Please read The Birth of the Atlanta Speedway and The Legend of the Merry Widow for the background on the following story, including the business relationship and friendship between Asa Candler, Jr., and Edward Durant.

The inaugural auto races in November of 1909 were a huge success to any outsider or daily attendee. The biggest names in racing participated, records were set, an exciting crash created a thrilling climax on days four and five. Concession stands kept attendees fed and Coca Cola flowed like wine. Photos of the week-long event captured grinning, laughing, joyous faces during an era when posed photos were still mostly stoic. One would think that the Atlanta Automobile Association (AAA) would be thrilled with the end result.

And maybe they would have been, if not for Barney Oldfield.

Barney Oldfield was a madman of a race car driver. He got his start in bicycle racing, and had only tried one gasoline-powered bike before his auto racing debut in 1902. That debut opportunity came about when Henry Ford attempted to race his now-famous Ford 999, and when it failed to start up he sold the automobile to Barney for $800. Barney learned to drive on Ford’s machine and won his first race the very same day.  Oldfield went on to become one of the the most famous early race car drivers, a record setter and the first man to ever drive a car over 60mph. His most famous car was the “Blitzen Benz.”

Barney made a name for himself in the racing world. He had a big personality, and his jovial, cigar-chomping mug can be spotted in photos throughout racing archives. His manager, Bill Pickens, capitalized on Barney’s braggadocious reputation by promoting him as a speed demon of the highest calibre. And since Barney spent much of his career banned from racing for what was called “outlaw” racing, he also ensured that Barney could make a living by charging premium fees for participation in speed record challenges and public appearances. Ever the opportunist, Barney took a role as himself in a 10-week stint on Broadway in a play titled “The Vanderbilt Cup” and was even asked to star in the 1913 film, “Race for a Life”

So when the AAA recruited racers for the Atlanta Speedway’s 1909 races, they knew they had to have Barney Oldfield. It wouldn’t be a top-tier event without him, regardless of his reputation for drama. And boy, did he bring the drama.

Auto Week arrived and the races were ready to kick off. Barney showed up with his Benz and manager and was all set to go. According to testimonials provided in the aftermath, Barney and Bill Pickens arrived on Monday for an exhibition race, for which Barney was to be paid his usual rate. But just before the race started, Pickens raised the asking price, and he and Barney refused to participate unless paid. This wasn’t unusual for Barney and Bill. The two of them had built a reputation of being contentious business partners who often started trouble for anyone who wanted to showcase Barney’s skills.

Now the exhibition race was in question while fees were renegotiated at the last minute. AAA President Asa Jr., Secretary Ed Durant, and General Manager Ed Clapp discussed the rate hike and came to a consensus: no way. They refused to increase their offer and demanded that Barney race at the originally offered price. Then, to put it mildly, “words were exchanged.” Candler, Durant and Clapp unanimously ordered Pickens off of the track and banished him to the grandstands. Durant was appointed to keep an eye on him and have him removed if he attempted to enter the track area again. It’s worth noting here that Barney was not included in the banishment.

So far this seems to be the agreed upon version of events. The story was reported nationwide in various racing columns in early 1910, featuring interviews, anonymous insider stories and speculation by journalists. While the details vary somewhat after this, the above version is fairly consistent across most sources.

From here on it gets subjective, and therefore more fun to dig into.

At some point during the five-day event, Pickens re-entered the track area. Tasked with the job of enforcing the ban, one of two things happened:

1. Either Durant sought out a police officer and calmly but firmly requested Pickens’ removal.

2. Or Durant confronted Pickens in an ungentlemanly way, forcing Buddie to intervene and break up the confrontation.

But Pickens refused to go, instead informing Durant that Buddie himself had invited him back. Depending on who tells the story, one of two things happened:

1. Either Durant immediately departed without a fight, fed-up with some undocumented preceding behavior that made him cut ties with Buddie on the spot, and returned to the clubhouse because what was done was done and there was no use in arguing.

