those two things led to his brief -- nine races -- stint with a rhesus monkey as his co-driver. For the first eight races Jocko Flocko, as the monkey was called, was fine as a co-driver.

The ninth race was a different story.

With Tim leading the race Jocko Flocko somehow broke out of his cage and went berserk in the race car at one time grabbing Tim by the neck. Tim subdued the monkey with one hand while driving with the other before pulling into the pits to get Jocko Flocko out of the car. His pit stop cost him the race he was leading before Jocko Flocko broke loose as he finished third.

He ended his career abruptly in 1954 after being disqualified in a race for an illegal part in his car. He went home to Atlanta and opened a gas station figuring he was through with racing.

He was talked into going to Daytona by some friends of his in 1955 and that is where he saw them testing the new Chrysler 300. That car, and some cajoling by some friends, was all it took to get him back behind the wheel again.

The one thing that Flock found wrong with the Chrysler 300 was that it had an automatic shift. He did not think it would keep up with other cars going uphill on the beach at Daytona because of that. It did not and he finished second to Glenn 'Fireball' Roberts in that race. Ironically, Roberts was disqualified the next day and Flock was declared the winner.

That was the start of an awesome season as he teamed with car owner Carl Keikhaefer to have one of the greatest seasons in NASCAR history. Driving the number 300 Chrysler 300 he won the championship by winning 18 races and 19 poles.

He lasted only about a season and a half with Keikhaefer, who was a bit tyrannical with his drivers. He then began cutting back on his driving and by 1961 was working at Charlotte Motor Speedway and racing on a limited basis.

It was at this time, however, that many NASCAR drivers started talking about unionizing going so far as to approach Jimmy Hoffa and the Teamsters about representing them.

The union idea fell apart and many of the drivers left the group, leaving only Flock and Curtis Turner, a former NASCAR driver who was his boss at Charlotte Motor Speedway, with that idea. NASCAR banned both for life. The lifetime ban was repealed in 1965 but Flock did not return to racing.

He was a pioneer. He was colorful. But, most of all, he was a very good racer.

He died of cancer in 1998.

He was the most colorful of The Fabulous Flock Brothers but they all need to be recognized as NASCAR pioneers.

NOTE: Gaylen Duskey's column appears each Wednesday on NASCAR.com. The opinions listed here are those solely of the writer.