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“A good sugar tree, for years and years. I’ve tapped it every season until this last one, for at least thirty years. We used to boil the sap right over there—had a long oven and one big pan. You can even see the old stones where the oven was.”

Deckhand Tommy Kelly, 36, from rural Sugar Tree, Tenn., feels safer that way.

Just about anyone who has raced in the Southeast has great memories of the competition bred by the racers bouncing week to week between Rolling Hills, Lake Sugar Tree, Devil's Ridge, Montrose, Secession MX, and Metrolina Park.

The sugar tree yields a kind of sap or juice, which by boiling is made into sugar.

There stood in the barn yard a large and tall sugar tree with limbs within six or eight feet of the ground.