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Nudging’s Nothing New: Before There Was “The Intimidator” There Was “Pops”. By Michael Smith
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Dale Earnhardt’s recent resurgence brings to mind another great driver who wasn’t afraid to bump and rub in order to win races. While fans who are new to NASCAR racing might think Earnhardt originated the notion of bumping, or even wrecking an opponent on the way to the checkered flag, there are some who remember the name of Curtis Turner. Turner wasn’t called “Pops” because other drivers looked up to him as a father figure. Curtis Turner, along with his party buddy Joe Weatherly, was called Pops because of his trick of “popping” against the side of opponent’s cars to nudge his way past.
Curtis Turner was born in Floyd, Virginia in 1924. His family owned a lumber business and, by the time he was 20 he was making his own way in the same arena, amassing the first of many fortunes he would gain and lose during his lifetime. For whatever reason, when he wasn’t shepherding his lumber business, Turner ran with local moon shiners (a “shine clan,” as he called them). As entertainment, the moon shiners would occasionally run auto races through the backwoods and eventually Turner got around to entering a 1940 Ford in one of the events. In the race, Turner drove like a madman, putting his car in places it shouldn’t have fit, eventually crashing before the midway point. Nevertheless, the crowd cheered his efforts and he left the event with a will to return and win. And win he did. Turner repaired his damaged Ford and returned the next week to win the event.
Turner went on to race modified stocks around the south, claiming hundreds of victories before winning his first official NASCAR event on the unusual circular track at Langhorne, Pennsylvania in September 1949. The following year, Turner won three races and claimed the pole for the inaugural running of the Southern 500 at Darlington. During the 1956 season, Turner claimed victory in 22 out of 43 convertible races and he dominated the Southern 500 to claim one of his biggest victories.
As Turner’s driving talents grew, so did his reputation around the garage. He continued to put his car places it wouldn’t fit, bending sheet metal if necessary, to obtain the desired results. During the 1958 Rebel 300 at Darlington, Turner and Joe Weatherly traded paint in factory supplied Fords. Ford executives reportedly fumed in the grandstand as the cars banged hard against one another. Turner and Weatherly took to calling these door-to-door altercations “pops” and one another “Pops” Weatherly and “Pops” Turner, and eventually everyone in the garage became “pops.” Curtis Turner and Joe Weatherly became best of friends and party buddies.
Once, at a small track, a local citizen bet Turner $100 that he couldn’t lead the first lap. Turner took the bet and, starting near the sixth spot, he plowed his way through the competitors to cross the start-finish line first on the opening lap. According to the story, that was all Turner led that day, because the car was too torn up to be a contender. Turner collected his $100 from the dumbfounded spectator and that was all that mattered.
At a race in Darlington Joe Weatherly passed Turner for the lead and, fuming, Turner beat the daylights out of both cars in order to get past to regain the lead. (Remember that the two were teammates.) An angry Ralph Moody warned Turner that if he beat and banged on Weatherly again, the pit crew wouldn’t work on the car during the next pit stop. Well, Turner continued to bash into Weatherly and, sure enough on the next pit stop, the crew sat down and didn’t lift a finger to work on Turner’s Ford. Furious, Turner returned to the track and bounced the car right into a cement wall, fairly well demolishing it in the process. But that wasn’t to be the end of Turner’s retaliation. The following day Turner showed up at the Holman-Moody shop in a new Cadillac and rammed the monstrous car though the rollup garage doors, backed out and drove away.
Turner didn’t always come out on top in his scrapes with other drivers. Once, after putting rival Lee Petty into the wall, Turner sat on a fence drinking liquor from a bottle after the race. Lightly tapping a newspaper against his leg, Lee approached Turner and said, “I want to talk to you.” Then, without further niceties, Petty swung the newspaper and clobbered Turner upside the head. The newspaper concealed a wrench and Lee Petty’s point was made.
