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LEVEL CROSS — The roads are paved here now, and the race shop's a museum. For the first time in more than 50 years, Branson Mill Road seems quiet. If you drive past the old complex on the left, past Lee and Elizabeth's house and on out across the county line toward Appomattox, you can imagine what is was like all those years ago.

In those days, you'd drive carefully out here. You never knew when you'd come around a corner and meet the fastest stock car in the world coming straight at you. The test track for the Pettys was a two-lane road lined by ditches and pasture and pointed straight at history.

Richard Petty turned 72 on Thursday, and he was headed exactly where you figured he'd be headed, to Daytona Beach where they'll run the Firecracker 400 tonight under a different name. It'll look the same through wrap-around sunglasses and under a cowboy hat.

The road from here to there is a history of racing in and of itself. A lot of those stories have been told through the years. Most of them haven't. Until now.

If you're a Petty fan, and if you're from here you can't help but be, you owe it to yourself to get a copy of Richard Petty's Audio Scrapbook, a four-CD autobiography, a four-hour history lesson of Petty Enterprises. Pop a CD into your car and head to Level Cross. Take a left on Branson Mill and let Richard and Lynda and Dale Inman tell the story.

It's a living history from Petty's childhood to present day, and it includes everything from bicycle races and rock fights with brother Maurice to dealing with the police and racing against David Pearson and wrecking at Darlington and winning the 200th and into the present day as a car owner.

"The audio book is easily one of the most enjoyable projects I have ever been a part of because it's so important to me," he said.

There's really nothing else like it, a modern-day history of a life lived on a public stage. The recording, actually a four-hour interview by MRN announcer Barney Hall, sounds as simple as any other interview with the King, but the gravity of it weighs heavily as it goes on. This is the best compilation of Petty stories ever told.

This is how he described the first time he ever saw the track at Daytona:

"I come through the tunnel of that thing, and it looked like it musta been 15 miles down there to turns one and two," Richard told Barney. "I mean, there was nothin' in the infield except a lake. I mean it was humongous. We said 'it's just another race track.' I was just a 21-year-old kid, hadn't run but maybe a dozen races in my life. I'd just started in '58, and we went down there in '59.

"Nobody'd been down there testing. Nobody'd done anything. Johnny Bruner was the chief flagman at that time. So he called everybody together, he said 'Look, I want ever'body to go out.' Nobody's been on the race track. 'I want ever'body to go out and run on the flat for three or four laps just to see how big the track is and what it all is before you ever get out on the bank.'

"And so, OK. I jump in the car and do down through the pit deal and go out into one and two, and I go through three and four, and maybe one and two again and I said 'A-ight.' So I go down and I get up on the bank. I run about a lap, and I'm the first guy to get black-flagged at Daytona."

His daddy won that race, and Richard would win seven himself and Daytona would become synonymous with the Petty name. A lot of things about racing would forever be tied to the Pettys, and most of them are discussed in this autobiography.

This weekend is the 25th anniversary of his 200th win, but this year is the 50th anniversary of the Pettys arriving in Daytona International Speedway for the first time, the 50th anniversary of Lee's win at the inaugural 500, the 50th anniversary of Richard becoming a full-time race-car driver. It all started with Papa Lee pointing at an old car in the corner of the barn on Branson Mill.

"There it is," Lee said. "Y'all get it ready and take it to Columbia, S.C."

The first time he'd ever been on a race track wide open was the first race the King had ever been in.

"I guess he figured if I got by that race track without crashing I'd be OK to go on a little bit further," Richard said.

And so began the greatest racing story ever told.

The road that led to everything still winds through the land where they grew up, stretching from a white barn race shop that became a museum to the promised land. They had no idea what was a little bit further on when they started, but it turned out they knew how to get to Daytona Beach and the glory that followed all along.

You'd just go to the end of Branson Mill Road and take a left.