♪ Beryl Dakers: Hello, I'm Beryl Dakers.

Welcome to Palmetto Scene.

We're here today at one of the gems of South Carolina, the historic Darlington Raceway in Darlington, South Carolina.

I can't wait to learn more about this legendary NASCAR track later in our show.

But first, a look at the very roots of the sport.

Dirt track racing.

It's easy to forget racing actually started on dirt tracks, but we're off to the Sumter Speedway Now, one of the longest operating dirt tracks in South Carolina.

Sissy Duke: Dirt track racing is where racing all began.

Here in the south, it kind of started as the moonshine running.

And once the moonshine kind of played its way out, people still wanted to see who had the faster car and they started making tracks in their backyard or in a field in 1956.

They open up a dirt track in a cow field.

It got too popular for the cow field.

So here we are in 1957.

They moved it to Wedgefield Highway right here in Sumter and now we have Sumter Speedway.

We are a track here in Sumter, South Carolina who have never closed our doors.

Most of the tracks in South Carolina have gotten overhauls or you know they've changed hands or promoters and they've closed down for a year or two and then pop back open.

Here at Sumpter Speedway, we've had a race every single year here since 1957.

Also, we're a three eighths Mile track, meaning we're a little bit smaller than most of the other tracks that are here in South Carolina.

It makes us the toughest little racetrack in South Carolina, which is our slogan, a lot of drivers say that if they can come here and win they can go to any track and win.

So we here have been historically long running and just a part of the Sumter community.

Speedy: Sumter is a good little track, it's a little different a little D shaped, kind of the back straightaway.

It's got a long curve into it's not straight line most drag so it makes a little different driving style.

You gone get dirty, it's hot.

But it's a lot of fun.

A lot of good people that's the main thing.

It's blue collar people who work you know, most people like myself, I mean, we spent every dime, we got to come here to do this stuff and put on a show and hope the fans enjoy it.

And you don't want to tear nothing up you might see a little wreck, little fight, little drama, so dirt track brings a little, a little bit of all that.

Jordan: I'm from Savannah, Georgia.

I've been coming here for four or five years now.

Come here a couple times, got a few wins under my belt here.

I love this place.

I love this track.

The people here awesome.

In the late model class, I'm the only female here tonight in this division, long, long line of racing and my family my, my mom raced, my grandma raced, my papa raced, my husband races.

My cousins, it's been in the family a long time and I just picked it up, keeping the generations going and a female racers.

And it gets intense, it's hot, it's fast, get dirty, there's nothing, nothing better.

Miles: Racing is definitely a small world you're kind of born into it or just know somebody who does it and it just like you get the fever and you just you hooked on it .

My grandpa, he was a crew chief for a guy who ran NASCAR back in the day.

And that's kind of what got my dad into it and got my uncle into it.

And now here we are, I'm racing and all my cousins are racing and everything.

So I run the mini stock class and it's the only four cylinder rear wheel drive class that they got out there and and it's real, it's real competitive.

All them guys who run in big races are really, really fast and really close and, and they're a bunch of really good drivers in that class and it's a lot of fun.

Kind of out of control and in control at the same time.

And it's just there's something about it everybody likes.

I love it.

You can't really watch it on TV because it's not the same.

But come on down to the track and it's a whole different experience and have a good time.

Hunter: I've been coming out here about four years.

You can go out meet the drivers.

They're not up on a pedestal like a lot of other professional racing series.

A lot of good action and beating and banging and there's no wall here.

How cool is that?

Fans are really cool.

You know, there's lots of kids out here and that's going to be the next generation of race fans.

Everybody's real friendly.

They'll explain to you what's going on.

It's a little bit different than most stock car racing is.

But everybody I've had out here has had an absolute blast whether they were into racing or not.

Cody: I'm seven And I've been watching dirt track racing since I was in my mom's tummy.

I come out here a lot, and I love it.

Marshall: I'm always here.

On saturday nights.

I've been coming out here, probably 30 to 35 years.

This is home track.

So glad to have the speedway close to home.

So we don't have to drive so far, Sissy Duke: The heart of a racer is just like the heart of a Carolina and Clemson football player or one of their people sitting in the stands.

Once you come out here and you pick your guy that you want to win, every week, you're going to get hooked just like those games.

And you're going to want to come out here and do it more and more, I would most definitely call racing a family sport, not only because my family got me involved, but also my husband when we started dating, he actually followed me to the racetrack, and it didn't take him two or three years before he actually decided that he wanted to race cars as well.

