The Cherokee Speedway In Gaffney on Saturday Night
Let's go racing Thunder Bombers
The Cherokee Speedway in Gaffney, South Carolina is a 3/5 mile dirt oval stock car track built in the 1950s. In the early 1990s, a woman I worked with used to head out there weekends with her husband and I would enjoy tagging along.
He raced in the “Bomber Class”. This was the lowest division and everybody drove old stock Chevy Novas. Now the Bomber class had some rules:
- Cars must be strictly stock with NO modifications
- All cars must have a windshield. Must have a steering wheel.
- The car’s interior must be completely gutted except the dash and front seat. Dash can be removed also if you wish.
- The track can purchase the winning car for $2,000.00 after the event, less fuel cell (if used), fire extinguisher, racing seat and harness system. If the winning driver refuses the claim, he/she loses all prize money and second place will be declared the winner under the same conditions.
I never saw anyone get their car purchased…I mean two thousand bucks! That's a chunk of change.
He would work on the car with his sidekick Dogbite. By coincidence, I took care of this gentleman’s wife in the clinic. I told her I knew her husband, hoping I would find out his Christian name.
“You mean Dogbite?” she said.
The pits were “closed to all women and children.” I would sit in the back of their pick-me-up truck in the infield with the Mrs. to watch the races. Some of the trucks had elaborate ladder systems in the bed to get you up higher for a better view.
One time there was a family of beefy beer-fed gals in the pickup next door and while they were climbing up to the top platform with more beer the whole structure fell over. Imagine a miniature Eiffel tower. The ground was muddy and they took the fall well. They were back up in two shakes.
In February on cold nights, folks would set rusty barrels full of wood ON THE TRACK and pour gasoline on the wood. Cars would race past these burning barrels and no calamities ever happened. If you leaned on the infield fence the fire kept your hands warm.
Once my friend got into the old Nova it was mighty bare, just a seat, a wheel and a small switch to start the car. Far as I could tell these babies topped out at 50 MPH.
I say that because they never topped out. The race would start, then there would be a major pile-up on the second turn and the caution flag would come out. So would all the drivers and half the crowd. There would be a melee on the track with a lot of yelling and fat men slipping in the mud. No one was seriously hurt and the drivers would be gathered up like ornery goats and stuffed back in the cars.
Restart…Second Turn…Crash…Fight…Repeat. Check out this YouTube Video. It Shows the “Thunder Bomber” Class that was much faster but you get the idea. The track has been fixed up a lot in the 25 years since I was there. Don’t want you to think it was this fancy.
The main event was the Late Model Class. These were real stock cars capable of well over one hundred MPH, racing nose to nose on this tiny track. A couple of things. Around 1990 they tried to make the track a half-mile oval. This created an odd dirt plateau above the second turn. A car could go up there and “hide” then roar down out of nowhere. Man, that was something to see.
As you can see, the track had no safety features. If a Late Model lost control it was on the fence, over the fence in the crowd, or over the fence in the woods. The woods ran down to the Interstate to Spartanburg. A time or two I know about those Late Models ended up scooting down the Interstate.
Racing at the Cherokee Speedway was a heck of a lot of fun. I think the drivers and car owners had a blast. The cars got in a lot of wrecks but there were very few injuries. I don't live near Gaffney anymore but I hope to get a chance to see racing there again before too long. Like the announcer says in the YouTube Video, my racing name is ‘Possum.
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