2. Or Durant and Buddie became heated, argued about Buddie’s unilateral decision without Durant and Clapp’s input, and the argument resulted in Durant washing his hands of the whole event and storming off to the clubhouse to stew.

No matter which way it went, the undisputed facts are that Bill Pickens was banned from the track for quarreling about Barney Oldfield’s fees, Asa, Jr., invited him back without consulting the other AAA officers, and Candler and Durant split their alliance over the incident. Which is significant, because Buddie and Ed were publicly inseparable up until that point. They had became fast friends and worked the whole track project themselves over the course of many months. Buddie had even shared the spotlight with Durant in the press coverage, and Buddie rarely shared the spotlight willingly. The Pickens/Oldfield fight must have been a doozy.

So Ed Durant returned to the clubhouse to cool off and wash his hands of the whole Barney Oldfield debacle. A short while later, Asa Candler, Sr., sought him out to try to mend the rift between him and Asa, Jr. This is how Ed described what happened:

Overlook his actions on the ground of his youth? Buddie was almost 30 years old. But Asa, Sr., always had a way of making excuses for his namesake. This is just one well-documented episode in a lifetime of shielding his drama-prone son from consequences.

Durant claimed that he agreed to let bygones be bygones and returned to the track to see his duties through to the end of the five-day event. The Merry Widow crashed on day four, Buddie bought George Robertson’s Fiat on day five, and Barney Oldfield continued to race throughout, in spite of the dust-up and the drama with his fees and manager.

If Barney stuck around and continued to race, he must have gotten his pay hike. Contentious personality or not, he knew his celebrity value. It’s also noteworthy that he was part of the brouhaha, his manager was ejected, but he was permitted to stay. The AAA had brought in lots of big names and hadn’t made a big deal in the press about Barney’s attendance in particular. So why was he permitted to continue racing?

One thing that became apparent in researching the life of Asa Candler, Jr., was that he loved celebrities. He wanted to be invited into their inner circles. He took on new hobbies and quickly aligned with whomever was the biggest name in the field, making a show of friendship that went beyond business associates or fellow hobbyists. When he started investing in athletics, he became friends with team managers and big name ball players like Ty Cobb. When he discovered magic, he befriended The Great Blackstone and Dante the Great. He also claimed throughout his life that Harry Houdini was a close friend. When he became a Shriner he aligned with the highest members in the local and national brotherhood. When he became interested in airplanes, he forged connections with the best-known names in air racing, and attempted to share headlines with Charles Lindbergh. When he became a born-again Christian, he traveled around in the inner circle of the top figures in the Methodist and Southern Baptist churches.

During Buddie’s auto years: he loved famous drivers. He loved the most famous drivers most of all. And that meant he loved Barney Oldfield. He wanted, perhaps needed to be Barney’s friend. When you look at photos throughout Buddie’s life, you notice a unique signature during this time period where his whole style of dress and presentation changed. First have a look at Barney’s photos, then one of Buddie’s photos from 1909.

It’s that cigar, jammed deep into the pocket of his cheek, that strikes a similarity. In 1909 he was photographed in racing settings several times with a stub of a stogie jammed into his mouth like that. Prior to 1909 he was never photographed with a cigar, although it’s known that he smoked since he was a schoolboy. In 1910 he was photographed with his cigar at the track again, but this was after the 1909 drama that split alliances, and the tucked-in stub was no longer his style. Later in life he was photographed occasionally with a cigar, but always in his hand, never in his mouth.

I believe Buddie was something of a natural hero-worshiper and wanted very much to be Barney Oldfield’s friend. And if that meant going back on his agreement with his business partners and granting clemency to Bill Pickens, then he was willing to do it.

That could have been the end of it. In fact, Edward Durant thought that was the end of it. He claimed that he went back to the track to see the event through and make the races a success, and thought he and Buddie would put the incident behind them. But Buddie wasn’t over it. There’s no record of whether he and Ed exchanged any more words, and since the Candlers rarely made public statements when embroiled in drama, we only have Durant’s testimony and anonymous insider tips from other AAA board members. The following details follow Durant’s version of events, which is corroborated by the other sources.

