Ten years ago today we were about to move. We'd signed the papers on a new apartment closer to where I worked. Oddly enough, we'd signed just after I'd been told my services were no longer required where I worked. However, since the events had been set in motion, since money had changed hands, and since we'd given notice where we were living, we couldn't back out. So we'd started crating things up for the big move, which was to happen the following weekend. This last weekend in the old apartment, though, was a last weekend to relax in the first place we'd called home together.
Hubby was very much into racing at this point. I was slowly gaining enthusiasm for it. When we met, I couldn't stand racing, for it was a symbol of everything about my background I was trying to flee. I remember the mild disdain I had as we watched the Daytona race that first July together. But, over time, I came to appreciate it, came to appreciate stock car racing's storied history, and found a rooting interest in a handful of drivers -- for instance, my affection for the doughily handsome Tony Stewart was starting to take hold. I'd even grown fond of my father's favorite driver, Dale Earnhardt. Hubby was an Earnhardt fan from way back, and between him and my father, I guess I had no other option.
So that last Sunday in the old apartment, we had lunch and sat down to watch the Daytona 500, the first one to air under the new television deal with Fox. Of course, Fox had pulled out all the stops on the coverage, too. And much hay was being made about the new aero package and the potential for "the big one."
Now, I don't know why it is, but as I watched the race that day, there was a feeling I had that something wasn't right somehow. Something was off. I couldn't put my finger on it, but I had the feeling something bad was going to happen. So I watched with interest, but also with clenched innards. It wasn't helped each time I saw another instance of high-banked slicing and dicing at 190 miles an hour.
When the threatened "big one" happened on the backstretch, and Tony Stewart's car went flying end over end, I thought, "Oh, man, this is it, isn't it?" It was a truly scary thing to watch unfold. Cars started flying around, pinballing off each other, creating a real mess. I was certain someone -- Stewart, perhaps -- had been killed. But "the big one" had been all bark and no bite. A lot of good cars had been turned into junk, but no one had been maimed or killed. They had to stop the race to get all the mess dealt with. It was about that time a friend of ours called to chat. I made some crack about Mark Martin's Viagra car "hitting something hard," and hubby found it amusing and relayed it to our friend.
Eventually the thing was again underway. I'd kept my eye on two cars the whole race: Earnhardt's #3 car, and Michael Waltrip in the #15. I'd come to know the story of Mikey's 0-for-462 career, and as the laps ticked down I started to think, man, wouldn't it be neat if he could do this? Close the deal at the biggest race of the year, in his first race for Earnhardt's team? Yeah, another Earnhardt win would have been neat, but Mikey, whose battles with futility struck a chord in me, had me in thrall as he led the closing laps.
The white flag flew, and I was relieved because this controlled crash of a race was about to end. The #15 was still in the lead, and my eyes were on it. Darrell Waltrip, calling the race, was coaxing his little brother to the finish, and it was hard not to get caught up in that. "Come on, Mikey!" I kept saying. But as the freight train made its way through the fourth turn came the cry "The three car - OH!" In the background, as the #8 and #15 shot toward the finish line, we saw a familiar black car crabbing, sliding down the track toward the infield. As I cheered for Mikey, I could hear hubby say "It's Earnhardt! Damn it, he's gonna end up finishing twelfth." We didn't know we'd just seen a man get killed on live television.
What followed was perhaps the most subdued victory celebration I've ever seen, made even worse by the pictures from the infield that kept cutting in. It didn't look like that bad of an accident, and we expected to see Earnhardt bound out of the car and talk to Schrader. But the longer it went on, the worse things got. I think we both knew what was going on when, in the closing moments, the Fox cameras showed the ambulance driving away. Halifax Medical Center is not that far away from the speedway -- I know, for I've traveled past it more times than I can count -- but the ambulance was traveling at a distressingly low rate of speed.
The race broadcast signed off with things still uncertain, and there was no further news for the moment; the best we could do was check the Internet. We had things we needed to do, namely the weekly grocery run, so we drove up the street to the grocery store and got weekly provisions. But what I'd seen was on my mind, and I'm certain hubby was thinking about it, too. But we couldn't do anything about it, and we had things we needed to do, so we did them. About 45 minutes or an hour later, we returned home. I jumped online for an update, and there was the awful news. Hubby was in the kitchen, right next to where my computer was set up. "Earnhardt's dead," I said to him. "Awww," he said. It was one of those "awww"s that was sorrow mixed with the likely outcome of what we'd seen. Sure, it hadn't looked that bad at first, but from Ken Schrader's shaken post-race interview, and from the way the ambulance crept toward the hospital, the inevitability had started to sink in. By the time the word came, it wasn't that much of a surprise. But it was still sad. Something had changed.
The next morning we awoke. I remember laying in bed after the alarm clock went off, and wondering if it had really happened. The radio station was playing Sarah MacLachlan's "I Will Remember You," the live version. When the song ended, one of the morning show people mentioned what had happened the day before. Yep, it really had happened, and the mourning was on. The Internet was awash in news, reactions, opinions and everything else. That afternoon I stopped by the corner hobby shop to pick up an airplane kit, and noticed in the car section that practically everything with a "3" on it was gone. Hubby came home that night with a copy of the local paper. "Earnhardt Killed in Daytona Crash," the headline read above a picture of the crash. Soon the newsstands were filled with commemorative editions and all sorts of other things.
Many people mourned, very deeply. One of them was my father. He never talked terribly openly about it, but it's not hard to understand why he loved Dale Earnhardt: another kid from a poor background who had worked, with hands and determination, to build a successful life. A few weeks later I flew home to visit my family over Spring Break, and while connecting in Atlanta I found a very nice Sports Illustrated commemorative edition dedicated to Earnhardt. I bought an extra one to bring to my dad. My mother told me it would be best not to give it to him. He had even taken the model of Earnhardt's car I'd built him as a birthday present many years before, one that had sat on his desk for years, and put it in a box up on a closet shelf. He was heartbroken. He never said it openly, but he was.
For many reasons, I'll look back on 2001 as the freakiest, scariest, and all-around worst year I've yet lived. Sure, it had its moments of laughter and joy and wonder, and it was the year I earned my doctorate and found the job I still have. But it was also the year I was fired from my first teaching job, and the year a few hard-fought dreams got punched in the guts. And it brought some moments that creeped me out and rattled me as have few others. In some way, I think the indestructible Earnhardt finally meeting his doom as we watched live showed me that all bets were off, and that the unthinkable could occur, and that nobody and nothing was immune, and the world could go bananas as you watched. Another event, on live television, half a year later really drove that point home in perhaps the most awful way possible, and completely threw our world off its axis.
But these events, or most of them anyway, were yet to come a decade ago this afternoon. For now, I think back to the last lap of a race that was but a handful of seconds from ending in unalloyed, delirious joy, and of what should have been.