Introduction to Spartanburg's NASCAR Legacy

If you took a time machine back to 1970 and wanted to go to the hub of stock car racing in America, there's a very good chance that time machine would plop you in Spartanberg, South Carolina. Spartanberg was the home to many legends back in the day, including Bud Moore, David Peterson, Cotton Owens, Buck Baker, Mario Rossi, Rex White, and many others. Today, we're going to give you the whole history tour of Spartanberg and where the legends were, where the cars were built. And we found the perfect guy to do that. Perry Allen Wood grew up in Spartanberg with the Moore family. pretty much. Perry co-authored books with Bud Moore and Bud's son, Greg Moore, both of which I have read and were fantastic. We'd like to dedicate this video to Greg Moore, who passed away 5 days after we recorded it. Greg is actually how I got connected with Perry in the first place. So, without Greg, this video does not exist. And I just absolutely loved growing up in Spartanberg with all the race teams and and we stayed very busy visiting race teams. My father was a city policeman. He knew everybody in town. He should have been the mayor. Daddy's favorite was Bud Moore. You know, he would visit with Bud and I would sit in a race car and play and I would pretend I was Buck Baker, but I'd look on the door and it said Buck Baker. Bud Moore had three shops here. The middle one isn't here anymore, but next to it was a beauty parlor. My mother would go there to get her hair done and drop me off at Bud Moore's so I could play, you know, as a babysitter. And I would they would be, you know, working on the race cars. That was back in the Jack Smith and Joe Weatherly and Buck Baker, those days. And I'd play in their race cars. And not once, not one single time did anybody ever tell me, "Don't touch that. Don't get in there. Don't do this." I mean, it was just it was Disneyland to me. I mean, it was much better than Disneyland. Next corner after we crossed Asheville Highway, Cotton Owens. He lived in the house here and uh his shop, he had several shops once again, you know, scattered all over his property, but the main shop I stopped in yesterday and it's a it's an active uh repair shop now. And I talked to Jesus and Jesus said, "Sure, come on in. I wish I could have I could clean it up in time." And I said, "Don't worry about it. It looks fine like this." That's where Cotton Owens lived in that White House there. Yes. And all these outuildings here were