Shop Acquisition and Final Reflections

rings again. Hello. Uh is this Jimmy? I said, "Yeah." He said, "Goddamn it. This is Buddy Baker. Do you want me Do you want to drive my car or don't you?" He says, "Baker, I'll be over there immediately." He said, "Bring a damn seat and get your ass over here." Buddy gave me my first ride and we went to do and the motor broke, but we were running good. But he gave me my last 15 races of the year and that got me in. Then I come over here and uh Austelin rented this shop. Austral was in here and I was I was working with Rod Austerlin. What a crook. Nhard warned me about it. Dale Nhard did and uh that's a whole another story. They're the ones that had all the equipment. They had expensive equipment. But as the rent kept going and the checks kept bouncing, uh we were out of money. And he he was he was he owed me a lot of money, a lot of money. and I ended up acquiring everything from him in in this building, all the equipment, the whole nine yards. And that's what got me back into my bush days. Do you think you would have done that had you not absorbed all of Austral stuff? Yeah, I didn't like driving for him. Uh I was I was wanting to own my own cup team, but I go back into bush racing because then at the time uh I drove for him. Uh, some people inquired about me driving for them, you know, and and I uh I I confided in Dale and and Dale said, "You need to you need to drive drive that car." So, he told me it was one of the smartest crew chiefs there was, Travis Carter. So I sat down with Travis and Junior Johnson that day and uh they slid a piece of paper across with how much it was and I was like son of a lot a lot of money real lot of money and I was like okay I'll drive for you. So that got me back you know even though I didn't drive for Austin the last two races I acquired all this and then I started driving for Travis the banquet car and we ran really really well but the motors just kept blowing up. Uh, we had a chance of winning in Bristol. I remember when I begged him to hire a new motorb Elliot came and Harold Elliot um was working with us and they wouldn't listen to Harold. Harold was a hell of an engine builder and uh I remember we we had Bristol one there. We Oh my god. and the throttle linkage broke. And Travis was so tight that he had this little all thread on the throttle linkage and it broke. And and Harold Harold said to me, he said, "I can't believe that son of a he said that he didn't have a good throttle rod." He said, "I knew when I was…