The Great American Gamble by Joe Menzer

Author:Joe Menzer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Published: 2010-05-10T16:00:00+00:00

Parsons was the one who set television down the path that eventually would lead through Australia, agreeing to add the unwieldy version of the camera on board his car during the 1979 Daytona 500, even though he knew it might ultimately cost him on the track. The selflessness was typical of the affable Parsons, who later would go on to make a name for himself during a broadcasting career that lasted long after his driving career ended. His story is one of the best NASCAR ever has had, and deserves being told in detail again.

Parsons was a native, appropriately enough, of Parsonsville, North Carolina. When Benny was a child, work in North Carolina Appalachia was difficult to find, and Harold Parsons, Benny’s father, eventually left the area along with wife Hazel to find employment in Detroit. It was a move that would later pay off for Benny’s racing career, but as a boy it saddened him. He told his parents that he did not want to move and they agreed to let him stay behind in the care of Julia Parsons, his great-grandmother.

They lived in a clapboard house built in 1890. There was no electricity or running water—or at least no conventional running water. When he was nine, Benny climbed the hill behind the house and dug a ditch that allowed him to at least run a gravity-fed water line into the home. “We dug a trench and built a reservoir and we did have some running water then. But there was no pump, so there were no toilet facilities. We had an outhouse,” he said.

The young Parsons intensely admired his great-grandmother, and he kept busy raising chickens and pigs. He also farmed an acre of land and tended to a cow that provided much-needed milk. If coffee, sugar, or salt were required, Benny would trade eggs for those “luxuries,” which is what he and Julia Parsons considered them.

It was a spartan existence, but it was all Parsons knew. And he remained happy, coming to believe in later years that those hardships helped shape his character. “It was the way life was for me at the time,” he said years later. “I didn’t know any different. You know, I guess in a perfect world it would have been different for me. But it’s not a perfect world. I may have turned out better off because of it.”

Benny’s parents made certain that he knew they had not abandoned him, staying in touch by telephone and letters. Shortly after he completed the gravity-fed water line into the house in the summer of 1950, Benny and his great-grandmother excitedly left for Detroit to visit Benny’s parents. That opened young Benny’s eyes to a whole new world, one that included electricity, televisions, indoor plumbing, bathrooms, and cars.

Especially cars.

Harold Parsons had a love for cars and racing that he quickly passed on to Benny. Occasionally he would come home and take Benny to Hickory Motor Speedway or to the track in North Wilkesboro to see a race.

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