In December of 1909, about a month after the close of the races, the AAA met to hold an election of its officers. Buddie was reaffirmed as President, which was to be expected. Durant assumed he would retain the role of Secretary, but to his surprise he was replaced by Buddie’s brother-in-law, Bill Owens. Insulted by the ouster, he split from the AAA and decided to have nothing more to do with the organization, although he did make clear that he still held a seat on the board of directors and owned $5000 in stock in the AAA.

In January he leveraged his position to arrange another meet at the Atlanta Speedway, this time a matchup between Louis Strang and George Robertson. He made the arrangements with the help of Edward Clapp, and they agreed that as a board director and the General Manager they had the right to do so. But this didn’t go over well with Asa, Jr. He declared that no one had authority to arrange a matchup but the AAA President. In other words, himself. He withdrew the offer to Strang and Robertson and struck the meet from the schedule.

• When approached for a statement, Ed Clapp told the press, “Since Mr. Candler’s repudiation of the match race between Strang and Robertson, my resignation, which was to take effect at the pleasure of the board of directors, becomes effective at once.”

• When approached for a statement, Ed Durant told the press, “I was canned from the secretaryship at the last meeting of the directors in December by Mr. Candler and his father.”

• When approached for a statement, Asa Candler, Jr., said, “There is no trouble whatever in the Atlanta Automobile Association.”

• And when asked about Clapp’s resignation, he said, “Ed Clapp had no position to resign; he was simply a hired man and his services had been discontinued.” This was a lie, since it was on record and established that Clapp was indeed the General Manager, not a mere hired man.

The drama made rest of the AAA board of directors nervous. Speaking anonymously to the Atlanta Georgian, one director noted that the total track build cost $300k, and that approximately $124k worth of stock was sold. More could have been sold, but Asa Candler, Sr., chose to keep as much of it to himself as he could, since he was the primary financier. Asa, Sr., took a mortgage out on the property, and the mortgage was scheduled to come due in December of 1910.

Said the anonymous director, “I do not think Mr. Candler [Sr.] will ever foreclose as long as the track looks like it will make money, but when such races as arranged by Ed Clapp between Strang and Robertson are turned down because the president was not consulted in the preliminary arrangements, we may soon see a residential park or a cemetery made of the finest automobile speedway in the world.”

Foreshadowing? Yes, foreshadowing.

On January 24, Buddie announced that Edward Clapp’s replacement had been found. He hired a former Secret Service agent by the name of J.M. “Bill” Nye to act as General Manager. Ed Durant and another anonymous director said Nye was never approved by the board, and that he had been offered a house and a large salary to relocate and start work right away. Asa Candler, Jr., was going rogue.

At the end of January, Buddie hopped on a train that was bound for New Orleans for a Mardi Gras party. He joined Bill Pickens, George Robertson, and driver Ralph DePalma to discuss the possibility of racing. They discussed perhaps holding the race that Durant and Clapp had tried to arrange. Ever the pot-stirrer, Pickens announced that he would never work with the AAA as long as Durant and Clapp were involved, but now with them out of the picture, he was ready to work with Buddie and Bill Nye and make things happen.

But the fight between Ed Durant and Asa, Jr., wasn’t over. In February, Asa, Sr., and Asa, Jr., orchestrated a vote among the board of directors to kick Durant out completely. They tried to force him to retract all of his public statements, and made the remaining directors sign a note from the AAA stating that all was harmonious. However, anonymous board members continued to approach the press and suggest that many of the directors felt strong-armed into going along with their president’s personal vendetta.

In a scathing tell-all to the Atlanta Georgian, Ed Durant spilled details of the inner workings of the AAA, including the dysfunctional power structure that gave the Candlers indisputable control over decision making. He then made statements to the Atlanta Constitution, reaffirming and doubling-down on his statements.

