Hayes remembered as great racer
I knew the Hayes brothers as motorcycle racers.....the best I had ever seen.
In the 60's I rode my stripped down Ducati street bike periodically to Thomasville NC to race in dirt track scrambles.
It never occurred to me that I might get hurt enough that I could not ride home.
Right off the start line, the left hander first turn came up at the bottom of a hill....... which was interesting because most people don't race that well downhill. It got exciting for me because Ducatis had the rear brake pedal on the left and the shifter on the right. It was the other way around for Nortons. And NO ONE grabbed the front brake on a slippery dusty dirt surface.
The Hayes rode Big Bore Nortons into the dirt track downhill left hander and kept their feet up through the whole turn as they cranked on the power and hung out the bikes tail end
I had my left foot down the whole way round the left hander to hold the bike up.
Norton, Ducati and a few others were bikes imported through Berliner Corp.
The Hayes probably had a dealership in Tennessee.
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I got a lot of 2nd places at Thomasville behind a Honda 125 with my 98cc Ducati Bronco.
Ray Pericles had his Honda engine set up so loose that he used one set of spark plugs to warm it up and changed to clean plugs on the start line before the flag dropped. Ray was a farmer who raced in overalls and had a trailer for his Honda.
The official story was that he couldn't get new rings, but really he had the engine so loose, it would rev to the stratosphere.
As a grownup with a real job, he could easily outrun me on engine size and money I made after school working in Winn Dixie. Both of us could out run 125cc Harleys.
Marion Pyron from Fayetteville raced a 650 Triumph from Meridian Motors, who was the only motorcycle dealer near Fort Bragg North Carolina. Those guys would drive over in a big box truck with their bikes tied down against the walls and they slept on military sleeping bags.
Bunch of hell raising Army guys. If they got hurt the military would always
fix them up in the base hospital. How fast would you go if you knew your medical bill was taken care of? Officials told us they gave one trophy for every three entrants. Marion asked: "So if we pass two people, we get a trophy?"
The track was on a hilly field that went left, right, up and down hills. In one race he was going too fast to make the right-left part and .....Marion over shot the turn, when the track dropped away, he went air born through some bamboo and came out the other side in front of the guy who went slow enough to make the right and then left turn.
My last race there, I had a 250cc road racer converted to scrambler. Smaller diameter wheels put me closer to the road and I didn't need ground clearance anyway. I overcooked it cresting the start line hill and going down into that downhill left hander first turn.
To slow it down, I downshifted and on the loose dirt and gravel, the bikes back end started to slide side to side. I couldn't reach the brake that was on the left side, so I downshifted again. The back end stopped sliding side to side and started bouncing up an down. I leaned it over into the turn and the bike was now on top of me. I slid down the hill with the bike on top of me still holding onto the handlebars.
I had bought a racing leather suit that was too short for me, leaving at least an 8" gap between the top part and the leather pants. Upside down on my back sliding headfirst down into the turn, my leather pants worked like a scoop cleaning the track of rocks and dirt until I came to a stop.
I don't remember the rest of that day other than the inconvenience of trying to empty out the rocks and gravel from a form fitting leather suit bottom.
It was the last time I raced on that track.
I did ride over one Sunday to take a last look.
Gone were the sounds and the smells. It was quiet and clean.
The track was turning itself back into a field.
They say that you can't go back there anymore.
It's because there isn't there anymore.
That track isn't there anymore...and neither is Kenny Hayes.
Except in the memories of my mind.
-Bob Vail
A poster at Jim's Motorcycle Sales highlights Ken Hayes' win in a national championship race.
- Friends remembered Ken Hayes on Wednesday as a champion racer, a mentor, a good athlete and a close friend.
Hayes died last Saturday at 78 years old after an extended illness. He was the owner of Jim’s Motorcycle Sales of Johnson City since 1965, but best known as a champion racer before that.
He and older brother Jim Jr. were known throughout the country as the “Hayes Boys.” In 1963, a South Carolina newspaper referred to them as the hottest motorcycle brother combination on the East Coast.
By that time, they were established stars. Ken had won the Tennessee State Scrambles Championship in 1958 and was one of the top riders on both the dirt flat tracks and on the road racing circuit.
He won championship road races in Marlboro, Maryland, and Laconia, New Hampshire, and in 1964 won both the East Coast Scrambler and a 100-mile race at Daytona.In later years, he later served as a mentor to AMA National Champion Mike Brown and they remain the only two riders from East Tennessee to win major motorcycle races at Daytona.
“If it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t be where I’m at today,” Brown said. “There are three people in my life — Ken Hayes, Kirk (Ken’s son) and my dad — who have been there throughout my whole career. I could always lean back on Ken if I needed somebody to talk to. He always had an answer for any question I might have. He was always such a big help to me.”
It was likely because Hayes, best remembered for his red No. 77 Ducati, had been there and done that so to speak.
The Hayes Boys, who included a younger brother Tommy, dominated the motorcycle version of the Southern 500 held in Fayetteville, N.C. in the early sixties. Jim Hayes Jr. won the inaugural race in 1960 and again in 1963 after Ken experienced a chain failure while running up front.
Ken continued racing on the flat tracks until an injury on the Daytona short track in 1967. The Hayes Boys started competing in motocross events in 1969 where they raced in the 250 and expert classes. Ken Hayes was paralyzed from the chest down in a vintage motorcross race in 1991, but continued to run the family business until his death.
For Brown, the times he spent talking to Hayes were priceless.
“Every time I would speak to him, I would hear the stories about him and his brother racing,” Brown said. “A couple of weeks ago, I called him from California and we probably talked an hour. He would remember the stories down to a T. It was always good to hear his voice and there were some great stories for sure.”
Johnson City Press