A Look Back at Motorcycling in the Heart of the Appalachians

By Lewis Hale

James P. Hayes Sr. begins his storied motorcycle career in the shade of a tree atop Roan Mountain, Tennessee, in 1936. Winston Johnson is a multitalented motocross racer offering other riders a track to practice, play, and worship. The facility opened in 2019 off Interstate 81 in Abingdon, Virginia. Johnson is not only a businessman but also the lead minister at Renewed Church in Kingsport, Tennessee. Between the years of 1936 and today, hundreds of dirt-track heats, flat-track mains, endurance runs, scrambles, cross-country events, hare-scramble courses, hill climbs, motocross tracks, and field events have been held in the region to give thousands of riders a chance to compete. Some of the many competitions and special events held over the past seventy years are reported in the book.

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• Language: English
• Publisher: Fulton Books, Inc.
• Release date: Mar 21, 2022
• ISBN: 9781639855551

Book preview

Preface

The book you are holding is written to honor the tens of thousands of off-road amateur, expert, and professional motorcycle racers in the heart of the Appalachians, who have competed in many different types of motorcycle and ATV competitions over the last seven decades. Today in the year 2021, many of the motorcyclists talked about in this book have passed away, but their rides, contributions, and dedication to the sport when they were here on earth are memories for us to keep. Thanks to all those who are pursuing first, second, or third atop the podium and to all those who race for any position they can achieve.

There are dedicated men, women, kids, and the not-yet adults who spend countless hours sharpening their skills to be competitive in their chosen discipline. They are eager to entertain in these almost always closely contested events. The challenge can be speeding through the woods over rocks, roots, and muddy trails; splashing through creeks; climbing up hills; or racing down hills in an endurance run, a hare scramble, or cross-country.

There are the demands of racing motocross, trials, flat track, or a road course. Motocross is thought to be the most physically demanding of all sports. Riders take a pounding to the body while speeding through roller-coaster sections of whoops. They are propelled high into the air off a number of jumps and are always required to calculate rutted turns and rough straights before completing even one lap. There are many laps to endure during the required twenty- to thirty-minute main events.

Promoters are a special group of individuals, clubs, and organizations. They spend countless hours, and funds to give off-road competitors a place to test, compete, and demonstrate their skills atop a motorcycle, ATV, bicycle, or Jet Ski. Winners of the season competitions in the Virginia Championship Hare Scramble Series listed in this book are taken from the VCHSS.org website. Victory Sports Inc. MEGA series yearly winners listed in this book are taken from panels with each of the class champion’s names posted at the entrance to Muddy Creek Raceway.

The contents of this book talk about some of the many contributors who have helped to grow the various disciplines of racing motorcycles and related machines in the heart of the Appalachians (pronounced Ap-pa-lach-ians).

Chapter 1

In the Early Days

The man is dressed for a challenge! He is wearing a white crash helmet, a dark maroon T-shirt, blue jeans, and black leather engineer boots that cover his legs to just below the knees. A printing on the front of his shirt spells the word triumph in big white capital letters. He walks onto the scramble track following two associates who are pushing an obviously modified Triumph motorcycle along the dry, loose dirt. His assistants are rolling the bike toward a white stripe just twenty-five feet from the foot of a monster hill.

It is a sunny and warm late afternoon near the end of July of 1969 with tree-covered dark-green ridges casting a cool shade over much of the motorcycle park. A number of scrambles races have just concluded, and so far, there have been several classes of motorcycle riders who have tried to climb the hill. But they have failed. Dixie Cycle News published an article recently in one of its weekly papers stating the extremely steep hill, located on the outskirts of Bristol, Tennessee, has not been climbed in competition. A photograph accompanying the article showed a near straight-up incline of dirt with a rider falling off the back of his motorcycle as it began to flip over backward. The rider in the photograph has lost his grip on the handlebars with the front wheel reaching for the sky.

