Goin’ to Kansas City, Kansas City here they come!

Goin’ to Kansas City, Kansas City here they come!

Goin’ to Kansas City, Kansas City here they come!

They’ve got a beautiful race track there, and the NASCAR boys are goin’ to
run.
I apologize to Fats Domino and the many others who have recorded the classic
song for this little play on their lyrics, but it was irresistible since this
week brings the Sprint Cup tour back to Kansas Speedway.
The STP 400 is scheduled Sunday.
I’d wager that few of the fans attending know that the very first winner of a
race on the circuit that was destined to become NASCAR’s glamour series was a
soft-spoken Kansan, not one of the more flamboyant Southern good-old boys like
Fonty Flock or Curtis Turner or Buck Baker.
His name was Jim Roper, a native of Halstead, Kansas.
And how he came to triumph on June 19, 1949 at Charlotte Speedway, a
3/4ths-mile dirt track ranks very, very highly in the sanctioning body’s rich
lore.
Roper bought his first racer, a midget car, in 1944 at age 27. He didn’t get
to drive it in competition until the end of World War II in 1945, because
motorsports competition was halted in the U.S. while the hostilities continued.
Once racing resumed, the slightly-built Roper showed his stuff. He won the
Beacon Championship at CeJay Speedway in Wichita in ’47 driving a track
roadster. He also raced regularly and with success on the International Motor
Contest Association tour in Kansas, Iowa, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Missouri.
During one race Roper lost control and smashed through a wooden fence into an
alfalfa field adjoining the track. He drove back through the hole he’d made in
the fence and returned to the speedway with a car filled with hay.
After that he was nicknamed “Alfalfa Jim.”
How Roper learned about the “Strictly Stock” race that NASCAR founder Big
Bill France was planning for Charlotte is among the sport’s most amusing
anecdotes.
He saw it mentioned in a comic strip!
Zack Mosley, who drew the once highly-popular “Smilin’ Jack” syndicated strip
was a close friend of France. Mosley included news of the impending Charlotte
race in the “funny paper” and it caught Roper’s attention.
Roper was intent on taking part, and he somehow convinced a Kansas auto
dealer named Millard Clothier that two of his Lincolns should be driven to North
Carolina for the event. Roper drove one of them to Charlotte, and he qualified
it 12th in a 33 car field.
Bob Flock won the pole at 67.958 mph in a Hudson.
Among those attending the race on a steamy summer day was 8-year-old Buddy
Baker, there to watch his dad Buck run in the historic event.
“It was wild,” Buddy recalls. “I remember Lee Petty turning over and over and
over. I remember cars blowing up in big clouds of steam. I remember that some
of the drivers brought extra gasoline for the 150-mile race with them in big
metal cans that normally were used by dairy farmers to transport their milk to
plants for processing. And, unbelievable as it might seem today, I remember
some even bringing gas in open buckets.”
Heavy attrition among front-runners finally put a driver named Glenn Dunnaway
from Gastonia, N.C., into the lead. Dunnaway was at the wheel of a 1947 Ford
owned by Hubert Westmoreland.
Dunnaway took the checkered flag, with Roper two lap behind in second place.
Roper had been forced to back off the throttle when his Lincoln started
overheating.
Post-race inspection revealed that Westmoreland had equipped his car with
“spreader springs” to improve traction in the turns and handling in general.
These springs were a favorite of moonshiners for their “hauler cars” in
transporting illegal liquor.
The Dunnaway/Westermoreland duo was disqualified and Roper declared the
victor and winner of the $2,000 first prize.
Dunnaway later sued in federal court, but the case was dismissed.
Roper’s car was inspected closely, too, and its engine torn down. He had to
get a replacement engine to drive back home to Kansas.
Roper returned to North Carolina to run at Occoneechee Speedway in Hillsboro,
N.C., on Aug. 7, 1949 and finished 15th in the 200-miler, winning $50.
He never entered another NASCAR event, deciding to compete closer to home in
the midwest.
In 1955 Roper suffered a broken vertebrae in a sprint car accident, and this
convinced him to retire as a driver. However, he continued in motorsports for a
few years as a flagman and car-builder before moving to Texas to breed and train
thoroughbred horses.
In 1993 officials at North Wilkesboro Speedway in North Carolina brought
Roper back to the Tar Heel State as Grand Marshal for a Winston Cup Series
event. He was presented with a duplicate of the trophy from the ’49 race at
Charlotte, since car-owner Clothier had received the original.
“I am proud of the way I always drove a race car,” Roper said at the time.
“And goodness, we sure had a lot of good times back in those days. It was far,
far different from now. I think we had more fun.”
Roper developed cancer in the late 1990s, and decided to move back home to
Kansas for the end of his life.
He learned before his death that a 1.5-mile superspeedway was going to be
built near Kansas City. And in May of 2000 he further learned that both NASCAR
and the Indy Racing League were awarding major races to the track. Roper died
at age 83 on June 23, 2000 of heart and liver failure traced to the cancer.
It’d sure be nice–and appropriate–if officials at Kansas Speedway would
honor in some fashion this racing pioneer, Alfalfa Jim, every chance they get.