Read Online The Purple Decades by Tom Wolfe - Free Book Online

truck for his car, a white Dodge, number 3, a big crew in white coveralls, huge stacks of racing tires, a Dodge P.R. man, big portable cans of gasoline, compressed air hoses, compressed water hoses, the whole business. Herb Nab, Freddie Lorenzen’s chief mechanic, comes over and sits down on his haunches and Junior sits down on his haunches and Nab says:
    â€œSo Junior Johnson’s going to drive a Ford.”
    Junior is switching from Dodge to Ford mainly because he hasn’t been winning with the Dodge. Lorenzen drives a Ford, too, and the last year, when Junior was driving the Chevrolet, their duels were the biggest excitement in stock car racing.
    â€œWell,” says Nab, “I’ll tell you, Junior. My ambition is going to be to outrun your ass every goddamned time we go out.”
    â€œThat was your ambition last year,” says Junior.

    â€œI know it was,” says Nab, “and you took all the money, didn’t you? You know what my strategy was. I was going to outrun everybody else and outlast Junior, that was my strategy.”
    Setting off his California modern sport shirt and white ducks Junior has on a pair of twenty-dollar rimless sunglasses and a big gold Timex watch, and Flossie, his fiancée, is out there in the infield somewhere with the white Pontiac, and the white Dodge that Dodge gave Junior is parked up near the pit area—and then a little thing happens that brings the whole thing right back there to Wilkes County, North Carolina, to Ingle Hollow and to hard muscle in the clay gulches. A couple of good old boys come down to the front of the stands with the screen and the width of the track between them and Junior, and one of the good old boys comes down and yells out in the age-old baritone raw curdle yell of the Southern hills:
    â€œHey! Hog jaw!”
    Everybody gets quiet. They know he’s yelling at Junior, but nobody says a thing. Junior doesn’t even turn around.
    â€œHey, hog jaw! …”
    Junior, he does nothing.
    â€œHey, hog jaw, I’m gonna get me one of them fastback roosters, too, and come down there and get you!”
    Fastback rooster refers to the Ford—it has a “fastback” design—Junior is switching to.
    â€œHey, hog jaw, I’m gonna get me one of them fastback roosters and run you right out of here, you hear me, hog jaw!”
    One of the good old boys alongside Junior says, “Junior, go on up there and clear out those stands.”
    Then everybody stares at Junior to see what he’s gonna do. Junior, he don’t even look around. He just looks a bit dead serious.
    â€œHey, hog jaw, you got six cases of whiskey in the back of that car you want to let me have?”
    â€œWhat you hauling in that car, hog jaw!”
    â€œTell him you’re out of that business, Junior,” one of the good old boys says.
    â€œGo on up there and clean house, Junior,” says another good old boy.
    Then Junior looks up, without looking at the stands and smiles a little and says, “You flush him down here out of that tree—and I’ll take keer of him.”
    Such a howl goes up from the good old boys! It is almost a blood curdle—
    â€œGoddamn, he will , too!”
    â€œLord, he better know how to do an about-face hisself if he comes down here!”
    â€œGoddamn, get him, Junior!”

    â€œWhooeeee!”
    â€œMother dog!”
    â€”a kind of orgy of reminiscence of the old Junior before the Detroit money started flowing, wild combats d’honneur up-hollow—and, suddenly, when he heard that unearthly baying coming up from the good old boys in the pits, the good old boy retreated from the edge of the stands and never came back.
    Later on Junior told me, sort of apologetically, “H’it used to be, if a fellow crowded me just a little bit, I was ready to crawl him. I reckon that was one good thing about Chillicothe.
    â€œI don’t want to pull any more time,”