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Goin’ to Kansas City, Kansas City here they come!

Goin’ to Kansas City, Kansas City here they come!

They’ve got a beautiful race track there, and the NASCAR boys are goin’ to run.

I apologize to Fats Domino and the many others who have recorded this classic song for the play on their lyrics, but it was irresistible since this week brings the Sprint Cup tour back to Kansas Speedway.

The Casino 400 is scheduled there Sunday.

I’d wager that few of the fans who will be attending know that the very first winner of a race on the circuit that was destined to become NASCAR’s glamour series was a soft-spoken Kansan, not one of the more flamboyant Southern good-old boys like Fonty Flock or Curtis Turner or Buck Baker.

His name was Jim Roper, a native of Halstead, Kansas.

And how he came to triumph on June 19, 1949 at Charlotte Speedway, a 3/4ths-mile dirt track, is an amusing part of the sanctioning body’s rich history.

But first, some background on Roper: He bought his first racer, a midget car, in 1944 at age 27. He didn’t get to drive it in competition until the end of World War II in 1945, because motorsports competition was halted in the U.S. while the hostilities continued.

Once racing resumed, the slightly-built Roper showed his stuff. He won the Beacon Championship at a speedway in Wichita in ’47 driving a track roadster.  He also raced regularly and with success on the International Motor Contest Association tour in Kansas, Iowa, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Missouri.

During one race Roper lost control and smashed through a wooden fence into an alfalfa field adjoining the track. He drove back through the hole he’d made in the fence and returned to the speedway, his car filled with hay

After this he was nicknamed “Alfalfa Jim.”

How Roper learned about the “Strictly Stock” race that NASCAR founder Big Bill France was planning for Charlotte is among the sport’s most amusing anecdotes.

He saw it mentioned in a comic strip!

Zack Mosley, who drew the once highly-popular “Smilin’ Jack” syndicated strip, was a close friend of France.  Mosley included news of the impending Charlotte race in the “funny paper” and it caught Roper’s attention.

Roper was intent on taking part, and he somehow convinced a Kansas auto dealer named Millard Clothier that two of his Lincolns should be driven to North Carolina for the event. Roper drove one of them to Charlotte, and he qualified it 12th in a 33 car field.

Bob Flock won the pole at 67.958 mph in a Hudson.

Among those attending the race on a steamy summer day was 8-year-old Buddy Baker, there to watch his dad Buck run in the historic event.

“It was wild,” it once was recalled by Buddy, who passed away during the summer at age 74. “I remember Lee Petty turning over and over and over. I remember cars blowing up in big clouds of steam. I remember that some of the drivers brought extra gasoline for the 150-mile race with them in big metal cans that normally were used by dairy farmers to transport their milk to plants for processing. And, unbelievable as it might seem today, I remember some even bringing gas in open buckets, obviously a very dangerous thing to do.”

Heavy attrition among front-runners finally put a driver named Glenn Dunnaway from Gastonia, N.C., into the lead.

Dunnaway was at the wheel of a 1947 Ford owned by Hubert Westmoreland. Dunnaway took the checkered flag, with Roper two laps behind in second place. Roper had been forced to back off the throttle when his Lincoln started overheating.

Post-race inspection revealed that Westmoreland had equipped his car with “spreader springs” to improve traction in the turns and handling in general.  These springs were a favorite of moonshiners for their “hauler cars” in transporting illegal liquor.

The Dunnaway/Westermoreland duo was disqualified and Roper declared the victor and winner of the $2,000 first prize.

Dunnaway later sued in federal court, but the case was dismissed.

Roper’s car was inspected closely, too, and its engine torn down. He had to get a replacement engine to drive back home to Kansas.

Roper returned to North Carolina to run at Occoneechee Speedway in Hillsboro, N.C., on Aug. 7, 1949 and finished 15th in the 200-miler, winning $50.

He never entered another NASCAR event, deciding to compete closer to home in the midwest.

In 1955 Roper suffered a broken vertebrae in a sprint car accident, and this convinced him to retire as a driver. However, he continued in motorsports for a few years as a flagman and car-builder before moving to Texas to breed and train thoroughbred horses.

In 1993 officials at North Wilkesboro Speedway in North Carolina brought Roper back to the Tar Heel State as Grand Marshal for a Winston Cup Series event. He was presented with a duplicate of the trophy from the ’49 race at Charlotte, since car-owner Clothier had received the original.

“I am proud of the way I always drove a race car,” Roper said at the time.  “And goodness, we sure had a lot of good times back in those days. It was far, far different from now. I think we had more fun.”

Roper developed cancer in the late 1990s, and decided to move back home to Kansas for the end of his life.

He learned before his death that a 1.5-mile superspeedway was going to be built near Kansas City. And in May of 2000 he further learned that NASCAR was awarding major races to the track.

Roper died at age 83 on June 23, 2000 of heart and liver failure traced to the cancer. Although little-known nowadays, “Alfalfa Jim” always will remain a part of stock car racing lore.