Great Al story!

[MU86NC]

NRetrospect August 2012, Humpy Wheeler
Aug 06, 2012 by apagliarini0 Comment

Parental Guidance
By H.A. "Humpy" Wheeler
Growing up in the forties and fifties in Belmont – at the time, population 5,000, 26 cotton and three hosiery mills – advice for young boys was in large supply, if you would only ask...and I did.  I got it everywhere – from my mother in her kitchen about life in general; Mr. Ford about nuts and bolts in his nut and bolt shop where I swept the floors; from the mechanics about cars at the Ford or Chevy place; from the monks at Belmont Abbey on right and wrong; from Mr. Hand, a contractor, on my future; from Ebb Gant who ran the near unbeatable Belmont Boxing Club, of which I was enthralled; other sports from my father who was a full time coach; and how to talk to girls from my friends.
But it was my mother, the former Kathleen Dobbins of Bessemer City, where the great Fountain of Endless Knowledge came from and echoed off the walls of her kitchen. It was the only kitchen in Belmont that served both Southern and Northern food, my father being from Rhode Island. There were collard greens on one end of the table and spinach on the other.
My mother was Baptist and my father Catholic, a very strange combination in those days but they were quite happy. She had been Miss Everything at Bessemer City High: valedictorian, basketball star and — roll the drums please — Miss Bessemer City.
Now I just loved stock car racing.  The old Charlotte Speedway was a short six miles away and many dirt tracks within easy thumbing distance.  But this was a time when the South was turning its back on the old ways. If you were trying to raise your kids up above of the middle section you didn't listen to hillbilly music, live in a log house, keep pigs or ever let them go to a stock car race. Those were the ways of the lower classes – the mill workers, service station attendants and the rough handed folk who worked hard for a living.
But my mother, whose parents had moved down from the mountains to work in the mills of Bessemer City, saw that my enthrallment for racing had reached a serious passion and she knew that more than offset the reputation it had. After all it was legal and wasn't dogfighting.  So, she encouraged me to pursue that interest. I know she had to swallow hard when I "borrowed" half our garage for a combination bicycle/race shop. Her backyard began to accumulate old Fords. When I actually started racing at 15 she pretended not to notice. When I started boxing the same year she wouldn't go to my matches but she would wish me luck and when I came home with black eyes and puffed lips she would look at her not so little boy and sigh while my dad would say, "I sure hope the other guy looks worse."
While my mother offered non-stop encouragement, my father was more devious.  When I announced I was going to turn pro as a boxer the only thing he said was just make sure you are good enough to be the champion. A few weeks later I got a call from Al McQuire. Al was the basketball coach at the Abbey and my dad was the athletic director, his boss.  He wanted me to go on a recruiting trip with him to New York. I went. Al, being a former Knicks star from there, knew everybody, particularly the tavern owners because his father ran a great Irish bar there. On the second night, we went to a bar in Manhattan near Madison Square Garden where Al had starred with the New York Knicks.  I was excited when I went in and saw all the old boxers and their pictures. I had seen these guys fight on the Friday Night Fights and they were my heroes. However it didn't take me long to notice their scarred eyebrows, their bent noses and the cauliflower ears. Next came the slurred speech. We stayed there for three hours and when we left I cast out all desire to be a professional fighter.  And my father never said a word.  You know he and Al got together on that one!
While my parents were loving, caring and plain wonderful, so were the other adults in that small town. Maybe that was why Belmont, like Mayberry, only had two jail cells and I don't remember anybody ever in one except the occasional drunk who, again like Mayberry, would let himself out the next morning.

Dad ("Humpy" Wheeler Sr.), Brother David, Mom (Kathleen Wheeler), Sister Mary, "Humpy" Wheeler Jr.
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[Goose]

Believe that probably was The Penn Bar, which was an awesome place.

[Warriors69]

Nope, McCann's across from the old Garden on 49 St and 8th Ave.7

[nycwarrior]

Kinda funny. The author is Humpy Wheeler. He ran the NASCAR track in Charlotte for decades. Not sure if he still does.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humpy_Wheeler

He's almost as much of a character as Al was.