Third place in NASCAR was his best score, but pride carried Marlin’s name to fame

After all that time in the racing spotlight, fighting tooth and nail to win, he never lost sight of his roots or who he was.

Coo Coo Marlin was basically unaffected. He was still the same man who still lived in the same modest farmhouse on the outskirts of Columbia, Tenn. The same man who still thought that herding cattle was just as important as harnessing horsepower.

And Marlin was still the happiest soul in the South every time his son, Sterling, chased down another victory in another race on NASCAR race weekend.

"I still remember the day he told my mother I was gonna race at NASCAR's fastest speedway ... Daddy was spearing a piece of meat at dinner. Looking away from her he said, 'Pass the potatoes, Eula Faye. Sterling's running at Talladega (Alabama) this weekend.'"

That was Coo Coo -- never coy, but forever a part of NASCAR's long bloodline of racing families.

One of stock-car racing's stars from the 1960s and 1970s -- before major TV networks and major-league money -- Coo Coo never left any doubt he was one of the racing's most colorful characters, even if he never won in 15 years of big-time competition.

But the passion for stock-car racing that he passed to his son would lead to the family's name being engraved on the trophy that symbolized victory in NASCAR's greatest race, the Daytona 500; Sterling won twice.

"We're a proud bunch, us Marlins," said Sterling. "And most of that comes from Dad."

Coo Coo, who died in 2005 at age 73, had to end up a race driver. How could you grow up in Hohenwald, Tenn., and not spend a little time in the Hohenwald Speedway?

It's where Clifton Burton Marlin first found himself one night in 1948. Nicknamed Coo Coo because that's how he said his name at age 4, he went to Hohenwald with his older brother Jack and immediately fell in love with the sound of the dirt track kicking up under four tires.

One night, when Jack didn't show up to drive, Coo Coo was the first to offer up his help. After flashing his cousin's license, Coo Coo climbed in the car and proceeded to finish third in his first race.

Following that, the open road was his own, but not without a little patience and time.

Coo Coo entered his first big-time event in 1950 after driving 45 miles to Nashville, Tenn., buying a Hudson Hornet and taping up the headlights and tying a seatbelt to the front seat.

"I think I got third there," Coo Coo would later say. "After the race, we untaped the lights and drove to a curb service place for something to eat and then drove it back home."

He began racing full-time three years later. Coo Coo ran the short circuits in Tennessee and Alabama for the better part of 18 years, racing regularly at fairgrounds and small events before finally making it to the big tracks in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

With a junk wreck of a car and some used motor parts, he couldn't afford to run the whole NASCAR schedule every season, but he made a good showing. He won a Daytona 125 race in 1973 (a preview race to the Daytona 500) and eventually had several top-five finishes in the 500 itself.

During the early 1970s, Sterling also got involved, working in the pits as the right-front tire changer on Coo Coo's pit crew. And when Coo Coo suffered a broken shoulder before the Nashville Winston Cup race on May 8, 1976, he didn't have far to turn. Eighteen-year-old Sterling filled in, making his first start at Coo Coo's home track.

Unfortunately, Coo Coo never took home the checkered flag. In 165 NASCAR races, he won $307,142 but never finished higher than third (three times). The closest he came was in the early 1970s when NASCAR stopped him while he was leading the Daytona 500 with 15 laps to go.

"They waved the black flag at me. I ignored it," he said. "They waved it again. I still ignored it. When they give it to you the third time, if you don't come in you're out (of the race). So I came in. They said I had a loose lug nut. There was nothing wrong, nothing loose. The NASCAR inspector said, 'OK, you can go.' Well, hell."

And that was that. Coo Coo's last Daytona chance sealed.

By the end of the decade, Coo Coo was suffering from problems with high blood pressure and was tired of the grind. His last race came at Talladega in 1980, his favorite track in his favorite part of the country.

But more Marlins were on the way.

Sterling's first win came at the one place that had denied Coo Coo for so long: Daytona. But only after 18 more years of trying.

"The greatest day of my life," Coo Coo would say that day in 1994.

And Sterling won Daytona again in 1995, starting a string of impressive seasons.

While all that was going on, Coo Coo was still out plowing that earth. He was still working a 700-acre cattle farm in the Carters Creek area of Columbia, Tenn., where he still lived across the street from Sterling and Sterling's son, Steadman, the third Marlin generation to race cars.

He might never have won a NASCAR race, but Coo Coo couldn't have been prouder.

Jason Stein is a feature writer with Wheelbase Communications. He can be reached on the Web at www.wheelbase.ws/mailbag.html. Wheelbase Communications supplies automotive news and features to newspapers across North America.