Back in the 60s, before NASCAR races were routine TV broadcasts, before high definition TV put you right alongside the cars, the best you could do was listen to races on the radio. Many a Sunday afternoon, Dad and I would sit by the radio pulling for King Richard Petty. One of Petty's competitors was Cale Yarborough, and, I got to meet him many years later.

In the early 80s, I worked at the SC Wildlife & Marine Resources Department as a scriptwriter/cinematographer. Cale Yarborough, synonymous with NASCAR's golden age, agreed to do a public service announcement for TV on the importance of responsible outdoor recreation— not littering, shooting holes in road signs, nor trespassing. That kind of thing.

And so, one blistering hot summer day, my partner and I were off to tiny Timmonsville, not far from the shadow of Darlington Raceway, "the track too tough to tame." We filmed Cale leaning on a fence near his driveway. He insisted on memorizing his lines (no cue cards,) but he had trouble pronouncing "recreation." He sounded like Strom Thurmond, pronouncing it "rec-kee-a-tion."

Filming is overkill, and after many takes, we wrapped things up. Yarborough invited us inside to his trophy room, a long room filled floor to ceiling with glass cases crammed with glittering trophies. Three Winston Cup Championships and 83 career victories had made him a legend but he was just a friendly man of the South to us that day. His wife served us iced tea.

Back in Columbia, we placed the film magazine in a changing bag—a portable darkroom—and prepared to unload the film. There was no film. We'd been shooting on an empty magazine. All those takes wasted. Embarrassed, my partner and I swore each other to secrecy. We didn't want anyone to know of our mistake, a gaffe easily prevented.

We called Cale back and scheduled another shoot, telling him the lab had gotten air bubbles on the film, a problem that sometimes ruins prints. (We had to save face somehow.) Again, it was a brutally hot day. Again, we put him through all the takes. Again, he and his gracious wife served us iced tea, and again we headed back to Columbia confident we had what we needed.

Our parents teach us not to lie for a reason. It comes back to haunt you. A week later, the film returned from the Atlanta film lab, cursed with the aforementioned air bubbles, which show up as "craters" on processed film. The print was trash. Again we called Cale and rescheduled a third shoot. As soon as we set foot on his land, he walked up, and I could see he was irritated. "You fellows sure you know what you are doing?" My partner and I looked at each other, embarrassed, and muttered "We hope so."

The third time was the charm. We added a soundtrack, dubbed in the sounds of wild birds behind Cale, and soon TV stations across South Carolina and the Georgia border were televising the NASCAR legend touting "responsible outdoor rec-kee-a-tion," complete with wild birdcalls. WJBF in Augusta beamed it into your homes as well, though I doubt any of you remember it.

The public service spot with Cale Yarborough was a relatively simple assignment, though we botched the shoot and it took three times the effort. But that's filming.

Making films provided me an education of sorts. A film is often pieced together with footage shot over a span of years and many places. You take care during the editing to give the illusion it's all done at the same time in the same place. This magic even extends to the sound effects. Rather than taping songbirds for Cale's TV spot, we took the easy way out and ordered birdcalls from Cornell University, a legendary provider of wildlife sounds.

From Raiders of the Lost Ark to Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, listen carefully and you'll hear birdcalls from Cornell University. Maybe the same ones on the Cale Yarborough TV spot we produced. It's false, but as Picasso said, "Art is a lie that helps us see the truth." And so, what's the harm in adding birdcalls if it makes a TV spot seem more truthful.

It's going on 30 years since I met Cale Yarborough. He's 70 now. I no longer make films. Dad left us in 2003, and I no longer follow NASCAR, though racing is bigger than ever. I'm sure NASCAR drivers still do public service spots, but I don't see many. They do a lot of ads though.

Maybe Cale told the racers down the line how much trouble doing spots was. Maybe he told them these city slicker boys don't even use real birdcalls in their films. Maybe the ads pay so well today, it's just not worth doing public service spots anymore. I guess I'll never know, but I sure remember how embarrassed we were on that third trip to see Cale Yarborough. I met a legend from the days when Dad and I glued our ears to the radios most Sundays. I'm just glad it wasn't the king of NASCAR, Richard Petty, though it sure would have been special to sip tea with him and check out his trophy case.

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