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Approaching the Windy Gap Road exit on U.S. 421 Saturday I was struck by a deep sense of nostalgia.

I knew it was coming. It happens every time I happen to travel that way.

Windy Gap, see, is the route I took for almost 40 years while en route to cover NASCAR races at North Wilkesboro Speedway, mostly while I was the motorsports writer for the Charlotte Observer.

A few miles further on I drove by a grandstand tower, looming near the highway in sad silence at the once-popular track, shuttered and inactive since 1996.

After buying the .625-mile oval 20 years ago the new owners moved its Cup Series dates to bigger markets with sparkling new racing arenas. North Wilkesboro, dating to stock car racing’s earliest days, was left to slowly, surely decline.

However, the memories it produced will never die for many of us lucky enough to have seen races there. For a majority, I imagine, the very favorite memory involves Junior Johnson in some way.
Mine certainly does.

Junior, born and raised at Ingles Hollow, only a few miles from the speedway, had become a legend in his own time, both as a moonshine-hauler who the revenuers couldn’t catch on the highway and as a racer who rivals seldom beat on the track.

He mostly was hailed as a hero across the area and and an overwhelming choice of fans in every race he ran at North Wilkesboro.

On May 18, 1958 Junior was driving a Ford in a 160-lap NASCAR event at his home track. And as usual he was in strong contention for the win, locked in a dandy duel with Chevrolet-driving Jack Smith.
Junior took the lead on the 79th lap and steadily pulled away to a half-lap advantage.

It was not in Johnson’s nature to back off the throttle and cruise to victory. Only recently released from federal prison after serving 11 months for manufacturing illegal liquor, Junior kept running as hard as his car would go.

Entering the third turn Johnson overdid it.

He went barreling over an embankment that served as something of a retaining barrier to keep the cars on the track.
Here, paraphrased, is how the incident is recounted in an excerpt from “Junior Johnson: Brave In Life,” an authorized biography I co-authored with my friend Steve Waid in 1999:
“Junior showed his immense driving talent hadn’t diminished in his time away in prison. After careening over the embankment he sliced through a thick patch of weeds and came back on the track ahead of Marvin Panch, who was second at the time. A crowd estimated at 6,000 went wild at the sight of the locl hero pulling off such a feat.”

In the book, Johnson had this description of what happened:
“Back then, the newly paved tracks seemed to tear up pretty easily and North Wilkesboro had been transformed from dirt to asphalt. I got into the loose pieces of asphalt ‘marbles’ and went over that four-foot high bank. I never touched the brakes. I knew my only chance to get back over that bank was to keep my speed up, so that’s what I did.”

Junior continued on to win by six seconds over Smith, with Rex White following in third place on the lead lap.

What I call “The Rush Through The Brush” enabled Junior to win.

Almost three decades later in the 1987 Winston all-star race at Charlotte Motor Speedway the late Dale Earnhardt pulled a similar feat resulting in victory, the infamous “Pass In The Grass.”

Which was the greatest move?

For diplomacy’s sake, let’s call it a tie.