D.I. COLUMNIST
On the Road
with Van Abernethy
I
f the sweet smell of burn-
out smoke suddenly begins to
mix with the unmistakable, sa-
vory aroma of boiled turkey necks
and Cajun crawfish piled high on a
plate, it can only mean one thing:
It’s late February in Mississippi and
time once again for Hub City Drag-
way’s legendary event most people
refer to simply as “Fat Tuesday”. This
marquee event, which eventually
grew into a five-day-long throng
that coincides with the Mardi Gras
gathering so famously celebrated
in nearby New Orleans, found its
way to Hub City Dragway roughly
22 years ago, when local racers (and
eventual Street Outlaws stars) Jerry
and Darryl Bird approached track
owners Ralph Abraham and Todd
Nace, along with then-track
manager, Ricky Stanbro, and
insisted that a Tuesday race
during Mardi Gras would be
the biggest thing since the cas-
sette player!
While the Bird brothers
seemed certain it would be
the “end-all” event, they were
about the only ones, accord-
ing to Stanbro, who couldn’t
quite wrap his head around
the whole concept. “I remem-
ber very well when they first
brought up the idea, I kept
saying, ‘Seriously...a race
on a Tuesday?’” After much
skepticism, the first Fat Tues-
day gathering happened a
few months later, sometime
around 1994, and honestly, it
blew everyone’s expectations
completely away, only it didn’t
actually begin on Tuesday. Instead,
that’s when the event ended. The
idea way back when was to kick
things off on a Saturday with various
classes and eliminators, and then
just keep the thing going all the way
through Tuesday.
Though the weekend crowd was
as heavy as expected, no one was
really prepared for the traffic jam
and interstate gridlock that Tues-
day’s grand finale presented. “I hon-
estly couldn’t believe it!” remembers
Stanbro, who’s amazingly been in
attendance of every Fat Tuesday
event since its inception.
It didn’t take long before the
celebration of exotic foods and
other various indulgenc-
es became commonplace
during this remarkable
five-day-long caucus. As
a native North Carolinian
I realize that “exotic foods”
mean different things to
different people, but for
the locals in Mississippi a
boiled turkey neck is a staple snack!
“It’s not the best part of the turkey,
but they’re awfully good to nibble
on with just the right amount of
spices,” explains Stanbro. I had hon-
estly never seen the neck of a turkey
being boiled at a drag strip until I
visited Hub City Dragway in Feb-
ruary. Giant pots of crawfish were
being cooked to perfection as well.
After that, people began standing Chad Copeland, are care-
ful to keep the traditions
and celebrations alive and
well at Hub City. Upwards
of 5,000 strands of Mardi
Gras beads are purchased
by the track and thrown
into the packed grand-
stands for people to wear,
then keep as a souvenir to mark the
occasion. It’s a lot to take in, espe-
cially if you happen to be attending
this event for the very first time, as
I was a few months ago. For the
most recent running of this amaz-
ing 120-hour-long spectacle, things
got started on Friday night with test
and tune and a gamblers race. On
Saturday was a no-prep event for
Big Tire, Small Tire, True Street and
in long lines to buy giant pieces of
fried chicken on a stick. Then came
the powdered-sugar-infused funnel
cakes, another Mississippi tradition.
Imagine all this, plus drag racing for
five days straight!
This event has raised the eye-
brows of many people over the years,
including Pro Stock legend Roy Hill.
“I used to work for Roy many years
ago as a driving instructor, and in
2003 Roy came here to Hub City for
Fat Tuesday and he made the com-
ment that this wasn’t really a race,
but more like a state of mind!” Stan-
bro laughingly recalled. Current
track owners Chad Waldrup and
Scott Taylor, along with manager 6.00 Index – all while competing on
a racing surface that was no more
prepared than Bourbon Street in
New Orleans! On Sunday, it was
the polar opposite of the previous
two days, when Tyler Crossnoe
came in and prepped the track for
a completely different criterion of
competition.
As often is the case at this event,
there’s a completely different group
of racers that show up from day to
day, based upon their particular
track surface preference. Tuesday’s
finale showcased small block nitrous
cars racing on a prepped surface,
along with 28 Extreme class en-
tries...and with nothing showing
on the scoreboards but a win light.
It was quite a show! True Street and
6.00 Index also raced on Tuesday
in front of the largest crowd of the
whole event, which is the remark-
able tradition of Fat Tuesday. “It’s
just a big, fun time!” echoes Stanbro.
As with any track I visit in my
travels, I’m always curious about
the early history, and Stanbro is a
walking encyclopedia for all things
Hub City. According to Ricky, the
track was originally an airfield be-
fore being converted to a quarter-
mile dragstrip in 1954. Dick Green-
wood, the track’s founder, owned it
until sometime around 1981, when
it was purchased by Jerry Mooney,
who eventually sold it to its cur-
rent owners, Abraham and Nace,
back in 1993. The track was
completely redone in 1994,
with a multi-million-dollar
restoration. A decade later,
Hub City Dragway famously
hosted the first ADRL race in
history, when series founder
Kenny Nowling kicked off his
fledging eighth-mile Pro Mod
club at the Mississippi facility.
The lowest point in the track’s
history came just over a year
later when Hurricane Katrina
completely destroyed the fa-
cility in 2005. Like most ev-
eryone else in the region, Hub
City Dragway rebuilt the best
it could and forged ahead.
With the warm Gulf Coast
climate, the track is open
virtually year-round and
typically operates four days a
week with various events. Hub
City even partnered with Mike Mu-
rillo of Street Outlaws fame in 2016
and launched an extremely popular
series called the Dirty South No-
Prep Racing series, which tours in
multiple states, but also holds races
at Hub City, where the whole thing
got started.
All things considered, Hub City
Dragway provides a wide array of
racing entertainment, but if it’s
your heart’s desire to bite into a
spicy crawfish or nibble on a boiled
turkey neck while wearing colorful
beads around your own neck, you
must save the date in late February
for Fat Tuesday. Believe me, it’s an
experience you won’t soon forget!
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