Last visit to the track

"I took him to the racetrack from the time he was a baby. You just knew Johnny would race."

Nancy Arrant, mother

Deep in the soul of car racing, unfettered by decals and corporate logos but burnished forever by memories of ghost-pale white '39 Fords with big-block motors that didn't rev but roared, was always the red-clay dirt of Southern tracks.

Where the lights were dim and the bellies burned with fire that couldn't be caged and the hardest chargers lurked and spun and slid through turns to shoot through straightaways like cannonballs.

From that red York County dirt, and a daddy who came from that red York County dirt, roared car No. 28A with Johnny Arrants behind that wheel. Nobody ran faster in the 1980s and 1990s on the tracks from Gaffney to Lancaster to Chester down here in South Carolina, and Gastonia and Concord and Charlotte across the state line.

The "A" was for Arrants, same car number of his legendary father before him, Donald "Big Don" Arrants. The same Big Don, gone a couple of decades now, who raced and scraped fenders when he sometimes beat legends like Lee Petty and Ralph Earnhardt and the great David Pearson himself.

"Johnny, I took him to the racetrack from the time he was a baby," said his mother, Nancy. "You just knew Johnny would race."

And race Johnny did. The friendly, teetotaling terror of the dirt tracks was Johnny Arrants most of his adult life, somehow balancing family and his job as a graphic artist for those Friday and Saturday nights under those dim lights that are the shrouds of stars on dirt. He won championships at all the area dirt tracks over the years, first in the bored-out 6-cylinder car in the early days, then the powerful V-8 limited late model with the big spoiler on the back that looked "like a big wedge of cheese," as his brother Bruce Arrants described it.

The trophies piled up and the years piled up.

"Don and Johnny, two of a kind behind that wheel -- and I know because my car was the competitor with Johnny, and we had some knock-out races," said Ronnie Aiton, still the safety officer at Lancaster long after his car-owning days are done.

Big Don was a giant in the racing world few fans outside that cult of horsepower and spraying nighttime dirt ever heard of, because he raced only for the thrill. He never made it to the big-time because family came first. His son lived the same way. All Johnny wanted was to be the toughest, fastest, best racer on area dirt, and few will argue he didn't do it.

"Lancaster, the dirt, was where Johnny's heart was," Bruce Arrants said.

And other parts of his body were there in the dirt, too, left in so many crashes at so many tracks as his black pony tail stuck out from under that helmet and flapped in the wind at track speeds so far over 100 mph.

Cousin Joe Tinker, on the car's mechanical crew, remembered one Friday night in Chester.

"He hooked up with another car, the guy puts him into the wall, and the whole front of the car is tore off," Tinker said. "Johnny's off to the hospital. We take the car back to the shop on Cherry Road and I start tearing her down."

By the next night, after almost 24 hours of work, the car was back in shape enough to race. Johnny had almost as much repair work -- but the car looked better.

Johnny left the hospital anyway and showed up at the track. Johnny could barely walk. He couldn't bend at the waist to hoist himself into the car through the window.

"We had to stretch him out straight, four of us, and put him into the car," Tinker said. "I was crawling down at the bottom to put his feet down at the gas and brake."

Johnny somehow qualified in his heat for the main event that night.

"And he led that main race all the way to end and won it," Tinker said.

The fans at the dirt tracks would crowd around for autographs, come for miles on those hot nights after weeks of hard work in their lives to see Johnny Arrants, who was one of them. But one who was faster and gutsier, who had that drivin' way unlike most of the rest of us, screaming through the pack like a comet.

"His fans, they loved Johnny," said his mother, Nancy.

"The girls, oh, they just chased after him," said the ace mechanic in all those days, Johnny's uncle, Jimmy Arrants. Jimmy helped to teach Johnny the ropes of racing, and cars.

Jimmy continued to help with the cars until a few years ago, when Johnny decided he wasn't going to race anymore. Too expensive. The old days of juggling dollars to keep race cars going and checkered flags flying were done.

So five years ago, Johnny Arrants walked away from the track. He got sick a couple of years ago with Guillain-Barre Syndrome, an immune and nervous disorder, his family said, and spent weeks in the hospital. But he recovered.

He never went back to the track, though, not once.

"He used to say he wanted to race so bad that he couldn't even stand to watch," his brother Bruce said.

Until Saturday night.

Johnny took his 13-year-old son Don -- named for Big Don, of course -- to Lancaster for the dirt-track races. From the press box, the public address announcer spied Johnny Arrants and told the raucous hard-scrabble crowd: "You won't believe who we got here tonight with us, the great driver from the 28A car you all loved for so long, Johnny Arrants!"

Johnny stood up from his seat and so did the rest of the crowd. One by one, in a wave like you see when fans lean in to watch the skidding cars come around turn four and head for the finish line, the whole place stood and gave Johnny an ovation.

"Man, it was awesome," said Aiton, the longtime rival and friend.

Then Johnny went home. He went for a sandwich a couple of hours later, his brother said, complained he was worn out and collapsed on the kitchen floor.

Johnny Arrants, the legendary driver, died of a heart attack at age 51.

The visitation Tuesday night at the funeral home in Fort Mill had so many drivers in the place the owners feared a race would break out.

Scores of competitors over the years, dressed nice in pressed slacks and shirts, lined up to pay their respects. Aiton, the former competitor who now runs a children's ministry, was more than happy when asked to say a few words at Wednesday's graveside burial service.

Johnny's family readied to bury him in a special racing T-shirt he silk-screened himself at the College Shoppe in Rock Hill where he worked so long. In the casket went a replica of his race car and the last checkered flag he ever won.

Johnny Arrants was then buried next to his daddy. In the dirt, just like the dirt of racetracks he slid through so many Turn 4s on. With the rest of the field eating the dirt from his rear tires, all in his rear-view mirror by then. On the homestretch, speeding toward the finish line.

This story was originally published September 18, 2008 at 12:27 AM with the headline "Last visit to the track."