Turner and Weatherly were so hard on rental cars, often racing them against each other, that some rental agencies refused to rent cars to the pair. It wasn’t uncommon for a rental car to end up in the swimming pool during a Curtis Turner shindig and at Daytona Weatherly and Turner maintained a “party pad” for entertaining friends during speed weeks. Another story involves a late night contest in a motel parking lot in which the contestants were to see who could drive the fastest in reverse. Someone secretly painted black a line of telephone pole-sized parking posts along one edge of the lot and, in the dark, it wasn’t long before the contest ended with a crash and the sound of broken glass and bent chrome as someone backed in to the camouflaged posts at high speed.
Despite his recklessness on the ground, Turner also managed to acquire a license to pilot airplanes and, by most accounts he was an accomplished (if overly daring) pilot. There are a number of legends and folktales surrounding Turner’s exploits as a pilot. During one flight, he landed on the main street of a small southern town to purchase adult beverages and, in the process of taking off, he tore out power lines or traffic lights (depending on the version you choose to believe). At any rate, a very real FAA representative was standing by at Charlotte to confiscate Turner’s pilot’s license at the terminus of his journey.
During another flight, Turner had teammate and drinking buddy Joe Weatherly and a journalist on board. With Weatherly in the backseat, Turner leaned over to the journalist and whispered, “Watch me scare the….out of Joe.” With that, Turner cut the power to one engine and feathered the propeller. An excited Little Joe brought the problem to Turner’s attention, to which Turner replied by secretly cutting the power to the other engine. Weatherly became more and more agitated as the plane spiraled down in a shallow glide until Turner restored power to the engines, all the while forgetting that he was also scaring the daylights out of the poor journalist.
Curtis Turner seemed to operate just inside the law, living for the day and letting the chips fall wherever they might and his recklessness eventually ran him afoul of NASCAR founder Big Bill France. Turner the businessman envisioned a Daytona-like super speedway in North Carolina and, in 1959 broke ground on what would become Charlotte (Lowe’s) Motor Speedway. A myriad of construction overruns, including the fact that the speedway was situated over solid rock that had to be blasted out, resulted in the project going deeply into debt. Desperate, Turner approached Teamster’s Union boss Jimmy Hoffa for a loan. The $800,000 load came with strings attached: in exchange for the loan, Turner had to organize NASCAR drivers into a union.
The unionizing effort was a success initially as Turner and fellow driver Tim Flock teamed up to sign a number of NASCAR’s top drivers, however Big Bill did not sit idly by while the drivers organized and, armed with a pistol at one point, Big Bill declared that no union driver would ever race on a NASCAR-sanctioned track. The unionizing effort folded like a cheap suit and both Curtis Turner and Tim Flock received lifetime banishment from NASCAR.
The punishment was devastating for Turner, who had been driving for the legendary factory backed team of Holman-Moody. Ford Motor Company found Turner work in other racing series including USAC. Ironically, when Ford began its own boycott of NASCAR in 1966, Big Bill France lifted the ban on Turner and Flock in an effort to bring back big name drivers to his sport. Turner came back while Flock flatly refused.
Curtis Turner went on to win a few more races following his return to the NASCAR fold, but he never fully recaptured his pre-ban glory. Turner scored 17 wins in his career but one has to ask how many more victories he might have scored were it not for the banishment.
Curtis Turner’s untimely death is somewhat fitting, given the way he lived. On October 4, 1970, Turner’s plane, with he and professional golfer Clarence King on board, plowed into a mountainside near Punxsutawny, Pennsylvania. One theory behind the accident is that Turner, as was his habit, had set the autopilot and was catching forty winks when the plane augured in.
In the end, when it comes to the cause of his death, we’ll never really know for sure, but we do know that Curtis Turner set the standard when it comes to trading paint and bending sheet metal. So, when you see “The Intimidator” nudging, or being nudged, remember that like it or not, nudging’s nothing new and spare a thought for “Pops” Turner.
Copyright 2000. Michael Smith
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