Daytona Countdown: '60

Junior Johnson wins; 'yaba dabba do' joins pop culture venacular

Driving a Chevrolet sponsored by the Daytona Beach Kennel Club dog track, located on the back side of the Daytona International Speedway main grandstand, Junior Johnson beat Bobby Johns by 23 seconds in the second Daytona 500 on Feb. 14, 1960.

NASCAR ACCELERATION •   Know Your NASCAR •   Tickets for Daytona •   2004 Daytona 500 highlights •   Get TrackPass for 2005! ALSO IN 1960 ... •   Joanne Woodward receives the first star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame (Feb. 9)  •   Soviet missile shoots down the U.S. U2 spy plane; pilot Gary Powers is captured (May 1)  •   First American Football League game is played: Broncos 13, Patriots 10 (Sept.9)  •   Cassius Clay (who later took the name Muhammad Ali) wins his first professional fight (Oct. 29)  •   Fire sweeps through the USS Constellation, the U.S.'s largest aircraft carrier, while it is under construction at a Brooklyn Navy Yard pier, injuring 150 and killing 50 (Dec. 19)  Courtesy: Wikipedia

Johnson won $19,600, which comes to about 43 cents for every person in the chicken-producing region of Wilkes County, N.C. (population of 45,269, according to the 1960 U.S. Census), but that's chicken feed to what Warner Bros. Records handed the Everly Brothers three days later -- a 10-year, $1 million contract.

The Everlys weren't in the top 10 in February of 1960, although Marty Robbins had a top-10 hit with El Paso. Robbins would later dabble in NASCAR, crashing out of the Daytona 500 in 1973 and '75. Fred Flintstone would "yaba dabba do" for the first time in 1960, as the TV animated series The Flintstones debuted later that year.

Johnson perfected his driving style running moonshine in the North Carolina mountains as a teenager, while the No. 1 song in the country according to Cash Box was Teen Angel by Mark Dinning. The Beatles wouldn't make their debut in Hamburg, Germany, until August -- and Elvis Presley had just been promoted to sergeant in January.

Johnson shared the spotlight with another North Carolinian, Mount Airy's Andy Griffith, whose TV situation comedy debuted in 1960.

If Johnson had driven from Ronda, N.C., to El Paso, a distance of 1688 miles, it would have taken him nearly 34 hours at highway speeds -- or 13 hours and 31 minutes if he had been able to run his Chevy at the race-average speed of 124.74 mph.

That seems pretty fast, until you realize that Joseph Kittinger reached an estimated 614 mph on Aug. 16 when he parachuted from a balloon at an altitude of 102,800 feet -- and was free-falling for 16 miles. Tom Petty, who released Free Falling in 1989, turned 10 later in 1960.

Johnson was the last 500 winner under President Dwight Eisenhower. John F. Kennedy, with Lyndon Johnson as his running mate, beat Richard Nixon in the November election and would be sworn in as the youngest man ever elected to that office the next January. A month after Junior Johnson's win, Eisenhower sent 3,500 American troops to Vietnam.

The DeSoto automobile officially ceased production on Nov. 30, but not before Bernie Hentges drove a '59 DeSoto to a 23rd-place finish in the 1959 Daytona 500. It expired with engine problems at the 100-lap mark.

Current drivers born in 1960:
• Dennis Setzer (Feb. 27)
• Kyle Petty (June 2)

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