This book is about Southern Supermodifieds and other early Dixie drivers.

If a driver never raced on a track in the "Land of Dixie," then his photograph or name is not in this book. We have included a lot of drivers who lived in the northern states, that did come south to race. We have forgiven them, because we realize it’s pretty hard to choose where you were born and brought up.

Supermodified racing evolved all across the land in the early 1960s from what had been the standard stock car of the day, which was modified coupes and sedans powered by predominantly large overhead V-8s. The innovators of the time started chopping away and narrowing the open-wheeled cars, replacing the factory bodies with their own aluminum or fiberglass creation, and even fabricating their own chassis with metal tubing.

These cars were ultimately given a variety of regional names such as "bugs," "rails," or "modified specials." Someone in the south christened them with the "skeeter" moniker, and early supermodified races in the south would feature a variety of entries from the standard full-size stocker to a rear-engine job, to a caged sprint.

Jim Cushman of Columbus, Ohio is credited with being the first driver to mount a wing on top of a car. The year was 1958 at Columbus Motor Speedway in Columbus, Ohio. With the help of two brothers, Floyd and Gene Miller, they developed the world’s first ‘winged race car,’ from a surplus World War II Mustang P-51 fighter wing.

My only claim to fame in the world of supermodified racing is that I owned one in 1967-’68. We raced it at Five Flags Speedway in Pensacola, Florida and Mobile International Speedway in Irvington, Alabama. The regular driver was "Foots" Emmons. Rat Lane drove it once. Near the end of the 1968 racing season we blew our second motor. My wife sat me down one Sunday night after the races, and said, ‘Gerald, it’s either the race car or your family. Which one is going?’

I sold what was left of my No.10-4 super and trailer the next day to Bobby Woods of Mobile, Alabama for two hundred dollars, but I never got rid of the memories.

In 1949, the center of racing had yet to be either in the Carolinas, or Daytona Beach, Florida. Four years after World War II ended in 1945, there were more than one hundred race tracks in the southeast United States and dozens more in the Midwest and New England States.

Every Saturday or Sunday afternoon crowds would gather to watch the local drivers duel it out in the dust. This is their story, not mine.