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Early Family Life and Racing Origins

5:58
34:42
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At 5:58 in

Richard Petty Shows Us His Childhood House! (Prohibition Era Secret Hiding Spots!)

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What happens here

Petty recounts his early life, including living in the house for about a year with his wife Lynda before their son Kyle was born. They later moved into a house trailer in the front yard and eventually a brick house nearby. He describes the origin of Petty Enterprises, noting that his father, Lee Petty, began working on race cars in the backyard when Richard was 11 or 12 years old. He mentions that the property always had everything needed, including a gas pump, and that they would continually add garages each year. Petty emphasizes that the house has never settled due to the original builders waiting for the wood to dry before applying plaster, a testament to its construction quality. He also points out the engraved names of family members and dates in the cement outside, a tradition that continues to this day.

Goal: Detail Richard Petty's early married life, the beginnings of Petty Enterprises, and the property's unique historical markers.

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then the front bedroom was where we slept. And so we didn't have no heat up there. So we cut a hole in the floor for the heat to go out of the up into the living room. The bedroom was still cold, but the living room was there. Yeah, we saw that. And we're like, "Oh, you can see right down there." Just cut a little hole. No fan or nothing. It just all the heat went up. So it worked out good. So we lived we lived here for a year and Kyle was born and then we bought a house trailer I guess what we call him then and put it out in the front yard and we lived there for I don't know a couple of years and then we built the the brick house that's over beside here and moved into that. How old were you when you remember your dad starting to work on race cars out back? Well, when when it first started, I was like 12 years old, 11 or 12 years old. First race we run, I was 11. And that was in June, and I turned 12 in July. So, basically, I started working on race cars when I was 12 years old. Wow. So, working on them ever since. Hear a car fire up and run outside to go see what was going on. Yeah. You know, we had everything here. The garage was right there. I know you seen the floor. That's original floor and all that stuff. And we had our own gas pump and you know we we had everything here. It was it was high buck for that time. I guess everybody had a race car. It was all in the backyard anyway. So we had a pretty nice backyard. Yeah, you did. It was pretty awesome setup. Seeing all the the evolution of the started with the one building and then it it's like really hard to follow cuz there's so many of them. When we first started, u my mother mother and daddy lived here and we moved to another place and uh so we had the original garage and then we started building garages every year, you know, 56 they built a garage, 57 they built a garage, 58 and my mother told my daddy, don't put it in the front yard, you know, as long as it's in the backyard. And then uh you know after a period of year we run out of room over there and we started building down there where these u buildings are there used to be a big garden. That's where back back in the day everybody had a big garden cuz and then they had a chicken house out back. I mean you know down right in the corner of the woods there had a hog pin for the hogs. So you know people were self-sufficient at that time. They went to the store to buy something. I don't know what they all but any they add all the ingredients the…

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