Sunday, June 8, 2003
JM: There’s so much that we could talk about in racing, but I’m gonna have to tell you.....this River Bend Museum that JB Day and Willovene have––and so much help they’ve had to really fix up this place is absolutely unreal. I’ve been in a lot of museums over the country but the pictures he’s got on every wall here, I think, is something that every racing person––male, female, whatever it might be––it’s worth their time to come here to see it. I believe you’d agree with me.
HR: I would. I certainly would. I was commenting earlier to another fellow, I’ve never been anywhere in my life that had more photos and memories of the past in any one location than right here.
JM: It’s right here, and look at all these restored racecars that they’ve got. I don’t know anywhere that you can go to at this time and come to a museum that’s got... what are we looking at? Maybe 15 cars out there.
HR: At least. And JB’s wife told me this morning that he assigned one man to do a car, and it would take between 9 and 13 months.
JM: Well, there’s one, I understood, that took––Dilbert Gober (Sosebez) car––took about 14, 15 months and they worked on it five, six days a week, but we’ve got to give a lot of compliments, lot of credit to Mr. Day and his crew that he’s got up here. Years ago, he used to ride a bicycle from Easley, South Carolina, all the way to Lakewood Speedway in Atlanta to see the races there and then he’d get a ride back with Cotton Owens or somebody like that.
HR: Is that the bicycle that’s inside, that’s been restored?
JM: From what I have heard, that is the bicycle that he rode from up here all the way to Lakewood to see the drivers run there. So it’s wonderful that we have people that are so interested in racing that they will do what he’s done and made the investment he’s made, but what I like most about right here is not the past 40 years in racing, but we go back into the late ‘30s, the ‘40s.... pictures on the wall showing how racing really started. And that’s what we.... the Georgia Automobile Racing Hall of Fame Association as well as LLOAR is most interested in. We’re trying to bring back the past and put it in print, put it on tape, that the race fans of today can look at those things and see where racing started.... really, on the short tracks, the dirt tracks in this country.
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