This is the latest post for an ongoing media project — SoCal Sports History 101: The Prime Numbers from 00 to 99 that Uniformly, Uniquely and Unapologetically Reveal The Narrative of Our Region’s Athletic Heritage. Pick a number and highlight an athlete — person, place or thing — most obviously connected to it by fame and fortune, someone who isn’t so obvious, and then take a deeper dive into the most interesting story tied to it. It’s a combination of star power, achievement, longevity, notoriety, and, above all, what makes that athlete so Southern California. Quirkiness and notoriety factor in. And it should open itself to more discussion and debate — which is what sports is best at doing.
The most obvious choices for No. 98:
= Tom Harmon: Los Angeles Rams halfback
The most interesting story for No. 98:
Parnelli Jones, race car driver (1949 to 1973)
Southern California map pinpoints:
San Pedro, Torrance, Palos Verdes Estates, Rolling Hills, Gardena (Ascot Park)
In the preface to his 2013 memoir, Parnelli Jones recalls a time where he didn’t really fight the law, and the law didn’t win either. But it made for a great story.
It was 1964 and, as he wrote, “my name had really gotten around. I’d won the Indianapolis 500 in ’63, which earned me a lot of attention in the media. That was true pretty much everywhere, especially in Southern California because from the time I’d started racing I listed Torrance as my hometown.”
He was “honking down” the Long Beach Freeway, the 710, in a Ford Fairlane given to him by stock car owner Vel Miletich, who would be his partner in a chain of tire stores and car dealerships as well as engineer vehicles for his career with the Vels’ Parnelli Jones Racing team.
“This Fairlane had a souped-up engine with three carburetors. Vel said it would pass anything on the road; I told him in passed everything but a gas station,” Jones continued.
Admitting he was “cruising along pretty fast” when he saw the blue lights of a California Highway Patrol car in his rear-view mirror.
“I pulled over and started digging for my license and registration. I had it ready for the patrolman when he walked up to my door.
” ‘You were going pretty fast,’ he said. ‘Who do you think you are, Parnelli Jones?’
“Later on, I had a few incidents similar to that one, but there’s nothing like hearing a line like that for the first time. It was such a kick that for a moment I wasn’t even mad at myself for getting stopped.
“I handed the cop my papers and said, ‘As a matter of face, I am Parnelli Jones.'”
Which made for a great book title released 50 years after that ’63 Indy win, when he commandeered the No. 98 Willard Battery Special roadster owned by J.C. Agajanian that may have been leaking oil but it still slid past the competition for another piece of lore in The Greatest Spectacle in Racing.
That also opened the eyes and ears of car-crazy Southern California.
While his surname may have been a fairly common, even for a someone who uncommonly raced everything from old jalopies at Carrell Speedway in Gardena, NASCAR four-door stocks in Daytona, Trans-Am titles, even a dune buggy championship in the Baja 1000.
It was his nickname that shot him forward.
Too many knew him by his first name, Rufus. Parnell was his middle name. His mother, Dovie, named him after Rufus Parnell, a judge who she worked for in Arkansas.
When he was 17 and legally too young to race cars, he and his friends came up with a name that wouldn’t be too recognizable. His friend Billy Calder would tease him that a girl in school named Nellie liked him, so somehow Calder took Jones’ middle name and started call him “Parnellie.” In 1951, Calder was also in charge of lettering the race car. Painting the driver’s name on the door, next to their No. 66, Calder one day came up with the alias “Parnellie Jones.”
“We lost the ‘e’ somewhere along the way,” Jones adds in the preface, “but I’ve been ‘Parnelli’ every since.”
He made quick work of it.
Continue reading “No. 98: Parnelli Jones (and J.C. Agajanian)”
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