Fender benders are encouraged at Hillybilly Speedway.
Engines roar to life and the cars lunge forward. Every driver is determined to take the lead. Suddenly, adding to the din, comes the sound of metal colliding with metal, and the frontrunner spins out. The crowd roars. This is what they came to see. For the best outdoor show on Saturday nights in southern Missouri, these spectators would give their endorsement to bump ’n’ run racing at Fair Grove.
“It’s sort of like in the movie Field of Dreams,” explains Franklin Hodges about his cornfield racetrack on a farm he inherited from his parents in 2007. “We built it, and they come.”
Franklin felt confident he could bring in a crowd. “I figured there’d been thousands of people coming to a big fall festival in Fair Grove for over 40 years,” he says, but the speedway idea didn’t pop into his head right away. Franklin, with help from his son Christopher, tried and discarded one idea after another. “We put on antique farm festivals featuring mules and old-time equipment, but both of them were rained out,” he says. “There were several swap meets that generated quite a bit of activity, but not much money. A few years we had pulling competitions for garden tractors, lawnmowers, and antique farm tractors. They weren’t a complete disaster, although the action was too slow for spectators.”
Next they tried mini-rod drag races on a straight track and Franklin says they were successful but more trouble than they were worth. “The people in charge started arguing, so they weren’t invited back to our place.”
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• Hillbilly Speedway owner Franklin Hodges is proud of his family-friendly entertainment venue. • Ron McGinnis
The ever-positive entrepreneurs put on ATV rodeos that brought in fair-sized crowds, but when the organizers became uncooperative, Franklin says they were told to leave the premises. The Hodgeses dug a big pit for four-wheel-drive mudathons, but when they determined how much water was going to be needed for it to stay mushy, they pulled the plug on that endeavor too.
With his mind always working on what would bring lots of folks to his dad’s old cornfield, Franklin happened to see a YouTube video of a bunch of wild-looking cars racing around a short track in Michigan. Instead of being black-flagged for hitting each other, they were doing it intentionally. Franklin and his friends had done that for fun as youngsters out in the pasture. Would bump ’n’ run racing work in Fair Grove?
Yes, it would, as Franklin and Christopher discovered when they opened Hillbilly Speedway in April 2017.
No need for speed
When asked how he came up with the track’s name, Franklin laughs and says, “Well, hillbillies is what we are. The main problem was whether to call it a raceway or speedway. Even though these cars rarely get over 35 miles an hour, some drivers are convinced they’re going a lot faster. When a car’s wheels are spinning on slick dirt, their speedometers run way up, but they aren’t considering that.”
Franklin describes bump ’n’ run racing like this: “Kind of like a demolition derby, but there are more rules. I tell the drivers not to wreck their cars, just hit a few rear-ends to spin the other cars around. What spectators want to see are collisions, but the cars need to last until the last feature races. That’s when the bigger money purses are given to winners. That takes strategy and skill.”
Franklin thought spectators would enjoy this unpredictable sport where drivers aim to keep battered beaters rolling toward the finish line. After calling the people in Michigan to find out what was necessary to put on a bump ’n’ run racing event, he asked for their permission to avoid animosity.
“There wasn’t anyone around our area, or even in Missouri, having bump ’n’ run racing,” he says. “What I needed were drivers who could come up with that kind of race car.”
When enough people became interested, Franklin and Christopher started the track’s preparation. After peeling off tons of topsoil in his dad’s former corn patch and replacing it with several loads of clay, they graded the track. Over the years, it has been reworked quite a few times.
Races are scheduled for Saturday evenings from mid-April through mid-October, weather-permitting. No matter how ready the track may look in the middle of the week, everything can change after a big rainfall. Even when drivers say they don’t mind running in mud, spectators won’t sit in wet bleachers, and that money pays the winners. If races are called off, fans, drivers, and the track’s owners have to hope for a favorable weather forecast the next Saturday.
Less is more
Every bump ’n’ run car’s outer attachments, such as mirrors and door handles, must be removed, as do windows, headlights, and taillights. Doors are welded or chained shut. Tires are supposed to be stock. Safety nets are required for both the driver and one passenger, who must also wear helmets and seat belts.
A few front-wheel-drive vehicles came to the track near its beginning. After winning every race, those vehicles with their built-in advantage were no longer allowed to participate.
“I’ve told the drivers that there’s no reason to spend a lot of money on their car,” Franklin says. “Someone can find a junker for a hundred bucks and come here to have fun. Some people call it poor-boy racing or grassroots. There’s no other kind of car racing in the country any cheaper than at Hillbilly Speedway.”
