Best Damn Garage in Town: My Life & Adventures Review

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(More customer reviews)Being a longtime fan of racing and interested in the history of the sport, I expected this book to give readers a glimpse behind the scenes from one of it's most legendary and colorful characters. It exceeded any of my expectations. As noted in other reviews, the story is told first hand as if you were sitting and talking to Smokey, language and all. Not a drawback in my opinion but consider yourself warned.
The book begins from Smokey's childhood and moves quickly through his bomber runs in WWII. Some of the most insightful war stories I've ever read! Then it's of to Daytona Beach and the establishment of the Best Damn Garage in Town. During this timeframe Smokey gets involved with NASCAR, the France family and the car manufacturers. It's refreshing to finally read stories about NASCAR that have not been censored in any way and are being told by somebody who was actually there. Smokey was very opinionated but 99% of the time he's right. Especially in aspects relating to safety.
One very interesting chapter is devoted to the 50 or so drivers who drove for him, both in NASCAR and Indy. These included some of the biggest names in racing during this timeframe. A tremendous amount of information is passed along about the drivers, some good and some I'm sure they wished Smokey would have kept quiet about. All in all a great chapter.
From there it's on to the Indy 500. This was during the glory days of the Indy 500 when creativity and a skinny rule book led to some of the most interesting racecars Indy has ever seen. Obviously, this was right up Smokey's alley. Let's just say that Smokey's Indy exploits, both on and off the track, could have comprised an entire second book. I especially enjoyed his thoughts on returning Indy to it's previous glory.
The final section is devoted to his inventions. You'd better be fairly technical to understand it but the stories still carry it.
One ongoing theme throughout the book is Smokey's relationship with the auto manufacturers. Not just with low end engineers, he was rubbing elbows with the heads of GM and Ford. A pleasant surprise was the insight into the auto industry as it existed during the time.
All in all a very good book. Yes, it tends to be repetitve at times and Smokey's style takes some getting used to but the content more than makes up for it.
Racing's history is slowly disappearing as the old timers leave us but at least one of them put his thoughts down on paper before he passed on. Racing lost one of it's most colorul characters in 2001 but his legacy lives on in this book.

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Best Damn Garage in Town: My life and Adventures was originally published as a 3 volume boxed set of 1,100 pages with over 400 photographs. This version of the book combines all the stories and most of the photographs into a single volume with smaller type and photographs in a bookstore package, as opposed to a coffee table package. Smokey got the idea for writing a history of stock car racing after giving a talk to explain racing to a group of kids at Lowe's Motorspeedway, around 1995. He realized that all the people who were a part of the early days were dying and most of the ones who were still alive were too involved with racing to be able to tell the real stories. He started writing this book as a history of stock car racing and ended up with look at American history of the past 60 years through a very unique set of eyes. The first volume, Walkin' Under a Snake's Belly, covers Smokey's life outside racing, beginning with growing up in Neshaminy, Pennsylvania on a farm, dropping out of high school to take care of the family and going off to World War II as a B-17 pilot. The war stories are told through the eyes of a young man who believed all that the Army Air Corps taught him, but he had a mind of his own and was also hell-bent on having fun at all costs. (If that meant irritating a few generals, then that was just par for the course.) After the racing years, Smokey ended spending most of his time working on his inventions and working in the oil and gold fields of Ecuador. Along the way, Smokey had a knack for finding fun and adventure everywhere he went. Alcohol, women and speed were his main addictions - he eventually gave up alcohol, but never did give up the other two. The second volume, All Right You Sons-a-Bitches, Let's Have a Race, chronicles the stock car racing years in living color. The warning on these books, that they are not to be read by those under 18 unless they are with a grandparent who can translate the social and moral implications of the stories, is not to be taken lightly. (Smokey even includes his own dictionary to explain the terms that racers used in the early days to the uninformed.) Smokey and his band of merry compatriots were racers and there were only two things on their mind when the sun went down Ð women and booze. Smokey had his share of both during 15 years of racing, when racers were looked down on as the dregs of society. Nothing could stop his dream of being the fastest at the sport he loved, no matter what happened along the way Ð the sign of a true racer. During his years in stock car racing, Smokey fell in love with a mistress that he would visit every May for over 20 years Ð The Indianapolis 500. The first half of the third volume, Li'l Skinny Rule Book, covers his love of this famed event and the wonderful stories of the days before the big corporate sponsors; when it was just men and their machines, sleeping on the floor in the garage and most times coming home with nothing. As the title implies, Smokey loved Indy because the rules were so simple. His inventive mind and knack for thinking way outside the box were at their best when Indy was involved. The fourth section of the book covers his years of inventing inside and outside of racing. SmokeyÕs 10 patents don't begin to cover the breadth and depth of his inventing. His work with the car companies and on the racetrack led to a host of developments that have improved surface transportation for everyone. The value of some of his ideas and inventions, like his famous hot vapor engine, were never fully realized. Many books have been written about the last 50 years of American history, but few are this entertaining, revealing and introspective all at the same time. Real stories from World War II, stock cars, the automotive industry and the Mexican Road Race are just a few of the el

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