Rumors circulating among the watchers say the man has traveled here from his home in Kentucky to take on the hill, which was completed the previous year in 1968. It is built to American Motorcycle Association specifications, and all the organizers’ events are sanctioned by that governing body. The hill has been cleared to more than fifty feet wide. It is a long three hundred feet all the way to the top, and there are numbered markers posted at each fifty-foot section to indicate just how far up the hill riders climb.

An associate kick-starts the Triumph engine when the bike’s front tire nears the white stripe marking the starting line. The powerful sound of exhausts blasting through open twin pipes brings wide grins to some of the faces in the crowd of spectators. There is a group of revelers huddled near the starting line for a closer look. One of the assistants checks the pressure in the rear tire by pushing his thumbs in the smooth section, where every other row of knobs has been cut away. The other associate places his hand over the end of each pipe to check the thrust of the exhaust. When the engine is revved, the sounds are rapid and strong.

The man nods his approval when the two assistants show him questioning in their expressions. After throwing his right leg across the seat of the machine, he pulls a leather strap over his left hand that is hooked to a kill switch. It will cut fire to the engine should he be separated from the bike in his climb attempt. There is also a trigger at the left-hand grip. When he pulls the trigger, the engine shuts off for a couple of seconds. When the trigger is released, the engine fires again. When he is ready to begin a run at the hill, the throttle sounds wide open, and the bike spins the rear wheel into a blur as it cuts a deep path across the white stripe. There is a whole lot of speed gained, and a cloud of dust fills the air in the near-level twenty-five-foot starting area.

The Triumph is throwing dirt high into the air with the engine constantly sounding its power as it quickly climbs straight to the 120-foot mark. Here on a three-foot vertical section of razor-sharp, sand-colored slate, which runs the width of the hill, is where many of the challengers have to either lay the bike over after running out of power and forward motion or have the machine stand straight up. Often, riders lose control of the bike and watch it slide back to the bottom of the hill while trying to keep from falling down and sliding off the hill themselves.

The Triumph rider has a lot of speed when reaching the vertical slate ledge. Suddenly the bike and rider are off the surface of the hill and high into the air! At the same time, the engine becomes quiet! When the Triumph drops back to earth, landing on the rear wheel, the powerful sound of the engine breaks the silence. The rear tire digs deep into the hill for traction, throwing clumps of dirt into a rooster tail while carrying the front wheel a foot or more off the surface. A few seconds later, he becomes the first rider to successfully climb the infamous hill in competition. A number of spectators, who have gathered at the foot of the hill and at observation points around the scramble track, scream and applaud when they see him ride through the yellow tape marking an end to the climb. The cheers continue as he steers the bike across and down the long return path.

Soon he arrives back at the starting line. He stops near the white stripe and tells the organizers while many of the spectators rush to congratulate him that he doesn’t want anyone to think that it was a lucky run, so he offers to climb the hill again. His associates prepare the bike for a second time, and again he makes it look easy as he rides to the top of the hill, just like he did the first time, and with another loud and lasting roar from the spectators. The hill climb, scramble track, and cross-country course is organized and constructed by the Bristol Twins Motorcycle Club and is thought to be the first motorcycle park in the region.

The Hayes Dynasty

But motorcycling in the vast Mountain Empire—which is made up of Southwest Virginia, Southeastern Kentucky, Northeast Tennessee, and Northwestern North Carolina—began many years before.

It is in 1936 that the few Indian and Harley-Davidson motorcycle owners in the area begin seeking the help of a talented young mechanic. His name is James P. Hayes Sr., and his shop just happens to be under a shade tree in Roan Mountain, Tennessee. The small community is only a stone’s throw from Tennessee’s border with North Carolina. James and his wife Stella Bunn Johnson Hayes are just starting their family in the depression era 1930s when James Sr. applies for an Indian Motorcycle franchise. The Indian brand is his favorite motorcycle. It is not long before the dealership is granted to James Sr. in October of 1937. Soon one Indian motorcycle arrives by railroad in downtown Johnson City, Tennessee. The bike is moved to a small building he manages to rent nearby, and Jim’s Motorcycles is created.

