Jenkins: Parsons loved eats, song with colleague

Jenkins: Parsons loved eats, song with colleague

Two paired as broadcasters with ESPN for more than a decade

By Ryan Smithson, NASCAR.COM
January 16, 2007
08:12 PM EST (01:12 GMT)

Some of Bob Jenkins' best times with Benny Parsons had absolutely nothing to do with auto racing.

After a long day at the track, the two chased good food and good music, usually in that order.

Jenkins, who worked with Parsons in the broadcast booth for 10 years with ESPN, said Parsons' folksy on-air persona was real. The two traveled together constantly, hitting places from Tucson to Talladega.

Parsons died on Tuesday after complications from lung cancer. The news hit Jenkins, 59, extremely hard.

"I am just absolutely devastated, I can say nothing else but that," said Jenkins, paired with Parsons at ESPN from the late 1980s until the end of the 2000 season.

Their time together eventually morphed Jenkins and Parsons into brothers. The two traveled the circuit, often via car, searching for steak and song.

Yes, song. Parsons loved music almost as much as he enjoyed talking about racing.

"We just both loved oldies, and there was a station that we listened to when we went to Talladega that basically specialized in old country music," Jenkins said. "We would both sing. It was terrible if you were there in the car, but boy, we had fun."

Some of the best times with Parsons involved their annual trips to Arizona, where the two worked side-by-side broadcasting the now-defunct Winter Heat Series for ESPN. The Winter Heat Series wasn't as intense as the typical Cup or Busch Series broadcast, and Parsons and Jenkins enjoyed the laid-back weekends.

Parsons and Jenkins always stopped by a particular country-and-western steakhouse on the outskirts of Tucson. The band there played a lot of Parsons' favorite songs.

"We loved to go there and listen," Jenkins said. "One of the songs that Benny loved so much was El Paso, the song that was made popular by Marty Robbins.

"The last few words were, 'One little kiss, and Felina, good-bye.'

"Benny would always stand up when they came to that line, and we would sing along with the band."

Another benefit of working the Winter Heat races was the lack of traffic. Parsons absolutely hated to sit in traffic, which puts him in line with every other NASCAR driver that lived.

Parsons eventually came up with ways to escape the logjams in just about every track the Cup circuit visited. When the series hosted its first Cup race in Las Vegas in 1998, Parsons found himself horrified to see the track backed up on Las Vegas Boulevard.

He took drastic action, as Jenkins remembers. Even 10 years later, Jenkins chuckles at the story.

"When we went to Las Vegas for the first time, he hadn't figured out the escape route completely," Jenkins said. "But he had this idea.

"Benny made a right-hand turn into Nellis Air Force Base. We got in, and there were these signs as large as billboards, saying, 'Private Government Property, no trespassing, violators will be prosecuted.'

"It didn't matter to Benny. He was not sitting in traffic. We went right through. It was probably in the same element as Area 51 where the government was watching every move you made, but we went right ahead and traversed those roads and didn't sit in traffic for a minute.

"It was nothing to Benny. His goal was to avoid traffic any way you could, even taking a chance at being prosecuted by the federal government."

Parsons probably hated sitting in traffic because it delayed his meals. Parsons loved food almost as much as he loved driving a stock car.

"We ate a lot of meals together and traveled together in the car a lot," Jenkins said. "If you hung out with him, you'd find the best restaurants, not necessarily the best, but ones that served the type of food he liked."

Parsons' fondness for food even extended to the broadcast booth. During his ESPN days, the network began airing brief segments titled "Buffet Benny," where a camera crew would follow Parsons' experiences in some out-of-the-way establishment.

"We did those 'Buffet Benny' features those few years during our ESPN days," Jenkins said. "Those were so much fun to do because Benny was asked to do some really strange things, like paddling a canoe down a river.

"Because Benny liked to eat so much, we would choose a restaurant or a local hangout when we went to individual racetracks. They were just so much fun because Benny will allow you to do anything you needed as long as it was entertaining and for the broadcast.

"We put Benny through a lot, and he never returned a word. He was something."