My sister who was never gonna get in a race car actually starting to doing it.

as well.

As she got older, she started to see how much fun and how much entertainment, it really can be, not only while you're here at the track, but I really believe that when you get your kids involved in any sport, it keeps them sometimes out of other trouble.

So if you have a racecar is just like practicing basketball, or baseball or football, you're at your house, you're working on your car, you're gaining skills, and it really takes a lot of skills to have a car, people think it's just putting gas in it and coming to the track, you're really teaching your family skills that they can use for the rest of your life.

This is a different sport than it was 10, 15, 20, 25, 100 years ago, no lie, you are going to find anybody from your doctors, to your lawyers all the way up to your mechanics in the town.

You know, your teachers like I am, you've got just a wealth of different people come to the track.

I can't describe them in one statement, because it's literally a mix of everybody.

It's a such a warm environment.

Once you come and you sit down in the stands, you're just gonna feel something that you won't get anywhere else.

Beryl Dakers: A few years back, we spent some time with Darlington Raceway president Kerry Tharp, who is a unique personality who spent his professional career at the center of two of the state's wildly popular sports Watch now, as we reprised this interview.

[Car engines roaring and crowd cheering] >> Most sports are similar.

[Car engines roaring and crowd cheering] Such a passionate fan base.

Really, when I got involved with NASCAR it really reminded me of a Big Bowl weekend.

[crowd cheers and horn fanfare] Well, I was working in Sports Information at the University of Oklahoma and I got a phone call one day by from a guy named Sid Wilson.

He had an opening at South Carolina and he gave me a call.

And there was just something about the university, Columbia, the state of South Carolina that just really attracted me.

I took that job in 1985 and I've been here ever since.

Well, I was there for 20 years 1985 to 2005.

And I can honestly say it was a blessing.

And I fell in love with the university and although I didn't go to school there, I consider myself a Gamecock.

You know, there was a lot of things that went on with the university here in that 20 year period.

You know we joined the Southeastern Conference in the early 90s that certainly was a landmark.

I'll never forget the press conference we had up on the stadium ramp that night when Roy Kramer, from the SEC was there and extended our bid officially.

And in getting into the SEC was just a really great thing for the school.

I think both athletically and academically.

You know, I can say that I was able to work with some Hall of Fame coaches, that's Lou Holtz and Steve Spurrier.

And I had the opportunity to work with both of them.

And that was cool to be able to work with two legends like that, They were both unique, both different and yet they did great things for not only for the program but for the university and the state of South Carolina.

I had the opportunity to work with Eddie Fogler.

We won a SEC Basketball Championship, went to a couple NCAA tournaments with him.

And you know Ray Tanner.

I was there when we hired Ray.

I was on the little committee that got together and we actually, you know, were the ones that hired Ray Tanner.

And so the people at the university, the people within the athletics program are really second to none.

I had a dear friend I went to school with at the University of Tennessee that was working with NASCAR at the time.

He contacted me back in 2005.

One thing led to the next and they had a position open in the NASCAR office in Charlotte, and I told him initially, I said 'I don't even like NASCAR.

I don't follow it 'I don't understand it and I just don't think it 'would be a good fit'.

He said, "Well, listen".

He said, "You know sports.

You know people.

"Why don't you come down to Daytona and check it out."

I spent pretty much all day there meeting people, learning as a much as I could about the sport and so forth and so.

I'll never forget.

I got home that night in Columbia.

And my wife said, "So, what did you think?".

I said, 'Well, Debbie, I don't know what I saw, but it was cool.'

You know I just saw something that I'd never seen before, the access the excitement, the enthusiasm, you know, the whole deal.

And so, I took that job and that was in 2005 and I've been involved with the sport ever since.

There's no question that when you think about Darlington Raceway, you think about one of the iconic sports venues, not only in the state but certainly in NASCAR.

It's kind of like the Wrigley Field of NASCAR.

We might not be the prettiest.

We might not be the fanciest, but I think we're the coolest racetrack out there.

And I think if you took a poll among the drivers certainly they want to win the Daytona 500, but I tell you what, right behind that Daytona 500 is that Bojangles Southern 500.

They want to win this race and win it bad.

And so the support that we receive from people in the state, from the governor on down, we are the home racetrack of South Carolina.

We don't have professional sports in this state.

We're blessed to have the Heritage down at Hilton Head, the tennis tournament in Charleston and then we got Darlington.

And so I tell people and I believe this with all my heart, particularly in the fall of the year in the state of South Carolina, there's two passions.

That's college football and Darlington Raceway.