James Sr. works the shop for a short time before his military responsibility takes him away to serve in World War II. His wife manages the motorcycle business and takes care of raising their two boys, James P. Hayes Jr. and Kenneth W. Hayes, while he is away. Back in Johnson City after the war, James Sr. is fast becoming a successful businessman. He even takes on a Volkswagen automobile franchise before the company asks him to give up his sideline of motorcycles and become an exclusive dealer for Volkswagen. Favoring his love of motorcycles, he promptly returned the Volkswagen franchise to the company!

Early in the 1950s, just a few years before the Indian Motorcycle Company is forced to cease production, another baby boy is added to the Hayes dynasty, and he will become known as Tommy. By the mid-1950s with the Indian no longer being manufactured due to bankruptcy, it seemed a perfect time for James Sr. to take on the Harley-Davidson line. He keeps the franchise until the company wants him to make their bikes exclusive. They want their machines to be the only bikes on his showroom floor. He refuses to give up his other franchises and returns the Harley-Davidson dealership.

Late in the 1950s, Jim’s Motorcycles adds BSA, Ducati, Norton, Triumph, and Honda as they become available. James P. Hayes Jr. (Jim Jr., Jimmy, or Junior, as he is now known) and Kenneth (Kenny or Ken) are making a name for themselves as they grow into their twenties. Junior is racing out of a shop he has started about twenty miles northwest of Johnson City in the city of Kingsport, Tennessee. His business is also named Jim’s Motorcycles, and he sells the same brands as the Johnson City shop.

The Bristol Twins Motorcycle Club is created

Meanwhile, twenty-five miles up Highway 11-E in Bristol, Tennessee, a well-known lawyer and community leader named Stacy Grayson opens a Harley-Davidson dealership. The Bristol Twins Motorcycle Club is organized and meets at the shop each week, where they plan weekend rides and compete in scramble races and endurance runs when they can find them. The club’s name should not be confused with the Appalachian League’s Bristol Twins baseball team. The names are derived from the Twin Cities of Bristol, Virginia, and Bristol, Tennessee. If a person is traveling west in downtown Bristol on State Street, that person is in the state of Virginia. If a person is traveling east in downtown Bristol on State Street, that person is in the state of Tennessee.

In the late 1950s, two of the club members are challenging each other on area mountain paths. One of the woods-riding enthusiasts is Bob Puckett, who used the time between graduating high school in the early 1950s and entering the military to install a Whizzer engine kit on his bicycle. The engine and accessories are purchased through Western Auto to power his Columbia bicycle. Puckett rides the machine from Meadowview, Virginia, to Washington, DC. The only problem he remembers having on the nearly eight-hundred-mile round trip is replacing the rear tire on his return home.

Puckett, before being discharged from his military duty in Germany, purchases a twin-cylinder Triumph while in Europe and has it shipped back to his home in Bristol, Virginia. Burl Canter, another Bristol Twins club member, races with Puckett through the woods on a V-twin Harley-Davidson Sportster. The pair chooses to ride these big machines in an off-road endurance run near Atlanta, Georgia.

Not long after pleasure riding in the late 1950s and competing in organized off-road events, both Puckett and Canter begin selling bikes to their friends. Puckett, who is an appliance repairman for a major retailer, is selling single-cylinder Ducatis from a garage located behind his house. Canter is a tool and die maker by trade, so it is natural for him to sell motorcycles out of his shop just outside the Bristol, Tennessee, city limits. His choice of bike now is the English-manufactured Triumph, and he has set up one of the larger displacement (650cc) machines to race flat track.

