TNN The Great Drivers: Cale Yarborough

i suppose most of us spend our lives kind of cruising through life but there are those among us who live life at full throttle hi i'm brock yates today we're going to spend some time with a man whose hard charging lifestyle has brought him some real rewards such as this beautiful farm in rural south carolina join me today as we meet one of the great drivers kale yarborough [Music] kale yarborough may be the most tenacious competitor in the history of stock car racing [Music] a natural athlete with a powerful competitive urge kale is known by his fellow drivers as a man whose great talent is only surpassed by his urge to win a veteran of 27 years of grand national competition kale has won every major nascar race including the daytona 500 and the grand national championship three consecutive years a highly successful businessman with two car dealerships and a chain of fast food restaurants yarborough lives on a 1250 acre gentleman's farm with his wife betty joe and three daughters only a few miles from his childhood home in sardis south carolina kale this spread has got to represent more to you than just a farm i mean having grown up on a farm your family were farmers for a long time it must just be a special part of your life well it is brock you know the old saying is you can take the boy off the country but you can't take the country out of the boy i guess it's true uh in my case i i love the farm and i was born and raised on it and uh you know i really make my living doing other things now but uh this is this is a one of my racing trophies as far as i'm concerned this is what i've worked for and this is the biggest trophy i've gotten in racing what is it i wonder about a man who gets as successful as you are and yet so many guys like yourself never want to lose touch with the soil i know there's something about the land isn't there more than anything else you can own it really is and uh and i don't know really how to explain it but uh it's something uh i guess if you get sand in your shoes when you're young you want to keep it you want it in there when you're old so that's that's about word of mouth too i suppose these uh these old angus cows out here uh mean a lot of ways more to you than uh all the all the business ventures and everything else in their own way i enjoy fooling with them brock they are it's they're kind of therapy for me you know i just enjoy getting out here and uh doing a lot of this farm work myself and yeah you really work there i work the farm myself and uh i feed the cows myself i'm uh i'm my own handyman around the farm and i enjoy it gentlemen's farm but uh the the farmer he's a gentleman but he works at it too as well well i do work at it uh i do 99 of all this farm work right by myself because i have the big tractors and the big equipment that that i can do it with and uh i enjoy it well it's it's a fantastic place i want to talk to you a little bit more when we get a chance to when we come back about your racing career and your other activities so we'll be back with more with kale yarbrough on the great drivers after this kale i want to say something right off the bat i've been in a lot of nice houses in my life but this is a winner this is my congratulations it takes my breath away well thank you brock we enjoy it out here you know it's uh we're out in the country and uh we're sitting here on about 1250 acres of land right in the middle of it and uh it's just my kind of living i was born and raised on a farm and uh living back off the road like i am with my cows and my farm equipment it's just it's a good place to come to when i leave a place like dayton running 200 miles an hour oh boy how about i bet you when you're sitting in that race car sometimes you think boy i'll be back home right now i wonder what i'm doing here i should be on that tractor somewhere boy just sorry this is just down the road isn't it where you were raised this is this is my home country this is where i came from and a little community called sawdust right uh right across the river there and uh that's where i was born and raised and of course i went to charlotte for a while and uh when i was working for ford motor company and uh then when when i came back i bought a home over in timminsville which is a few miles down the road still i'm still home too and uh but then i bought this property here in 1968 and i wanted to build out here one day that's what i bought it for to really come back home completely home not six miles down the road but back home and so um about six years ago i built this house here and came back home and we really enjoy well it's just it's it's breathtaking it's one of the most beautiful homes i think i've ever seen in my life thank you kel you know you uh buddy baker said to me a while back he said you know yeah bro he said you can knock him down but you can never knock him out you've got a reputation of being just a competitor a pure competitor and you you seem to bring that intensity off the racetrack to all forms of your life you're uh you're a hard driving guy well uh brock i've always been a competitor from the time i can remember shooting marbles on the ground or you know anything that i've ever done i want to do it right and i want to do it better than anybody else and it's i guess i'm a kind of a workaholic i i i gotta be doing something i you know i just can't stand to to be still or or sit still and i keep working at it and uh it's it's just my nature that uh i look forward to getting up in the mornings seeing what all i can get done uh that day and and i and it's gone over into my to my racing too i'm that we're on the racetrack i i feel like that uh being out front and winning races is uh the name of the game and i want to do it the very best i possibly can i've seen you i've all the years i've been around you i've seen you erased with bruises and burns and bent and bent knees and all the stuff that you've been through but you never back out you never never quit i think that's a special quality i don't think i've ever seen it in any other race