Owner Gordon Pirkle has served Bully Burgers at the Dawsonville Pool Room for nearly 40 years. Credit: Julie Pate

Siren is silent, but Pool Room still lives strong

Dawsonville diner lacks race audience, but regulars still come

DAWSONVILLE, Ga. -- It's 7:42 p.m. on a Saturday, and of the 11 people in the Dawsonville Pool Room's main seating area, two kids are playing a video game, one man is teaching his little boy to play pool and the eight others chat as they wait on their Bully Burgers.

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The Daytona Room, just to the right of the grill, is buzzing with noise because of one child's birthday party that crowds the tables. Three different waitresses rush food between the kids and adults, while Gordon Pirkle makes his rounds like a proud papa just before he goes back into his office.

Pirkle, owner of the Pool Room, stops first and turns the television volume up in the main room so he can hear as the green flag drops on the Crown Royal 400 at Richmond.

Nobody else is paying attention.

"Oh, it's a big difference now," Pirkle said. "We used to have to put folding chairs out. You couldn't shoot pool on Sundays because people were on the pool tables."

But on this night, the only thing on the two pool tables was a 7-year-old reaching across to roll a cue ball into the side pocket.

The Pool Room is located on the outskirts of historical downtown Dawsonville, Ga. Credit: Julie Pate

MEMORIES STILL RING Mike Turner hasn't experienced too many race days at the Dawsonville Pool Room. He was too busy changing tires.  Turner grew up with Bill Elliott and was a member of Elliott's pit crew from the late 1970s until the end of the 1985 season.  But most people are more impressed when he mentions his hometown.  "I can be in Texas or Washington or anywhere," he said, "and as soon as somebody finds out I'm from Dawsonville, they'll ask, 'You ever heard of the Pool Room?'"  Turns out, despite mostly being at the racetrack with Elliott, one of Turner's most vivid memories is of the Pool Room.  It will ring in Turner's mind for many years to come.  "When Bill won his last race, I was listening to it on the radio and said, well I'll just run over to the Pool Room," Turner said of Elliott's 2003 victory at Rockingham. "That was the first time I was ever at the Pool Room when Bill won a race, and Gordon asked me to ring the siren. That was special."  Free VideoA day's worth of news in 90 seconds Sign up for TrackPass now BUY THE NEXTEL i836

Used to, the Pool Room was where nearly everyone in Dawsonville gathered to watch Bill Elliott race his way from the local dirt tracks to the 1988 Cup Series championship. Located, appropriately, on Route 9 in the North Georgia town, it was the only place outside of Atlanta that carried every NASCAR race on television. Pirkle had satellite TV years before fat contracts and hour-long, pre-race coverage.

"Back in the late '80s and along then, they'd get here early," he said of his regular patrons.

So early, in fact, Pirkle had to expand the dining area and add the Daytona Room, although it was without a single television. People couldn't understand. They came to watch the race, but Pirkle didn't have a TV in his new addition.

"I told them I have to make a living," he laughed. "On Sundays, they would come here and stay until the race was over. I don't have any alcohol here, and you can't make much money off iced tea.

"People that came for the race, they'd come early and eat back there. As soon as the race started, they'd come in here."

On this night, however, it was the Daytona Room that was packed with people, while the TV room's buzz was mostly sounds from the grill and the phone ringing, at least until one man walked in.

"Mark Martin lead a lap?" asked Pool Room regular K.K. Turner in a general direction just seconds after he walked in the door.

Of course, the couple that answered him were friends. That's one thing that hasn't changed at the Pool Room. Of the rotating door of customers -- many of which come to pick up carry-out orders -- it's a safe bet they know one person in the tiny side-street diner.

"This is a place where everybody knows everybody," one customer said. "Everybody knows your business, good or bad."

And everybody knows Elliott.

"I grew up just down the road from Bill," the customer said as she waited to pay for her meal.

The Pool Room is appropriately on Hwy. 9. Credit: Julie Pate

"My step-dad is cousins with Bill," said another, who came in just after the green flag and stayed for nearly 150 laps with his eyes partly on the TV and his focus partly talking to the comers and goers, namely Turner, who's also related to Elliott.

Their night, like the majority of those who watched any amount of the Richmond race from Dawsonville, became a little darker on Lap 59 when Kasey Kahne pulled behind the wall with a potential dropped cylinder. It's not that the Dawsonville folks are overwhelmingly Kahne supporters. They just can't give up the 9 that was etched in their hearts for more than a decade.

"I always liked the red 9 the best," said Edwin Bruce, who was eating with his daughter, Jill Odom, before they headed to a gospel benefit singing. Bruce, too, can claim to be a relative of Elliott's. "I watch [NASCAR] whenever I can, but nothing like I used to. When you know somebody, you like to follow it."

That was always Pirkle's theory.

Miss the Pool Room sign, and you might miss Dawsonville. Credit: Julie Pate

He continues to operate the Pool Room as an ongoing shrine to Elliott. The paper menus -- with whiteout and ink-pen marks on them -- let you know it. The Coors quarter panel on the wall and the three different Ford front bumpers on the ceiling are an example. They came straight from the shop after a crewman called Pirkle to ask if he wanted an old car's skin. Elliott, Pirkle said, would have killed them had he known how much time they took to shave the sheet metal off.

The tire below the cash register, it came from Elliott's car after it crossed the finish line to win the 1985 Southern 500 and cash in the Winston Million.

And if you missed anything in Elliott's career, just read the walls. They're covered in framed newspaper clippings about the driver. The restroom actually has the clippings as its wallpaper.

It's been this way for most of the 40 years Pirkle's place has been open. But race day just hasn't been the same at the Pool Room since Elliott stepped out of the No. 9.

"That's part of it," said Pirkle, who admits he doesn't watch NASCAR like he used to when his old friend was running full time.

Quite honestly, there's just not a reason to stay at the Pool Hall in case he has to ring the siren. For each of Elliott's 44 victories -- which are documented on the Pool Room's window and catch every customer's eye -- Pirkle has sounded a fire siren attached to the corner of his building so the whole community will know their hometown driver is the victor.

The siren, though, has been quiet since a cold day in Rockingham on Nov. 9, 2003. But if Elliott can find one more victory in him somewhere -- even if it's in a Chevrolet -- the siren will sound again.

"You dang right I would," Pirkle said with a hopeful grin.

But there are no plans to ring the siren if another driver, namely Kahne, wins in the 9 car. It just wouldn't be right.

"I'd love to, but I'm not going to," he said.

No worries, because on this night, there wasn't an Elliott in the race. The 9 car finished 34th, four laps down. And by the time Dale Earnhardt Jr. was standing in Victory Lane, Pirkle had long been gone from the Pool Room.

Dawsonville, on a NASCAR Saturday night, was silent.