D.I. COLUMNIST
On the Road
with Van Abernethy
I
’ve noticed how drag strips
that have existed for a half-
century or longer always seem
to have legendary tales attached to
them, which only adds to the folk-
lore, and Alabama’s Phenix Drag-
strip has one of my all-time favorite
anecdotes.
Back in 2014 when I first visited
this nitty-gritty eighth-miler, track
manager Brian Gordy told me about
the legend of “Old Man Stilwell,”
who turned out to be the worst
neighbor you could imagine.
Back in the early days when
the track was still operat-
ing as a quarter-mile facility,
racers had a difficult time
getting stopped and would
routinely end up stranded
past the shutdown on Old
Man Stilwell’s property.
It wasn’t long until Mr.
Stilwell saw an oppor-
tunity for revenue, so on
race days he began sitting
on his front porch with a
shotgun and anyone who
“went long” and ended up
on his property would get
charged a nominal fee to
retrieve their race car! “I
wasn’t there to see all this,
but they swear this actually
happened!” says Gordy. It
didn’t take too many dou-
ble-barrel encounters with
Old Man Stilwell before
the they quickly realized it
was easier to just shorten
the track to an eighth mile.
Gordy is a Phenix City,
Alabama, native who grew
up five minutes from the
racetrack but never even
stepped foot on the place
until he was out of high
school. It just so happened
that the track was short-
handed the night Gordy
happened by and they
asked him if he’d like to
run the ticket booth. “Af-
terwards, they told me
they had more work to do
on Monday if I wanted to come back,
so I did, and 20 years later I’m still
here!” he laughs. He accepted the
job as track manager a decade ago.
Although the track hasn’t been
sanctioned for quite a while, some
noteworthy NHRA races
used to take place here,
and I once came across
a special event flyer from
1974 that advertised Shirl
Greer, Paul Smith, Don
Garlits and Shirley Mul-
downey among many
others slated to appear.
Garlits and I have actually talked
at length about Phenix Dragstrip. “I
used to race there a lot since it was
close to Tampa where we were based. YouTube contains a
treasure trove of memo-
ries both old and new,
and I once stumbled
upon some vintage
footage recorded with
an 8mm video camera.
It features old gassers
thundering down the
quarter mile with no guardrails –
only a steep dirt bank on each side
of the track served as a retaining
wall. Present-day Phenix Dragstrip
I really liked the original owners –
they were really nice people,” Gar-
lits tells me. “Big Daddy” even has
a piece of the original asphalt from
Phenix Dragstrip in his drag racing
museum. has transitioned to a grudge track
mainly, but it also hosts plenty of
heads-up index racing. The legend-
ary Dixie Pro Stock series (later
called Dixie Pro Modified) used to
frequent this track until the series
disbanded a number of years ago.
If you ever visit this unique fa-
cility, you can’t help but notice the
old, broken-down school bus parked
near the concession stand...and
you’d be surprised by the amount
of joy that old thing has brought
to the local kids. “When we first
started constructing the playground,
somebody mentioned they had an
old school bus, so we had it hauled
out here and put in the playground,”
Gordy says.
The Phenix Dragstrip
playground also includes
beach sand, a tube slide
and giant tractor tires for
climbing, but the main at-
traction has always been
the hollowed-out school
bus, where kids can run and
shout and be as disruptive
as they please. “It’s hard to
believe that little kids could
be so destructive, but any-
thing we left in that bus the
kids have torn out!” Gordy
laughs.
Another unlikely at-
traction here is a beloved
food vendor affectionately
known as the “Chicken
Wrap Man.” Sometimes
people call the track just to
ask if he’s there. Gordy even
allows people to drop by the
track, surrender their driv-
er’s license at the front gate,
go buy dinner, promptly
return to the gate, pick up
their license and go home.
“The ‘Chicken Wrap Man’
is such a big deal that I’ve
actually put him on race fly-
ers before,” Gordy chuckles.
As a lover of great cuisine
myself, I had to see what all
the fuss was about and I can
honestly say that this dude
is a grilled chicken virtuoso!
In a perfect world this
spectacle goes on year-
round...the racing, the
chicken wrapping, the
continued demolition of
the school bus...all of it! “Hey, if the
weather is favorable (and sometimes
it is) we’ll do this stuff all year long!”
Gordy insists. Only in America,
right?
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52 | D r a g
I l l u s t r a t e d | DragIllustrated.com
Issue 145