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It was like he just couldn’t
wait to race.
Just a couple of days after New Year’s, Charlie “Red” Farmer was all
over his super dirt late model in the pits at the Talladega Short
Track’s Ice Bowl. In his Bass Pro Shops firesuit he looked V-shaped
– fit and athletic, if a tad stooped at the shoulder. He was
respectful of the crowd continually milling around him, but you
could tell his mind was grinding on tires, gear, and setup, just as
he has done – literally – since the sport first began.
Red Farmer, the enduring torch bearer of the infamous Alabama Gang
of racers, is simply some other kind of smoke. Having won several
hundred features, he said to Clyde Bolton, “Sometimes I get up in
the morning and my busted ribs and busted legs are sore and I wonder
whether it’s worth it.” That was in September of 1967. Today, at the
dawn of his fifty-ninth season behind the wheel, he muses “Well,
let’s see. I’ve got five or six metal screws in me holding parts
together, two rods in my back, no left knee cap, and a whole new
shoulder from last year. I can really make those airport scanners
light up. After a race the shoulder is pretty painful. But the Doc
says it’s healed enough so I can do no damage and that’s close
enough to perfect for me.”
Red’s passion for racing still simmers when he spins tales of racing
decades ago. But there’s a mischievous twinkle in his eye when asked
his actual age. That, Dick Berggren once quipped, “is one of the
great unanswered racing questions.” These days Red will say, “I
guess something in the mid to upper 70s might be OK. But, if you get
up to the 78 area, then you’d be talking about my Daddy.”
The more you contemplate them, the more incredible his career stats
become. He’s won 749 features. Consider for a minute that he might
have averaged, say, one win in every ten shows. That means he would
have run 7,500 times – that’s over 20 full years of race days. He is
a four-time NASCAR National Champion and a four-time NASCAR Most
Popular Driver. He is in the Dirt Track, International Motorsports,
Daytona Beach Stock Car, and Alabama Sports Halls of Fame. He may
well be the most-followed short track racer of all times, who also
happens to have won major superspeedway shows at Daytona and
Talladega.
He was even fast in open wheelers, but that early dalliance was not
to stick. “I had a real bad wreck over in Laurel, Mississippi way
back when. Broke that car right in half, and they brought home a
hospital bed for me to lie on for a while. One day my wife Joan
marched in with a hub, full of flowers. She laid it down on the
table and the law along with it. She said that was all that was left
of my supermodified. She had had it cut up. It’s been fenders ever
since. ‘It’s gotta have fenders, she said.’”
If Red has discovered the secret to eternal racing youth, he is not
giving anyone else the setup. He’ll just shrug his natural and
artificial shoulders and say that it’s because he is having a good
time. “I don’t let it overwhelm me. I go hunting and fishing – and
relax sometimes.” That doesn’t seem quite credible. At 31 Lee
Burdett is looking hot in the crate late model his grandfather Red
put together for him. He says Red is still consumed with racing.
Rest has never been a part of that Alabama Gang, known for the wired
Allisons and Neil Bonnett, as well as Red Farmer. Last year Red had
nine top tens at the Talladega Short Track, unarguably one of the
toughest late model bullrings in the country. Track record holder
Stacy Holmes says, “I just don’t know how he does it, what it is
about him. He has so much zip. But I have noticed that whenever he
is around my wife Lisa, he wants to kiss her.”
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Red Farmer at
Talladega’s Dirt Track in 2007 – Eric
Williams Photo |
Before he went out for
qualifying at the Ice Bowl, Red slipped into the cockpit with the
seamless moves of a teenage gymnast. Over 80 aluminum-blocked
entries signed up for the 24-car shootout. This was short track
racing at its ferocious best. Red knew he would have to stretch
every last muscle of his F-97 and that’s just what he did. He was
high, wide, and handsome until the left rear bead lock separated and
he limped to the pits, the first dropout. Later, starting last in
the B-Main, Red toured the third-mile red clay a couple of tenths
faster than the F-97 had any right to go. He was downstairs, rim
riding, and in the middle in relentless search of more bite. He was
so up on the wheel that almost every lap he polished the front and
backstretch walls with his right rear to gain maximum momentum. He
soldiered up to fifth, a couple of spots out of the feature field.
His disappointment after the race was an easy read. In fact, he
almost seemed a little defensive, kind of like an unproven driver
seeking approval. He told anyone who would listen about what had
happened with the bead lock and how he would have been in the show
had there been just one caution in the last qualifier. Pretty
remarkable for a, say, 77-year old.
Who can possibly say just how long this can go on? Back in 1967 Red
would go on to say to Clyde Bolton that he would retire “as soon as
anyone gets into the turn two lengths deeper than me.” Ask him today
if that has happened yet, and he snaps back “No way! I’m still going
in too deep. That’s my damn problem!” Ask competitors like a Shane
Clanton or a Donnie Peoples about him and they’re quick to agree
with an admiring smile. Meanwhile, Stacy Holmes not only worries
about Red in the pits with Lisa, but he has to deal with the F-97
out on the clay. “I often run behind Red in hot laps and he scares
the fool out of me. He’s so fast I dread when I am faced with trying
to pass him.”
Originally published by Dick Berggren's Speedway Illustrated, March 2007
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