Finding a way to pack masses of race fans into his Rockingham Dragway has always been a challenge for owner and operator Steve Earwood. Every year the ADRL’s Dragstock event rolls into town, he thinks back to his first year as owner of the track and wonders how in the world he reached this point.

Seeing full grandstands represents a milestone for Earwood and he shares the sentiment of the late IHRA founder Larry Carrier who once stated publicly that the most beautiful drag strip is a full one.

Earwood’s initial experiences with Rockingham Dragway were not beautiful.

Earwood was worn out just from the myriad of hoops he jumped through to get the financing to purchase the facility.

Finding a way to pack masses of race fans into his Rockingham Dragway has always been a challenge for owner and operator Steve Earwood. Every year the ADRL’s Dragstock event rolls into town, he thinks back to his first year as owner of the track and wonders how in the world he reached this point.

Seeing full grandstands represents a milestone for Earwood and he shares the sentiment of the late IHRA founder Larry Carrier who once stated publicly that the most beautiful drag strip is a full one.

Earwood’s initial experiences with Rockingham Dragway were not beautiful.

Earwood was worn out just from the myriad of hoops he jumped through to get the financing to purchase the facility.

“Then boom … we had 32 days till the Winston Invitational,” Earwood explained. “It was 20 hour days and seven days a week leading up to it.

“We bought the track in February and had the Winston Invitational race 32 days later,” said Earwood, in between work duties. “[We] had no phones. [There were] no lights, [I had] no staff, no secretary, no nothing.”

Earwood quickly realized ignorance is bliss.

“There was just so much that I didn't know and that was a good thing,” Earwood said.

Earwood was a press and media specialist during his track management days at the Texas Motorplex and Atlanta Dragway. Many of the day-to-day tasks were delegated to specialists in those fields. When it came to the Rockingham experience, Earwood was in uncharted waters.

“These other tracks that I operated had sponsorships, press and publicity and I had ticketing people and they had bathroom people and they had security and parkers,” said Earwood with a smile. “Well here it is now that it's all mine.  When I worked for Billy Meyer he took care of all that crap. In Atlanta, when I ran it, one of the wives of the owners took care of all the ticketing and all that stuff.  I never really had to physically do everything. 

“When you have an actual event, it's like running a small city. You have a fire department, you have security, you have parkers, you have bathroom people and it truly is like running a city. You're kind of like the city manager and if you haven't done that before it can be quite a challenge.”

That’s why if Earwood didn't have had Roy Hill as a partner at the time, he might have suffered considerably when it was discovered that counterfeiters had wreaked havoc on his ticket sales.

There’s law enforcement and then there’s Hill’s method of solving the issue.

“We had taken in $32,000 worth of counterfeit tickets in so we clamped down everywhere and starting asking where everyone bought a ticket from,” Earwood recalled. “ So we identified what the people looked like that they were buying the tickets from. 

“Roy had some of his associates at the track start combing the parking lots and they found one guy selling these tickets.  This was on Sunday, so we called the sheriff.”
 
The sheriff, Earwood said, fit the stereotype of the southern law enforcement official.

“Roy knew the process of what you do with a criminal from firsthand experience, so he had the guys drivers license and all that,” Earwood continued. “He hands it to the sheriff and says here's the clown who we found selling counterfeit tickets.  The sheriff, who is a very good friend now, looks at the license and says, ‘is that a boy or is that a girl? The guy had long hair so obviously he was trying to say it wasn't a guy. He said, ‘Son I don't like getting out of bed early on a Sunday morning unless I'm going to church.”

The track officials confiscated the wads of cash the perp had stuffed in his pockets and refunded the money to the victims. 

“There was another incident with another gentleman who wasn't near as cooperative,” Earwood said. “He and Roy got in the backseat of a Ford 500 that I had at the time and I drove around for a bit.  Roy and he had a real heart to heart conversation about what he had done and to make sure that it wasn't done before.  I dropped him off in the backwoods here back when we had a lot of woods here.”

Story has it that Roy wanted to find out where the rest of the associates were with the counterfeit tickets and he actually had a pair of pliers and clamped them down on the guy’s tongue and threatened to pull it out if he didn’t roll over on his associate. 

“Before it was over, this guy had went and got counterfeit tickets to Disney World, Gatornationals and other major events,” Earwood added.

In the end, Earwood and his makeshift staff pulled out a successful event.

“I look back at it now and I'm thinking how did we pull that off,” Earwood said. “I mean I had limited parkers and I didn't know what the heck I was doing with ticketing.  We got through it and it was just terrific. That first Winston Invitational was quite a challenge. It was probably best that I didn't know then what I know now.”  

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