Tires Fit for a King; NASCAR Fan Unknowingly Buys Petty’s Wheels
A local Richard Petty fan struck NASCAR gold recently and didn’t even know it.
Scott Atkins of Woodlawn was in the market for some good used tires for his Ford truck. He went to Scott Cowart’s place in Nebo, he told The McDowell News, and saw a good pair of slicks in the back of the shop. The two agreed on a price; Atkins paid $100 for the pair.
He brought them home and put them in the shed without another thought. They were very wide tires and he would have to get new rims to mount them. Not much later, he got a call from his wife, Carrie.
“You won’t believe what I’m looking at,” she said. One of the tires bore a signature in chalk: Richard Petty. Scott Atkins was now the owner of a pair of Goodyear Eagle tires, 275/12-15, signed by the king himself.
“I couldn’t believe that,” she said. “I told him not to even wash the dust off them. ‘That’s Richard Petty’s dust,’ I said.”
Atkins bought a set of 21-inch wide rims to mount the tires on and put them on his blue truck. He said he has spun out a couple of times, just to enjoy the noise and the smell, but he resisted the temptation when he drove his truck in the Marion Christmas Parade.
“I had my big hat on,” he said. People yelled for him to get a wheel, but Atkins kept his cool.
The tires are now off the road; someone recently rear ended the truck and it has been totaled. Atkins said he plans to save the tires for only the most special occasions. Otherwise they’ll be displayed prominently and proudly in their home.
And a happy home it is: Carrie, a stay-at-home mom, is happy to passionately share her faith and is the author of a devotional book, “My Thoughts of Jesus in My Life and Home.”
As Scott shows off the tires and the sad damage to his truck, daughter Christina demonstrates her mastery of the hula hoop. Daughter Crystal said she can do the hula hoop, too, but chose not to climb down from her mom’s hip to demonstrate, as there was ice on the ground and she was barefooted.
Atkins said he and Carrie have been to a couple of races at Charlotte and Daytona, but he has never collected much in the way of memorabilia. The tires have interesting markings besides Petty’s signature. Someone also wrote No. 9 on them — the ninth set he ran in a race? They’re also inscribed “X5H473″ and “0879.” Does that mean they were run in August of 1979?
Atkins said he has not learned the answer. Messages left by The McDowell News at Richard Petty Motorsports were not returned.
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