Spirit of Hueytown alive with memories of lost sons

HUEYTOWN, Ala. -- The sign outside Hueytown High School's football stadium simply reads "Go Gophers Go."

It's Homecoming weekend, and the purple and gold bows seem to multiply every time you turn around -- perched on mailboxes, tied to fences and attached to front doors throughout this blue-collar town on the outskirts of Birmingham. Hueytown hugs the side of one of the long, low mountain ridges that signal the southwestern end of the Appalachian chain.

• Send Mark your thoughts

Fidgety kids line up on the playground at the elementary school, ready to follow their teacher back inside after a welcome break from reading, writing and arithmetic. It's too nice to be cooped up inside a classroom all morning and their faces show it, pink from a combination of exertion and excitement on an unusually warm and humid October day, longing for a little more breeze before they must return to their desks.

Across Parson Drive, toilet paper hangs from the trees of the house on the corner like long white spaghetti noodles dangling at the end of a fork, evidence of a successful high-school prank completed during the night.

On Brooklane Drive, a craggy-faced man squints into the sun as he mows close to the road, a cigarette hanging from his lower lip as he aims the riding mower at the chickweed and dandelions in his way.

The marquee on the hardware store says "deer supplies are here." That's evidenced by the deer decoy leaning against a car hood behind a chain-link fence in the backyard of one of the many one-story brick homes and Craftsmans that defy anyone thinking of building a cookie-cutter subdivision nearby.

At the U.S. Pipe and Foundry just across the city limits in Bessemer, a yard locomotive toots its horn as it moves dented railcars filled to overflowing with rusty scrap, passing a stack of recently cast pipes heading in the other direction.

And at the Highland Memorial Gardens less than a mile away, in a section of plots called the Garden of Everlasting Life, nestled among the Jameses, Poseys, Garretts and Whatleys, there's a grave marker in the expanse of close-cropped grass -- halfway between a pair of stately sycamores -- that reads "David Carl Allison, a true champion, a loving husband and father."

Welcome to Hueytown, A.D.: After Davey.

Hueytown isn't so much a suburb as a small-town island in the middle of an ocean of unceasing growth. Birmingham bangs loudly on its doorstep, but for now, Hueytown isn't answering.

Allison-Bonnett Memorial Drive is the main east-west route through town, and Davey Allison Boulevard is a truck route back to Interstate 20-59.

Folks flying Alabama flags from their eaves can peacefully co-exist with their Auburn-loving neighbors -- at least 51 weeks a year.

Not surprisingly, the population has found a way to make religion and racing co-exist on Sundays, especially when NASCAR comes to nearby Talladega. The Alabama Gang -- Bobby, Donnie, Davey and Clifford Allison, Red Farmer, Neil Bonnett, and to a lesser extent, Jimmy Means and Hut Stricklin -- remains a source of pride and inspiration to Hueytown, which incorporated checkered flags into the town seal.

If you never saw the Alabama Gang in their prime, you missed something special. They dominated the short tracks at Birmingham, Montgomery and Huntsville, then went on to acclaim on NASCAR's biggest stages. At their best, they were as feared as anyone in the sport.

But the racing fates can be terribly cruel, almost sadistic at times. The Alabama Gang celebrated incredible triumphs -- and suffered incredible tragedies.

Bobby and Donnie suffered debilitating injuries that affect them to this day. Clifford died at Michigan, Neil at Daytona. And Davey was killed and Red was severely injured in a helicopter accident in the infield of Talladega Superspeedway.

Hueytown grieved. Hueytown never forgot.

State of emergency

The remaining members of the Alabama Gang know the chances of a native return to NASCAR glory are slim unless major changes are made.

• Complete story, click here

You can still get the Davey Allison breakfast -- two eggs, meat, grits and toast or biscuit and gravy -- delivered to your table by a polite waitress at the Hometrack Restaurant (all you can eat catfish on Friday nights), where the walls are plastered with posters and photos of the Gang in action.

There's even a mural on one wall depicting the start of a race at Talladega. But on closer inspection, there seem to be a few liberties taken by the artist.

The front row is made up of Bobby Allison and Dale Earnhardt. But to Davey's right in Row 2 is Dale Earnhardt Jr., who was an 18-year-old kid running Late Models in 1993. And the scene shows a nighttime start, with lights shining brightly above the grandstands -- even though the real Talladega has no such thing.

But in retrospection, one wonders if the artist wasn't trying to suggest what life might be like had Davey Allison's helicopter not hooked the chain-link fence in the Talladega infield 14 years ago. It's a tantalizing exercise, because so much has happened, so many events are interrelated, like dominoes stacked in a line.

If you take one away, does the chain of events stop? Or would things have transpired in a different tangent and timeline?

At the cemetery, the woman in the office says there's always a steady stream of fans who want to pay their respects to Davey Allison, particularly on race weekends. "Most come from out-of-state now," she adds.

Davey's brother, Clifford, who died 11 months earlier in a practice crash at Michigan, is also buried at Highland, but in a different section of the cemetery, closer to the plots owned by parents Bobby and Judy Allison. If you ask at the office, it's "because Davey loved hunting, they bought him a plot nearer the woods."

Neil Bonnett is buried in nearby Pleasant Grove -- and the similarities are eerie. His marker, also in the Garden of Everlasting Life, includes a bas relief sculpture, crossed checkers and the inscription: "Always a winner."

Just a few yards from Davey Allison's gravesite, the dark marble bench inscribed on the top with "In loving memory of our daddy, Robbie and Krista" is a perfect place to ponder a number of questions. The silence is only interrupted by the sound of tractor-trailers roaring past on the interstate, interspersed with the chattering of the squirrels and chirping of the birds.

How would Davey Allison have handled Dale Earnhardt's death? The Chase for the Nextel Cup? The Car of Tomorrow?

But most importantly, what would Davey Allison be like today? When he left us, his star was still on the rise. With a bushy moustache, a slender build and an infectious grin, the second-generation leader of the Alabama Gang was primed to be NASCAR's next superstar.

It's almost impossible to imagine Davey Allison now as a 46-year-old -- only slightly younger than Ward Burton -- perhaps with thinning or graying hair, a paunch, crow's feet or a mid-life crisis.

How many championships would Davey have recorded for Robert Yates Racing? Would he be the one passing Dale Earnhardt's win total? How would Davey's existence changed the careers of Ernie Irvan and Dale Jarrett? Would he have been NASCAR's veteran voice of experience?

Most of all, would he recognize Hueytown? So much has remained the same, but so much has changed.

Neil Bonnett's auto dealership no longer bears his name. Bobby Allison's shop, where Davey once swept the floors, now manufactures high-tech wheelchairs. Even Davey's beautiful mansion, with its own pond and views of the surrounding mountainside, is up for sale.

It's almost as perhaps it's time to whitewash some of the memories away, and that's literally the case on the billboard outside Allison Bonnett Memorial Park, where the white paint almost completely obscures the blue stars for each of the Alabama Gang, including the phrase "Memories of Champions."

Back at the cemetery, two dogs -- a chocolate-colored pointer and a brown and white spaniel -- appear without warning from the brush, circle the area around Davey's grave, sound a series of warning barks and growls, then disappear just as quickly into the woods.

That's obviously a signal that I've overstayed my welcome. So it's back past the steel-pipe factory, the Jet Pep station, the restaurant, the football stadium and back up Allison Bonnett Memorial Highway heading toward Birmingham.

If there are seven stages of grief, Hueytown has reached acceptance.

The opinions expressed are solely of the writer.