D.I. COLUMNIST
On the Road
with Van Abernethy
A
lbany, Georgia, is a small
town that’s famous for sev-
eral things, not the least of
which is being the birthplace of
famed musician Ray Charles. Per-
haps a lesser known fact is that Al-
bany is also home to over 600,000
pecan trees, easily making it the
pecan capital of the United States.
A good dose of drag racing his-
tory is also attached to this south-
west Georgia town positioned on
the banks of the Flint River, as it’s
also home to U.S. 19 Dragway, the
oldest still-active drag strip within
the Peach State. To be clear, what
would eventually become the rac-
ing surface was already in place
years earlier, only
it was originally a
vintage airstrip.
By the late
1950s, rumblings
about transition-
ing the airstrip
into a drag strip
were being heard,
and on Labor Day
weekend in 1960,
Albany, Georgia,
held its first drag
race on the for-
mer airstrip. To
this day, a piece
of the airstrip’s
history can be
experienced by
walking into the
drag strip’s large
concessions build-
ing, which once
served as an air-
plane hangar in
the 1950s.
When I first vis-
ited U.S. 19 Dragway in the summer
of 2012, Bobby Childs had just taken
over as track manager. He then took
an ownership role in the facility
shortly thereafter. Bobby was 56
years of age when he first decided to
give track managing a try after many
years of being a successful race pro-
moter and avid bracket racer.
I was eager to catch up with Bob-
by and hear how the last eight years
had been treating him. “Drag racing
will keep you young, but it will also
make an old man out of you!” he
declares. “Regardless, it keeps me
going and gives me something to do.”
He has a silent partner
with whom he co-owns
the track, although his
partner takes the silent
part pretty serious. “I
actually haven’t seen my
partner in about three
years!” Bobby laughs.
When I dropped by
most recently this past
February, I couldn’t help but marvel
at how involved Bobby is in practi-
cally every aspect of the track. While
certain classes are running, he en-
joys standing on the starting line
ready to activate the tree, all while
also serving as the announcer via
a wireless mic! Clipped to his shirt
collar is a walkie-talkie,
and if someone wants to
buy nitrous or fuel, he
might take a quick break
and run to the fuel shed,
after which, he’ll return
to the starting line to
resume announcing and
flipping switches!
I was also eager to
learn if Bobby still taught the adult
Sunday School class at his church.
“Of course!” he replies. Bobby Childs
can multitask like few others.
The track can be a real challenge,
too, especially when you consider
that southwest Georgia has a warm
climate, ideal for almost year-round
racing. “We don’t have much of an
offseason...maybe 4 weeks in some
cases,” Childs says.
The track offers all the popular
categories in bracket racing, index
and small-tire/small-block classes,
but Bobby really hit a home run a
few years ago when he introduced
a factory EFI class. “These are your
Camaros, Mustangs, Challengers,
Cadillacs, etc., with factory EFI on
them,” Bobby says. “What’s not al-
lowed is taking an older car and
outfitting it with an EFI motor. It
must come with it from the factory.”
After all the participants arrive
at the track, they must then go on
a 20-mile cruise, after which, they
report directly to the staging lanes
for the race without so much as rais-
ing the hoods. “This class is where
the real excitement is!” Bobby says.
He’s also introduced popular
classes called Hot Street and Daily
Driver, which can have carbureted
engines, but still must accomplish
the 20-mile cruise. There’s plenty
of test and tune, and grudge action
that goes down at U.S. 19 Drag-
way, as this month’s column photo
features the sleek Malibu of Cope
Butler, who was finding some good
bite on U.S. 19’s racing surface in
early February. Bobby himself is
even building a 2012 Camaro that
he plans to outfit with a 900-plus
cubic-inch motor for some grudge
racing in Albany.
While Childs has found success
with the newest classes he’s intro-
duced, nothing compares to the gold
he struck when he decided to allow
street cars to race each other in the
shutdown area of U.S 19 Dragway.
He named the shutdown area “Da
Hole” and he’s packed as many as
2,500 people down there to watch
street cars square off. “Racing down
in ‘Da Hole’ is all heads-up, no glue
on the track, no electronics, with
arm drop starts,” explains Childs.
He first introduced this attraction
three years ago, now holding about
three or four big meets a year. It may
have started as a novelty, but Childs
is now investing money to repave
the shutdown and expand it, so that
he may accommodate larger crowds.
“It’s a mad house down there!” here
insists.
Even while the track thrives, Bob-
by contemplates retirement from his
current gig as owner/operator. He
already retired from his day job at
UPS in 2017 after a 42-year career.
“I’m 64 years old now,” he says, “and
I recently became interested in rid-
ing Harley Davidson motorcycles
again, which is something I did as
a younger man, then took a 30-year
break from it.” On a recent trip to
Florida with his wife, he stumbled
upon a beautiful Electra Glide, and
it wound up going home with him.
These days he dreams of finishing
the grudge car and seeing more of
the world from his Harley. Mean-
while, the drag strip is actually for
sale, although it’s not being aggres-
sively advertised. “I’ve put the word
out on social media, but that’s about
it,” he says.
So, if someone wanted to be the
proud new owner of the oldest drag
strip in Georgia, complete with “Da
Hole,” Childs says, “Let’s talk!”
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