BALLSTON SPA, N.Y. — The recent passing of “Jumpin’” Jack Johnson at age 76, after nearly a decade of being bed-ridden with ALS, brought back many memories of a golden era of the sport.
When Johnson was at the top of his game, so were fellow Hall of Famers “Barefoot” Bob McCreadie, Lou Lazzaro, Will Cagle and brothers Alan and Danny Johnson (unrelated to Jack), and all found enviable success around the Empire State, leaving scant pickings for others.
The Johnson brothers were younger and are still competing, but the others are long retired or have died, though, their exploits remain special among fans of a certain age.
We can recall when Jack Johnson first came on the scene at Fonda Speedway, when the big guns were Kenny Shoemaker, Bill Wimble, Pete Corey, Lazzaro and Steve Danish. Blazingly fast from the get-go, it took a little while for Johnson to learn patience.
“He always had his right foot right through the radiator,” car owner Tony Villano once told us. By the time he’d moved into Tommy Douglas’ fleet Falcon big-block modified, Johnson’s natural talent began to show and his march to stardom unfolded.
Johnson was soon a full-time racer, sometimes in cars of his own and at other times driving for a bevy of eager-to-win owners. He told us once that he had not intended to race for a living but got to his job at an auto dealership late one Monday morning after a long weekend of racing and was told to choose between racing or working there.
“I loaded my toolbox in my pickup and that was that. All of a sudden I was racing for a living,” Johnson said with his familiar mega-watt smile.
On his way to becoming Fonda’s all-time leading winner with 149 victories, Johnson became the master of the odd-shaped half-mile’s third and fourth turns. The backstretch curves smoothly into turn three until all of a sudden there’s a sharp corner onto the frontstretch.
Scores of drivers who thought they were hugging the infield shared the experience of hearing a big roar and then seeing the orange No. 12a shoot inside them with its left front hiked up on the infield berm, before hitting the frontstretch with a full head of steam.
Away from home, Johnson was a winner on tracks ranging from the quarter-mile bullring in Canaan, N.H., to the New York State Fairgrounds mile. While he was always proud of the fact that he was the first New Yorker to win the Super DIRT Week classic after years of domination by the big guns from Pennsylvania and New Jersey, Johnson surprised us once when we asked about his lasting memories from his 1979 Syracuse score, which he repeated five years later.
“We partied so long after that first one that JoJo crashed the truck and trailer before we even got off the fairgrounds,” said Johnson.
“JoJo” was JoJo DeSarbo, one of a gaggle of hard-core racers who devoted a lifetime to crewing for Johnson. When he was racing four and five nights a week, it took help like that to keep going. A few are still helping his son, Ronnie, now a successful racer.
In addition to mentoring his son, Johnson tutored Vermonter Dave Camara and fellow New Yorker Billy Decker during the early days of their careers. Both went on to outstanding careers, with Decker, a fellow Syracuse winner, still among the elite big-block modified pilots.
Another driver Johnson had many thrilling battles with needed no tutoring. When Cagle moved to the Capital District, he and Johnson fought it out Fridays at Albany-Saratoga Speedway and Saturdays at Fonda.
Longtime Albany-Saratoga promoter C.J. Richards called his newly added Jersey barrier walls inside the turns “the Jack Johnson wall,” saying, “I got tired of Jack running down in the infield and Cagle trying to get down inside him to steal the lead.”
When he retired after a Fonda crash in 2010, Jack Johnson’s 43-year career showed 428 wins at 35 speedways and a half dozen Mr. DIRT Modified championships.
We’ll probably remember him best for the time after he was stricken with ALS. Not wanting to deal with the public as his mobility declined, he’d watch the Fonda races from a pickup in the infield with a companion politely shooing away potential visitors.
But he always welcomed us over to chat about the current state of racing as well as look back at the good times of the past. Once he could no longer attend the races, Johnson spent years in bed, unable to move. He was one tough racer right to the end.
RIP old friend!