driver well i think the good lord did me a favor when he made me he he he put a switch in my brain somewhere that i can turn off and turn all that stuff off and uh then when uh the race is over or whatever i can turn the switch back on so uh i can just i can get it completely out of my mind uh any kind of of injury or i can i can pretty well still go on and and and get my job done and uh and don't think about it and i think that's a gift i'm serious i really think that it it is a gift to be able to do something like that the the racing business uh has brought you a great deal but now you're expanding i mean you're becoming almost a mini conglomerate here you got you've got the car dealership i understand you're going to build another one and now you're getting into the food food business is that well yeah and the farm of course yeah yeah the farm um the farm is a big farm and um and they have a goodyear service center a body shop and some dry cleaners that i started uh years ago and and some rental warehouses and uh different things like that i'm in the automobile business and uh now i'm in the hearty business i've just bought six hearty restaurants so uh i'm uh cooking hamburgers too now and and a lot of other little things that that i own part of and don't own all of so uh it's just gets right back to the being a competitor i got to keep going you know were you in business before you started to race i mean had you did you think about a career other than racing even while you were racing oh yeah well i started racing at early age and um i as i said i was born and raised on the farm and when beta joe and i got married we were in the turkey raising business i was in the turkey business and logging business both same time and about to starve to death i said there's got to be a better way than this so uh we uh i kept racing and and doing all these other things too and uh eventually i had to weigh everything out i said now i'm not getting anywhere in my racing business uh i'm not making any money in the logging business and i'm not making any money in the turkey business so i've either gotta do one or the other i gotta i gotta make up my mind which one i think is going to be for me in the future so i sat down and talked to their job about it and i told her that you know this is what we had to do and along about this time ford motor company was had their eye on me about maybe giving me a shot at one of their factory cars and uh and they were helping me a little bit on the side and we had some problems so you know i looked all around and to see what kind of future i had in the racing business and i and i really couldn't see much every every good car had a driver and uh nobody was looking for a driver at the time and once it's the middle 60s this was the middle 60s yeah and um so i decided that the best thing for me to do is quit racing just forget about it and go to work and uh this is what i decided to do so and i made uh kind of an announcement that that's what i was going to do i i was going to get completely out of racing and and when i and that was the best thing i ever did was make the announcement because some people heard about it and some people at ford motor company mr jack pasano at the time was heading up the ford motor company racing team and he heard about it and he had been watching me and helping me some so um he called one day and uh he says my wife called me the phone he said she says jack passing though and i said are you kidding me you know he's not calling me so i went to the phone shooting up it was him he says uh what are you gonna do you're gonna drive race cars or do something else i said well i don't have a race car to drive i would like to be in the racing business but i don't i don't have a race car he said well go to charlotte and uh hold him in the movies and charlotte and get your seat fitted for you so wow making the decision to go one way or the other uh was the right thing to do because this you know it put me in the right direction and even though it went basically in an opposite way direction yeah but i but i decided that i had to make some decisions and that doing what i was doing i might be doing all three of them the rest of my life and none of them would amount to anything so i made the right decision did you know what you were going to do i mean if you if nobody had to take any up on the deal well i was going more turkeys and more logs i'll get a bigger truck make a bigger load we'll be back with more with kale yarborough and the great drivers after this i think a race driver like yourself a lot of ways is like a movie star i think that a lot of people out in the world sort of fantasize about you guys and a lot of people think that it's just a con steady road up to stardom but there have been a lot of hard times haven't there well it sure has brock um it's uh it's a steady road but you gotta keep steady digging too to get up and there's no way you can start on this in this business on top it's uh it's a tough climb and it was tough for me i started out actually i started the bottom of the racing world in a soapbox derby when i was 10 years old and uh and went from there and it's had a had a lot of tough times but you know it's just something you have to if you really want to do it and you really want to be successful at it that you got to keep digging at it what did your wife betty joe i know you were your childhood sweethearts you've been she's been through it all with you has she felt the always that it was worth the effort she uh she never one time ever asked me if i thought it was worth it uh she knew it's what i wanted to do and what i thought that i could do and uh it's and she knew that i thought that it could be good for us if if we ever made it so uh she gave me a lot of support there's no doubt about it kel you uh this is a business uh that requires good automobiles and you went through a long hard time we talked a little bit earlier about not having the good cars but did you really feel in your heart that you could race with anybody if you had the right equipment uh i felt like