Racing with the Outlaws

Part 3

by Dale Wilson
photos by Classic Motorsport Services and Dale Wilson
9/9/03

We continue with our tour of small southern outlaw tracks.

BAILEYTON

I ran at Baileyton (Alabama) Good Time Drag Strip once, in my old front-engine dragster, before the days of delay boxes and buy backs. I lost first round and loaded up and went back to my brother-in-law's house, which was five miles away. Fran and I always preferred Huntsville Dragway, an hour away. Maybe we liked the chicken better -- Huntsville was run by "Chicken Man," a KFC franchisee who built the track to keep his kid away from illegal street racing.

Baileyton is the place with the sign tacked on the tree that says you race at your own risk. It is located in a former cow pasture where there are still cows nearby, separated from the racing action by a barbed wire fence. Come late Saturday night in the summer, it seems like every kid in Cullman, 10 miles west, is at Baileyton, watching the drags. There's not much else to do in Cullman on a Saturday night except cruise.

It could -- and can -- handle the horsepower. My friend Bill Mullins has a photo of himself racing his Top Gas Dragster at Baileyton.

The moment we pulled into the track, back in the summer of 1986, a manic type of guy named Jerry Rhodes, who would later shoe alcohol Funny Cars on a Southern TA/FC circuit, came up to me and said, "We need you. We have a circuit of front-engine dragsters that race all over for good money. Come on." I told him I couldn't -- my dragster ran in the pitiful 6.20-second range, while his and his buddies' went 4.70s on a single stage of nitrous. That was fast in those days.

When we were there, in 1986, an outhouse served as the pit-side rest room, although it looked seldom used. It sat over a creek. The track was laid out in a reasonable enough fashion, my car launched okay and it hooked up fine. But by the time first round came, it was dark. Good thing I made two time runs and got the lay of the land because just as soon as I crossed the finish line on first round (I lost), I sailed into pure darkness at 112 mph. I made the turnoff, then headed back to the pits. All I could see were the track lights to the right, my big carb scoop in front of me, and blue-black ink to the left. I had to look to see where the cows were, because I sure couldn't see the return road. I followed them and the fence back. Occasionally, my flex plate would scrape asphalt -- the return road was humped up in some places.

Still, Baileyton was a fun place to race, and if you go there on a particular Saturday night, track owner Jack Walker might drag out his "Tater Hauler," a wheelstanding '51 Chevy pickup of which the "Little Red Wagon" has nothing on.