Iowa track's debut recalls the state's greatest racer (cont'd)

Harlan, a town of 4,500 people known for its low crime rate and located about halfway between Des Moines and Omaha, Neb., was home to both Lund and Beauchamp. But it was Lund whose larger-than-life antics left the bigger impression, for better or worse. Locals still tell the story about how Tiny, never one to shy away from a fight, decked a teacher in high school and was held back a year. There's another tale, likely more myth than reality, involving Lund riding his motorcycle up the steps of the high school and through the hallways. As the NASCAR community would discover years later, Lund was a man of extremes. He could be frighteningly violent and endearingly caring, all within a matter of minutes.

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Jensen remembers one such outburst after a sports-car race in Daytona. Lund spotted two men carrying quart-sized beer bottles, one of whom discarded his empty not into a trash can but onto pit road. Lund grabbed the man by the trousers and tossed him into the glass, ordering him to clean it up. "Open your mouth," he told the other man, "and you're going to be down there picking it up, too." After it was all over, Lund had his arms around both men, lecturing them in a fatherly way about cut tires.

"I thought the world of him," said Jensen, who raced with and against Lund. "I've always said this, there were times I could have killed him, but he'd give you the shirt off his back."

Lund started out racing motorcycles, but after a series of injuries -- including a broken arm suffered while racing a factory Harley-Davidson -- his mother made him switch to cars. Tiny raced anything on four wheels, from jalopies to roadsters to midgets to stock cars. Nobody in Harlan, Jensen thought, had any idea that Lund was as good as he would turn out to be. He was too reckless, too much of a hellion, the locals believed. Lund finally went south in 1955, making his NASCAR debut with a 25th-place result in West Memphis, Ark. He went on to win five times in NASCAR's premier series, and 41 events on the lower-rung Grand American tour. He might have won more often had he not had such a fierce independent streak, which scared away the more successful factory-backed teams. Even so, when NASCAR named its 50 greatest drivers in association with the sport's 50th anniversary in 1998, Lund was on the list.

And yet, Lund and his hometown had a complicated relationship that endures to this day. At the height of his career, Lund was so famous that waiters in a Japanese restaurant recognized him from his tour of Japan. He even made a cameo in an Elvis Presley film. Yet many back in Harlan, Jensen said, seemed to resent the fact that Lund had become famous, wondering how this kid who would rather hunt, fish or race than work was able to make it big. For years, there was a Tiny Lund Museum in downtown Harlan, and a Tiny Lund Festival every fall. The museum featured many of Lund's helmets, driving suits and trophies, and according to former director Faye Jacobsen attracted a steady stream of visitors. The festival included the local drivers showing off their cars on the courthouse square, a parade, a festival queen and even an essay contest. Lund's widow, Wanda, and son, Chris, often attended. Bobby Allison even made an appearance one year.

But Jacobsen and her husband Ron were running the festival and the museum primarily out of their own pockets. As Jacobsen tells it, they went to the town to ask for funding, ran into some resistance from council members who didn't like auto racing, and were denied. The festival was canceled. The museum was closed, the pieces in the collection sold off. Had Lund's reputation finally caught up with him? "He was such an ornery devil," Jacobsen said, "that people thought him no good."

Ornery, yes, but in a manner many of his NASCAR friends came to love. He was a consummate practical joker, once warning Buddy Baker that there were alligators in Lake Moultrie before they set off for a swim, and then surreptitiously diving underwater to yank on his friend's leg. There were many tears shed after Lund's death in a vicious T-bone accident at Talladega in 1975. A driver as large as Lund, in cars that didn't feature the reinforced sides or contoured seats of today's vehicles, didn't have much of a chance. You have to wonder what Lund was doing in that race to begin with, given that he hadn't made a Cup start in more than two years, and that the car owner he was racing for hadn't fielded an entry on NASCAR's top level since 1969.

Jensen didn't have a good feeling about it, either. "I felt bad, because he went back down there by himself," he said. "He told this guy he'd race for him. I even talked about going down. I'm glad I didn't, but I hate it that he was down there by himself. They flew his body back in Bill France's jet. I couldn't believe he got killed. He raced for so long, he did that for so long, I kind of got over him ever getting hurt."

Jensen attended Lund's funeral in South Carolina, along with a host of NASCAR luminaries. Back in Iowa, Jensen surmises that outside of those who attend the annual memorial race, there aren't many people who remember Lund or where he came from. But the big man would clearly relish the idea of a major NASCAR race in his home state, his friend said. In a way, it was racers like Lund and tracks like Shelby County Speedway that laid the groundwork for Saturday's Nationwide Series event. And when the engines fire over at the new Iowa Speedway, somewhere Tiny Lund will be smiling.

The opinions expressed are solely those of the writer.