Double H Drag Strip, Blue Ridge, Ga.
Then and now
The plan was to meet with Bob on Sunday, and then go to the track on Monday. I left in the dark, had breakfast with my daughter about 4 hours later, and drove on to Ellijay. Bob is a hard guy to get on the phone. Even though he's in his 80s, he's at the office six days a week. Work winds down on Saturday evening, but Sundays are reserved for visits with his grandkids. Anyway, there was a misunderstanding about when we could talk, so I moved that back to Monday (hopefully), and decided to find the track.
I had some maps, but they were pretty much useless. I flagged down a guy in a truck, and he got me to the right road. I drove onto the property, now under development as the Blue Ridge Skyport, with the old track serving as a landing strip for fly-in homeowners. No one was around except for an old guy who was still living in an octagonal-shaped house on the property. The view of the track was astonishing -- right out of the old photographs, minus the timing tower and some of the hillside where the spectators would perch.
I drove right down onto the asphalt, and spent the next couple of hours taking pictures and video. Here's the best pass I made:
I was able to get a few minutes with Bob on Monday, but the real find was the envelope he pulled from a filing cabinet, loaded with old photos. He told me who took them, Ronnie Evans, who is one of the nicest people on the planet and who opened lots of doors for me in continuing research on the track. The Double H, after living exclusively on the Internet, was firmly placed in the ghost track pantheon earlier this year with the publication of the book "Lost Drag Strips," by Tommy Lee Byrd.
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