It seems to me that the Stockbridge oval story may be attributable to Tim Flock, whose interviews feature prominently in both the Chapin and Wilkinson books. I just pulled Chapin's book off the shelf and Flock was adamant that that was the way it started, ....."I don't care what anyone else tells you," .... he is quoted as saying in reference to stock car racing starting in a cow pasture outside of Atlanta.

I have no doubt that there was an impromptu race or two in a cow pasture, but somehow he built it up in his mind that that was the origin of stock car racing until he believed it. Memory is funny. Things that happened once gradually become what you did all of the time and ordinary events become embellished to the extraordinary.