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about the black farmhands he’d
known and learned from. He lamented
that these stories will soon be lost.
Charlie Pride grew up on the Scott
place.
Do not think, however, that Sam
was one of those delusionists who
prattle on about the “Old South” or
who drive out to the airport hoping to
see Robert E. Lee and Cap’n Rhett
Butler get off the next plane. I’m
proud to say he was not that kind of
southerner.
Sam stopped short of being a pop-
ulist, but not by much. For rewards far
more psychic than monetary, he
taught law at predominantly black
Jackson State University. He did so
comfortably, and his students learned
comfortably. In the courtroom, he used
the law to help the poor and the put-
upon of all races.
Few of us have even one true
friend – the man or woman you can
call from Buenos Aires, say you need
ten grand by noon next, and have the
money show up. I was fortunate to
have three; Sam was one of those. The
last one.
The things I miss, all of which
were on display at our lunches, are
Sam’s wise counsel, his stories, his
grasp of humans and their history, and
his peerless sense of humor. He was
what we down here call “damn good
company.”
If I’ve gone on a bit about Sam, it’s
because, as he did, I respect the Bolus
& Snopes official motto: “
Anything
worth doing is worth doing to excess
.”
The SHELBY AMERICAN
Fall 2016 47
Sports car racing is serious busi-
ness today – with the exception of
the quasi-demolition derby known
as the 24 Hours of LeMons. But it
wasn’t always like that. SCCA’s am-
ateur racing often had drivers and
teams that knew how to have fun
when they weren’t racing. One of the
first to come to mind was the Bolus
& Snopes team in the early 1970s.
The team’s beginning is said to have
begun in Sam Scott’s backyard in
Jackson, Mississippi on a Sunday af-
ternoon, after he and crony William
Jeanes lost count of the number of
martinis they had consumed and de-
cided to form a race team and go
racing.
But just not go racing. The two
were also determined to demon-
strate that their racing exploits
could become the excuse for a sea-
son-long party which, like a semi-ac-
tive volcano, would erupt each
weekend in a shower of sparks, hot
vapor, smoke and alcohol-fueled gai-
ety when they showed up at a race
track. Scott was an afficionado of
early Shelby GT350s, having owned
a half-dozen of them over the years.
At the time he owned a former
GT350 Hertz rental car, 6S1828, and
was somehow able to convince the
alcohol-addled and disoriented
Jeanes to purchase a half-interest.
That done, they set about as-
sembling a team. A leader and fig-
urehead was required and they
chose Ovid Bolus, a famous Missis-
sippi lawyer and confidence man
who had operated in their area in
the 1930s and 1940s. He was a
grand villain in the Faulkner sense;
a true rascal. To be taken seriously
the team needed a second principal
and they chose another slippery
William Faulkner character from
the area, Flem Snopes.
Jeanes was a contributor for
Car
and Driver
and later became its ed-
itor. He wrote an piece for
C/D’s
Sep-
tember, 1974 issue, “Shelby GT350:
Everyman’s Real Racer.” It was the
first article in a major automotive
magazine about the GT350 after all
of the initial introductions, road
tests and race reports about the cars
when they were new had run their
course. The car photographed in the
article was 5S517 which was owned
by Sam Scott, who contributed a
side bar. But that’s another story.
The fact that the team was rac-
ing a former Hertz car provided just
the right amount of panache. By
1970, these cars had been passed
along by Hertz, a mere three years
earlier, to individual owners and
they still wore the mantle of disdain
and disrespect of being rental units.
Scott provides a watchful eye on the B&S entry [
above left
] and congratulates driver Bob Mitchell after winning at Road Atlanta.