Accompanying Photos
Photo Caption:
Stock-car racing was quite different in 1948
when this photo was taken during a race at the old Greensboro
Fairgrounds race track.
ARCHDALE — In a field full of clover and milkweed at least hip
high, Gary Lewallen can take you to an overgrown race track and talk
about mothers and fathers.
Many of us will do that today, Mother’s Day. But for Gary, it’s a
little bit different when he steps past the iron gate and into the
last working farm in Archdale to talk about his parents, Jimmie and
Carrie.
We all have memories. But Gary has a film.
He ain’t Hollywood. He’s a retired police chief from Archdale. Yet,
he raised money and lassoed enough friends to help shoot a movie about
the first families of stock-car racing, the people who helped build the
NASCAR we know today.
Those first families came from our corner of the South, and those
families include the Lewallens. One of the film locations sits near the
corner of School and Trinity roads on a 300-acre farm a few miles from
Interstate 85.
Roll into that spot in Gary’s pickup, and you’ll find a land-locked
time capsule of the rural South, the racing South.
“Red Dirt Rising” captures a time bookmarked by World War II, a time
when men worked their weeks on a farm, in a mill or in a garage and
packed up their families on weekends to race their personal cars in
places such as High Point, North Wilkesboro, Greensboro and Daytona
Beach, Fla.
Their only safety equipment? Goggles, a football helmet and a rope
that passed for a seatbelt.
“Red Dirt Rising” is a love story. It’s also a racing story. It shows
how hauling moonshine to make extra money led to a love of racing that
created one of the world’s most popular sports.
Gary is one of the film’s executive producers. His journey started
four years ago with a book and a chance conversation at a local gun
shop known as Archdale Ammo & Arms . He talked about needing to find
a filmmaker. He found one. And now, after raising $600,000 from 58
local investors and networking with almost everyone he knew in his
hometown of Archdale, Gary has a film.
And as he stands near the milkweed in that field in Archdale, he’ll
talk about the plank fence, the two platforms and the bleachers brought
in from a racetrack in Elkin to re-create Tri-City Speedway, a storied
race track in High Point that’s now become a gated townhouse community
off Skeet Club Road.
“I keep going back to what Junior Johnson told me at my daddy’s
funeral. He said, 'As long as you’re alive, your daddy will never be
gone,’ and who wouldn’t want to honor their mother and father and save
something for years to come?” Gary says. “You can erase memories, but
you can’t erase DVDs.”