One of Sterling Marlin's favorite stories of survival to tell is from when he was a kid and tagging along with his father, former NASCAR driver Clifton "Coo Coo" Martin, to a race at Talladega. This was back in the day when drivers hauled their racecars behind them on open trailers.

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"We were coming out of there one day. The road dead-ended and turned right. He was running about 85 [mph] after driving that racecar all day, and he's towing the racecar behind us," Marlin said. "I was sittin' in the middle of the cab in his truck and I was thinking, 'Man, he needs to be slowin' down.' He went to hit the brakes and I remember seeing the brake light come on. There wasn't no brakes.

"He hit the curb and flipped, and we slid across the highway on the roof. The racecar come loose and like to have run through some poor woman's house. It didn't hurt the truck. It knocked the mirrors off, but we flipped it back over, put some oil in it and the next day we drove it home. We had to weld the trailer back together a little bit, but that was about it."

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07/05/smarlin.cutting.back/index.html