He also repeatedly called Buddie out in multiple press statements. He portrayed Asa, Jr., as a spiteful, irresponsible young man whose authority only existed due to his powerful father’s insistence. He protested the way he was treated both as Secretary and Director, and he insisted that he had done nothing to deserve the treatment, even going as far as to claim that there was history to the rift and that Buddie had been a problematic friend for months.

And, understandably so, he wanted receipts to justify the poor treatment he had received. He wanted his reputation restored and he wanted Buddie to go down for his behavior.

But Durant forgot one thing: the Candler family owned more than just the Atlanta Speedway. In fact, Asa, Sr., owned the Candler Building in which Ed Durant’s offices were located. And his rent was processed through Asa, Sr.’s bank, which operated out of the ground floor of the Candler Building. And his lease was under the management and control of Asa, Jr., the very man who had turned every ounce of spite he possessed on his former friend.

Durant forgot that much of his life and livelihood was in Candler hands. But Asa, Jr., didn’t forget. Asa, Jr.’s next move was to serve his former friend with an eviction notice and to change the locks on his office doors.

Meanwhile the cracks were starting to show. While Asa, Jr., responded to press inquiries by telling them he had no time to answer questions, an AAA director spoke anonymously to the Atlanta Georgian and suggested that Buddie planned to escape the negative attention by giving up management of the track, cancelling his plans to build a $100k mansion in his father’s new land development in Druid Hills, and move to New York permanently.

Side note: In terms of research, the article shown below is a key finding because it establishes Asa Candler, Jr.’s initial intention to build a mansion like Briarcliff more than 10 years before he was able to break ground. The context in which was raised and the outlandish price tag suggests that the idea was originally a flex, an effort to demonstrate wealth, power and influence in the face of a rapidly deteriorating public reputation. Also of note is the $100k price tag, which corresponds neatly with an apocryphal family story that claims Asa, Sr., reduced Buddie’s inheritance in 1919 by an even $100k to recoup an unspecified debt. Two years later Buddie leveled his farm and broke ground to build Briarcliff.

To fight back against the eviction, Durant’s lawyer successfully argued that he had a right to a 60-day notice and did not need to immediately depart. In response, Buddie shut off the radiator in his office and froze him out during the coldest month of the year. By March Durant gave up his 60-day vigil and found new quarters in the Fourth National building at the corner of Marietta and Peachtree Street. But he stuck with his insult, calling his former friend a “spoiled child” at every opportunity. All of this played out in the local papers, and sometimes even made news as far away as California.

Now, one might wonder whether this is all a storm in a teacup, a minor drama seen under the microscope of historical research. I would submit the following evidence that this matter was a big deal to the Candlers at the time of its unfolding. In the Candler Papers at Emory University’s Rare Papers Archive, there is a box dedicated to the paperwork Asa Sr. sought to preserve associated with the Atlanta Speedway. The papers are mostly contracts, deeds, stock certificates, and business correspondences. But right in the middle of the stack, saved as the only example of a preserved newspaper clipping I can find in the collection, is the following article from the Atlanta Georgian:

It mattered enough for a man who saved few newspaper clippings to save this one.

By April of 1910 the drama finally blew over and press refocused their attention on the efforts of Asa, Jr., and his new General Manager, James M. Nye, to recruit drivers for the 1910 fall races. But dust-ups with some of the biggest drivers and chaotic track management hindered their ability to orchestrate an encore performance of the 1909 event. With the initial opening races falling short of recouping the cost of construction, followed by a total breakdown of the Atlanta Automobile Association’s management structure, the future of the Atlanta Speedway was uncertain.

Asa, Jr.’s falling out with Edward Durant was a turning point. From then on there was likely no escape from the eventual demise of the Atlanta Speedway.

Foreclosure was an inevitability.

And Asa, Sr., saw it coming.

Trouble at the Track Gallery