i could brock i even felt like i could probably before i could but uh i thought i could and i think that's 90 of the battle there is thinking you can and it's uh i did have to run bad equipment and i would sit with that old bad equipment broke down and look at the good cars running i'd say one of these days one of these days and uh i just kept kept it up keep on trucking um a lot of the guys that have you raced with most of your career have sons that they're some of them are coming into the business three daughters uh if you had a son what would you tell him what would you want him to do if i had a son which i don't so really i probably really can't answer this question um the way i might answer it if i had a son but if i had a son and and he wanted to get into the sport uh i'd hit him all i could uh there's not an awful lot of help you you can you can give to a young person whether it's uh your son or not really it's uh they gotta they gotta have the desire well the girls are all racing fans that they're all involved aren't they one of your daughters of course is that uh working at the dealership she must love cars she loves cars and she works at the dealership and uh i have two doors still in high school so um i won junior high and one high and uh but none of them uh are thinking of becoming racer office dad might put his foot down on that end of it yeah it's uh you're it's i'm sure it's a that you have moments when you think if if only your dad had been around to watch this all happen he would have been a very proud man well yeah my dad was was a big race fan and uh i think probably that's where my love for racing came from because when i was a little boy he was used to take me to the races i mean when i was a real little boy he used to take me to the races and i enjoyed it we i can remember going to columbia speedway columbia south carolina had a half mile dirt track then i was just a little felon i remember people like cotton owens and buck baker and curtis turner and and these fellas racing there and i just thought they were the greatest people in the world and but uh he unfortunately he got killed when he was 31 years old and he um didn't stay around to see what's happened but i'm sure that he'd have been right in the middle of it hasn't it sure would have been kel you uh we talked earlier about uh a lot of different facets to your business life and your career and you're backing off slowly uh from the racing thing and i think you said that a lot of that reduction in your schedule down from the full grand national schedule down to 16 or 18 major risks a year has an awful lot to do with being here being with a family well there's no doubt about it that was that was the big reason that i that i stopped running the full circuit i i won three back-to-back championships and i'd run for the championship ship for years and years and years and and uh i had missed a lot in my family life my i had one daughter that was almost grown and uh you know i had two more coming along and i you know i took a look at the situation and uh life's too short and i feel like that i've paid my dues in the racing world and i still enjoy it i still enjoy running the races but i think 16 races a little over half the schedule is enough so i weighed all the facts out and i decided that i need to spend more time at home and i'm sure you've that you've heard the story that the reason i that really changed my mind was one day i was um i came left office and i came home to uh get something i had to go on a business trip and uh it was a very important business trip and i got my briefcase and uh walked out of the back door and my youngest daughter bj was sitting on the doorsteps and she had some friends sitting there with her and uh they were just sitting there not doing anything in the summertime i said bj why don't you uh why don't you ride in your bicycles or something she said daddy says every one of my bicycles are broke and i said well why haven't you told me how to fix them she said daddy i've told you 50 times well it kind of got my attention i came back in the house i set my briefcase down i took my suit and tie off and i put my jeans on and went out and fixed the bicycles all the people and told them that something very important had come up and i couldn't make it and that one thing got my attention and i i made up my mind right then that enough of anything was enough that i was going to spend some time with my family kale i got to believe that a man who drives a race car as hard as you do and has as much business acumen and works as hard as his business got to play pretty hard too well i enjoy my outdoor life brock i'm a big hunter and fisher and fisherman and i enjoy i got a pack of dogs and a pack of bird dogs and i enjoy duck hunting and anything in the outdoors i just enjoy and then when you're not doing that i understand you do a little airplane well yeah i enjoy you know i have my uh navajo that i fly for business but i got a pleasure plane too which is a a little wizard ultralight and uh i keep it right here on the farm and i enjoy an afternoons to get out and crank that thing up and fly around and look everything over neighbors must always know when you're about to come brother they know when i'm home [Laughter] well it it uh you must know these uh these lakes and these woods pretty well after spending your life around here well i do i've um i've hunted in almost all of them and uh flown over all of them and i i know them pretty well it's this is a some fantastic country around here we got good hunting and fishing and it's just a good place to live i wouldn't trade if anywhere in the world kel we envier it looks like a to you a dream come true and it couldn't happen to a nicer guy we want to thank you for bringing us is us into this fantastic house and letting us be with you today thanks a lot for joining us thank you too for joining us today with kale yarborough on the great drivers [Music] you

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Length: 20min 53sec (1253 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 03 2021