This is funny –
“By the late 1960s . . . pressure from local church groups (in Hillsborough, NC), who didn’t like racing on Sundays, led Bill France to look elsewhere as he sought to build a larger, faster track. Unable to persuade local authorities to expand the Hillsborough site, he turned instead to a small town in Alabama and built the 2.66-mile Talladega Superspeedway.”
– especially when you pair it with this:
“But historic Hillsborough, North Carolina, can probably claim more critically acclaimed authors per capita than any zip code in the region. . . . A list of Hillsborough’s resident authors reads like a who’s who of Southern letters—(Michael) Malone, Allan Gurganus, Lee Smith, Jill McCorkle, Randall Kenan, Craig Nova, Annie Dillard, Frances Mayes, Hal Crowther…the list goes on.”
I’ve been to Hillsborough, and I’ve been to Talladega, and I can’t quite make the mental leap to what might have been. Though I would like to see Michael Malone pounding down PBRs in the infield and throwing chicken legs at Kyle Busch.
(Many thanks to Lew Powell for sharing the ‘Hillsborough Speedway’ article on the North Carolina Miscellany blog.)
Dixie Babble 