And so for us to be a part of that equation is very, very cool.

You know we've got that throw back platform now.

Back on Labor Day that's where we need to be.

We're going to stay on Labor Day.

We're going to continue the throwback.

And we want to continue to be one of the crown jewels in the sport of NASCAR.

It has been a change, but I will say this.

My training in college sports, my training at NASCAR I think was great training for what I'm doing now and being able to be in and stay in the state of South Carolina has been just almost too good to be true.

>> And now it's off to the race track.

Well... sort of.

Soda City RC is a non-profit remote control racing facility in the heart of Columbia.

It gives the sport of RC racing a place to call home.

At first glance, these remote control cars may look like children's toys, but in actuality, they are highly customized.

And boy, do they pack a serious punch on the racetrack.

♪ [hard rock music] ♪ >> Soda City RC is a nonprofit organization facility that we are open here just to give the sport of RC Racing a place to call home in Columbia, South Carolina.

♪ [hard rock music] ♪ We race what affectionately we call as toy cars, but they're actually model cars, model remote control cars that act and race and are able to adjust, just like some real cars.

They actually are driven on electric power, lithium polymer batteries.

We call them LiPo's.

So it's very, in terms of technology, in terms of all the aspects of the techy side, they're very much advanced and they're very adjustable.

They're very much almost like a real car, just miniature and brought down to scale and they're scale model race cars, is what they really are.

It's almost setup very much like a Motocross or another kind of amateur racing, where you have heats that are divided into similar classes.

Classes are the different kinds of cars.

They're different kinds of chassis, different kinds of motors, different kinds of specific rule sets for these cars.

And so you go into a heat type setup where you have no more than about six or eight cars at a time on the track.

And they get divvied up into different racers that are in that class.

You might have one, you might have five heats of the same class.

And you go through several rounds, and by the time you get your best qualification rounds, you have the main event we call the 'Mains' that are actually - those are for the placement.

Those are for the end of the day, and that's for the first, second, third and bragging rights and the, you know, the ability just to talk smack to your friend and fellow racer, and then feel good that you did a good job.

<Jimbo Massalou> My time is all here.

All our extra time is right here.

I started racing in 2006 to 2010 outdoor.

It's pretty serious.

The competition is tough.

I mean, in between each race, guys will come over.

They'll look at the results, see where they're at, see what they need to do to the car to make it better.

What they try to do is get your best run in.

The person with the best time in that five minutes, of course, is going to be on the pole.

And that's where you want to be.

And if it's on your side and your car is good enough, that's where you're going to be.

<Ryan Evans> I was like, this is something I want to do, because we have done so many sports.

Like I did basketball.

I didn't really like that.

We did Motocross.

It was cool, it was fun, but it wasn't really my thing, and now we found RC, and I was like, let's do this.

Now we're fully into it.

I really like the racers down here.

They've always got nice people.

And a couple of people that used to race at our track who drove out three or four hours are racing down here now, because this opened up about a year ago.

And so I'm getting to meet some of them people again.

Some of our buddies come down here and hang out and race.

But what I like mostly is just, just to have fun and just to experience with other people, and just kind of like getting to drive because RC, it can be tense at some points, but most of the time it's just like a stress relief.

<Dylan Fuge> It's fun to race with other people.

It brings out competition.

My hands start to sweat because I just want to win so bad.

It feels like your work pays off.

This is the same thing that happened with my car.

It paid off as soon as I got it running, and I've gotten a lot better since that happened.

I race adults and kids.

I like the people, so if I break and my dad is not here, other people can help me fix my car.

<Ryan> Soda City has probably some of the nicest and best racers I've seen.

I think it is for everybody, every gender, every race, every age.

<Mark> We have this facility for the racers and really just kind of continuing a legacy of a lot of years, a lot of effort, a lot of energy for this great community.

It's continually evolving, and that's where we're at right now.

<Jimbo> The friendship is like no other.

It's awesome.

I really don't know how to explain it.

This is what we do.

Beryl Dakers: Now let the good times begin with music from the Swinging Medallions.

This nationally recognized South Carolina based band formed in the early 1960s.

What's so amazing about the group however, is they don't seem to know the meaning of the word retirement.

<Narrator> Ah, yes!

Beautiful, quiet Abbeville, South Carolina located in the Upstate, where the Abbeville Spring Festival is held every year.

Families can enjoy rides, treats and famous rock and roll bands like The Swinging Medallions.

We say 'famous' because this group became nationally known, becoming a beach music favorite for many generations to come, past and present.

