In the mid-’60s, racing driver Parnelli Jones was a force to be reckoned with, whether in Indy cars, midgets, sprint cars or stock cars. His was a name synonymous with speed, so much so that law enforcement officers of the era would greet speeders they pulled over with the line, “Who do you think you are, Parnelli Jones?”
When a California Highway Patrol officer asked that very thing of the driver of a Ford Fairlane he stopped on the Long Beach Freeway in 1964, imagine his surprise when the answer was, “As a matter of fact, I am Parnelli Jones.”
It almost sounds too good to be true, the stuff of legends made up about legends, but Jones told the story in his 2012 autobiography, which he titled with the…