The Hayes Boys and dirt-track racing

Organized motorcycle racing on dirt tracks in the Southeast is hard to find in the late 1950s before Bill France’s USMC series begins. Racers could find competition at the big American Motorcycle Association week at Daytona Beach, Florida, in early March each year, but there are few dirt-track races anywhere in the south. France’s USMC series of events races in the Carolinas on banked dirt tracks that usually draw spectators for hot rod and late-model race cars. Junior Hayes has already made a name for himself as the person to beat at the few dirt-track races he can find throughout the south. Riding the USMC events, Junior proves he is the fastest motorcycle rider on these dirt tracks by dominating the yearly series in the heavyweight class. He easily wins championships in 1960 and 1961 power sliding a 650cc Norton Manxman through the banked left-hand turns onto the fast and short straights, which are slightly banked also, making up these race courses.

Ken Hayes is starting his professional motorcycle racing career in the 1958 Tennessee State Scrambles Championship. He is now the rider giving Junior the most competition in the USMC heavyweight class and finishes the series by winning the 250cc championships. Ken and Junior are masters at throwing their machines into a slide to help reduce the straightaway speed in order to enter the turns fast and in control at each end of the oval tracks. For safety reasons, rules prohibit installing brakes on the bikes.

According to a feature article in the July 1967 edition of Cycle Magazine, the USMC series began to crumble in 1961. That same year, an independent race car promoter named John Moose from Charlotte, North Carolina, runs a ten-race series for motorcycles. Moose’s minimum purse is $300, and he offers paid-up insurance for the riders. He has connections with many dirt-track owners throughout the south. These promoters are not at all eager to run motorcycle races for fear of attracting an unruly crowd that is thought to follow the competitions. But Moose convinces the owners that the series will draw large crowds with the Hayes Boys as headliners.

Junior and Ken dominate the racing in this series too! Junior and Ken by now have become well-known as the Hayes Boys. They are young, fast, determined, and extremely hard to beat in any of the races they enter, whether the event is run on dirt or asphalt. In the last novice race on the beach course at Daytona for motorcycles in 1963, Ken has a commanding lead in his class for thirty laps before the bike loses third and fourth gears. Ed Moran wins the race. Later Ken learns that Ed is bragging that he was in complete control of the race.

Ken tells his father that he needs to settle the score with Ed Moran. James Senior, after a lot of convincing, finally agrees to allow Ken to be away from the Johnson City shop for at least a week or maybe even more. It is a long trip from Johnson City, Tennessee, to Laconia, New Hampshire, but that is the location for the next race. When Ken arrives at the Laconia track, he not only wins the event overwhelming but also sets a new track record on a 500cc Norton. Ed Moran finishes second.

In the Marlboro, Maryland, race that follows, Ken takes first place again. In 1964, Ken wins the amateur race at Daytona on the long and twisting asphalt road course. Meanwhile, Junior continues to dominate championships on the dirt tracks in the Southeast with Ken being his closest challenger. Junior is riding a BSA in the heavyweight class, averaging nearly eighty miles an hour on a dirt oval that is less than a half mile long. He rides a Ducati in the 250cc class. Ken’s bike choice in the heavyweight class is a Norton, and he sometimes passes Junior to lead or win the race. The Ducati brand is his bike choice in the 250cc class.

When Junior and Ken are racing the BSA and Norton side by side at eighty-five to one hundred miles per hour down the straightaway, there is only one way to slow their brakeless bikes for entry into the horseshoe turn other than engine braking. The bike is thrown into a slide with the left leg as a prop. To keep from being passed through the corner, the lead rider has to keep his bike in a groove down close to the fence on the inside of the track. But the Hayes Boys did get beat when AMA professional flat-track racer George Roeder entered a state fair race with a big purse. Ken was quoted as saying, Old Georgie can really ride. Junior and I were right behind him, but couldn’t get by. Roeder is a regular competitor on the AMA pro circuit, racing to earn national points toward a season championship on his Harley-Davidson.

Unfortunately, Ken broke his collarbone in a pileup at one of the Carolina dirt-track races in 1965, the same year James Senior turned the dealership in Johnson City over to him. James Senior is now busy as a regional distributor for the Berliner Motor Corporation. He is responsible for supplying Ducati, Moto Guzzi, Norton, and Matchless