The Swinging Medallions was formed in 1962 in Greenwood, South Carolina by John McElrath, who played keyboards, and Joe Morris, who played drums.

Carroll Bledsoe, who played trumpet, also became a member.

It was a way to make extra money while they were students at Lander College.

The group became an official beach music party music band on the college frat house circuit, and by 1966, their single Double Shot of My Baby's Love went national, reaching number 17 on the US Billboard Hot 100 becoming a party classic for college students.

They toured up and down the east coast, hitting 34 states in three months.

Their follow up single She Drives Me Out of My Mind also charted nationally, and they appeared on Dick Clark's Where the Action Is all chronicled in Carroll Bledsoe's book The Swinging Medallions: Double Shot An Insider's History of The Swinging Medallions .

Bledsoe says he was inspired to write the book by Swinging Medallions fans.

<Carroll> We played several years ago down at the club in Greenville, South Carolina, and a man and his wife were sitting at the table where I was on break, and he was asking me all kinds of questions about "what did y'all do, and how did y'all do this?"

and when we got through talking, he says, "you know, you need to be writing this down or nobody will know about it."

We kept it G-rated, but it's been a blessing, it really has.

♪ [instrumental band music] ♪ Excitement about The Swinging Medallions runs in the family.

Emily Bledsoe is Carroll Bledsoe's granddaughter.

<Emily> As the Special Events Coordinator for the city of Abbeville, it's important for us to get as many people as possible downtown into the community, and the best way to do that, I think, is to have The Swinging Medallions, because they always bring a big crowd.

It just is going on from generation to generation.

People who are older love it and people who are younger love it and just pass that along.

When I see my grandfather dancing, it's kind of unbelievable, because growing up, when I was younger, he was just my Grandpa, and I never really thought about it, and then as I got older and people would recognize my last name and ask about it, I didn't realize he was this big star, and people would be so excited, and I think it's really cool just kind of seeing him in his element and having fun like he's a kid again.

I really enjoy that.

<Narrator> Although no longer with us, John McElrath's vision is carried on by friends and family.

>> My father would be proud of this band today, because it's exactly the type of music and style and fun that they started back in the 60s.

♪ [snare drumming] ♪ <Narrator> After all these years, The Swinging Medallions still perform Double Shot of My Baby's Love and other hits like Hey, Baby today with original member Larry Roark on keyboards, and original members Joe Morris and Carroll Bledsoe, occasionally appearing in their red shirts out front, still singing, swinging, and dancing.

>> It's a legacy that these guys' father kept going for so many years, but it's just important to keep it going.

♪ ...be my girl ♪ ♪ <Shane> Truthfully, what am I doing here?

It's only because I just love it.

♪ [performance of Hey, Baby continues] ♪ After 50 something years, 57 years, it just seems like the natural thing to do.

♪ [song continues] ♪ ♪ Hey ... ♪ <Emily> The thing I want people to remember most is just the fun.

I love watching people out here and just dancing and moving along to the music, and I think it takes people back to a really fun time in their lives, and I really enjoy that.

♪ [ Hey, Baby concludes] ♪ [cheers and applause] Beryl Dakers: For more stories about our state and more details on the stories you've just seen, do visit our website at palmettoscene.org.

And of course don't forget to follow us on social media, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

It's @scetv#palmettoscene for all of us here at Palmetto Scene.

I'm Beryl Dakers.

Good night, and thanks for watching.

Karen: Welcome to Middleton Place.

My name is Karen Bloom and I'm the director of engagement here for the Middleton Place Foundation.

And this is a former rice plantation which is now a National Historic Landmark and a 501 c three nonprofit educational trust and Middleton place is 110 walking acres of incredible history, beautiful gardens, and really complex stories that we want to share with you.

We're open seven days a week from nine to five.

And included in the price of admission is access to 65 formal acres of gardens.

Beyond the fields tour which explores the enslaved history here in Middleton Place, garden tours complimentary and also a meet the breeds tour and all sorts of educational opportunities that are going on over in the plantation stable yards.

There's all sorts of beautiful architecture to see and stories to explore.

There's also Eliza's House.

It's a two family dwelling that was built in 1870 as a Freedmen's Quarters, but it's built in the architectural style of a true family slave dwelling.

A really important piece of art.

History here both from the past and from the more modern history of Middleton Place as a foundation.

You can visit the wilderness area to the north of the gardens.

There's all sorts of history to explore here.

And we hope that you'll come and join us, ask lots of questions, make connections to the past and really help us to promote building a better future.

♪