Moose Lodge 715 car show stokes memories of racing's past

Out on the vast parking lot of Moose Lodge 715 on Lakeside Drive, Harlow Reynolds and friends are building a time machine.

It will come and go on Saturday, and if the names Buck Duvall, Melvin Creasy, Squeaky Snead or Judge Lucian Shrader mean anything to you, you might want to be there.

Or even if they don’t, but you’d still like to learn something about what NASCAR and Central Virginia automobile culture was like during the 1950s and ’60s, Harlow Reynolds would be proud and pleased to have you show up. No charge, although the Moose members would be delighted to sell you food and drink.

There will be a car show, and a trio of bluegrass bands (Against the Grain, Country Fried Grass and Rollin’ Grass) and maybe even a few ghosts, if they can fit it into their schedule. Anybody seen (or not seen) Lee Petty, Richard’s daddy, lately? Or Bill Abbott, a former driver and car owner who just passed away? Or even the Judge himself, a man Reynolds calls “the Boss Hog of Amherst County”?

A point of geographical reality, though: Shrader Field, where a generation of drivers roared around an oval that was first red dirt and then asphalt, spraying noise and cinders into the humid night air, was not on Lakeside Drive. It was up in Madison Heights, a place where some of NASCAR’s long-forgotten stars like Lee Petty and Rex White and David Pearson and Fireball Roberts and Glenn Wood made occasional appearances.

They called it “stock car racing” then, and that was the whole point. These days, the focus is on the drivers, who have become heroes in space suits and ride in limousines. Back in the ’50s, they often drove around town in the same cars they raced, and the car was the star. One story is of Bobby Allison experiencing engine failure in practice for a race in some small southern burg, walking two blocks to the nearest auto dealer and buying another car off the showroom floor to race on Saturday night.

Reynolds offers another tale, a Shrader Field story, about how the second-place driver in a race took offense at the winner for nudging him off the track and into the wall en route. These days, such altercations have been known to trigger a verbal exchange and maybe even a shove or two. In the incident Reynolds described, the angry loser snatched up a convenient railroad tie and went after the winner with it.

“He was a big boy,” Reynolds recalled. Fortunately, the driver he was chasing was faster.

Harlow Reynolds would like to have re-created Shrader Field on the site of the real Shrader Field, but it now lies sleeping beneath John Hughes Motor Company and a Big Lots. Shrader, who combined a long career in the judiciary with considerable land holdings, passed away years ago.

So Reynolds figured he’d go for the vibe if not the authenticity, and they’ll be picking and grinning and tinkering and waxing those proud old fenders and bumpers by high noon Saturday. The organizers would also like to take a group photo of anyone involved in Shrader field racing in any way, even as a fan or the son or daughter of a driver or a car owner.

You might even find yourself, for a moment, in 1955. Say hi to Lee Petty.