For $40, drivers can register at the gate to run in a class of four, six, or eight cylinders. A drawing at the beginning of each race determines how the cars are lined up for the start. Yellow or red lights come on at the track when there are unsafe conditions during races, and cars are required to slow down or stop where they are. Fire extinguishers are positioned around the track for emergency situations that rarely happen. There have been a few turnovers and an occasional small fire, but nothing life-threatening has ever happened at Hillbilly Speedway.
After heat races for each class, there is a kids’ time in front of the bleachers that allows drivers to enjoy a brief period to rest. Mechanics take that time to change tires, adjust engines, or yank off their car’s dangling body parts.
“We get youngsters from the audience to run races by kicking empty plastic milk jugs, rolling old tires, or riding stick mules,” Franklin says. “That really entertains the crowd. Parents say their kids don’t quit talking about it all the next week, which increases attendance.”
The art of the race
Hillbilly Speedway cars are products of their owner’s imagination. They’re colorfully spray-painted and, in an exception to the “no outer attachments” rule, often topped with a good luck charm, like a set of steer horns, a fake rooster, or a bright green frog clinging to the car’s roof. One, done-up as a police car, keeps its overhead red lights flashing throughout races. Its owner was politely asked to quit running the siren because it interfered with real situations on the nearby highway. Another car, representing the General Lee from the Dukes of Hazard television show, is painted a brilliant orange. Many
cars have American flags flying in the wind.
According to Franklin, “At the beginning of racing season, we have about 50 cars coming from around the country to Hillbilly Speedway. Toward the end, fifteen of so are still competing. By then, a lot have been wrecked too bad, or their engines won’t start.” He laughs and says, “There’s times when cars have died on the track before a race is over, and other drivers help push it across the line, although to be included at payoff time, they have to finish the race under their own power.”
The COVID pandemic turned into a boon for the track. The biggest crowds came during the 2020 COVID epidemic period because people could spread out in the bleachers to avoid contact. Most forms of indoor entertainment were closed, so going to Hillbilly Speedway was an attractive option. “There’s lots of room in the stands, sitting in lawn chairs out front, or on pickup truck tailgates over at the track’s north side,” Franklin says. “Photographers like the dust and mud that flies on turn two.”
“For 10 bucks,” says Tom Huff, a longtime friend of Franklin who attends most of the races with his family, “this is the best-spent money for any kind of entertainment. You can’t beat it.”
During cool spring and fall months, Hillbilly Speedway’s gates open at 4 in the afternoon on Saturday, and races begin at 6 PM. In the summer, when it’s hot, the gates open and races begin an hour later.
The drivers aren’t the only ones who should come prepared to abide by track rules. “This is a Christian family entertainment center.” Franklin says. “We don’t allow alcohol, and there’s zero tolerance for fighting. We don’t even want specators or drivers arguing. Our place is only for fun.”
The road to Bump ‘N’ Run
Car racing has been around since cars were invented. As first-place winner of America’s first car race on Thanksgiving Day, Nov. 28, 1895, J. Frank Duryea (driver) and his brother Charles Duryea (mechanic) received $2,000. The course for their “self-propelled road carriage” was 52.4 miles from the Chicago World’s Fair site, north to Evanston, Illinois. It took them 10 hours and 23 minutes to complete at an average speed of 5.05 miles per hour. (Today, that trek would take 45 minutes.)
At some historically undocumented date, an unknown promoter realized that auto-racing fans enjoyed wrecks most of all. That person said the last running car’s driver would receive a prize, and lots of hungry boys with Model T Fords came to the fairgrounds. These crowd-pleasing crash spectacles were popular entertainment during the Great Depression.
Stock car racer Larry Mendelson has been given credit for organizing the first true demolition derby in the late 1950s at Long Island, New York. During this non-racing sport, car rear-ends were used as battering rams, so engine areas (especially radiators) in the front could avoid being damaged. Basically, no rules existed except that a car needed to keep moving to avoid disqualification. The last one still moving was declared the winner.
Bump ’n’ run races, on the other hand, run in one direction around a dirt track. Drivers strive to be the fastest, and one of the main tactics is hitting other cars in the rear to make them spin out of the way. While the bumped car’s driver attempts to return his vehicle to the track, he finds himself passed by the car that bumped him. The first car across the line after a predetermined number of laps wins the race.
Race schedules and rules for cars and drivers are available at Facebook.com/HillbillySpeedway.
Hillbilly Speedway is located at 392 E. Old Mill Road near Fair Grove. Admission is $10 for adults. Youngsters 12 and under get in free. In memory of Webster Hodges, Franklin’s father who was a veteran of World War II and career member of the US Navy, all military veterans, firefighters, police officers, and health providers are admitted free.
This article was orginally printed in the October 2022 issue of Missouri Life.
