I've had an odd, prickly relationship with motorsports. I spent many earlier years not caring much for racing, but later on it would come to be a pretty big deal in my life in a few ways. The funny part is, now I look back on some of the memories from when I hated it -- when I was exposed to it but didn't care, or when it was nothing more than a means to a paycheck -- and realize that I blew off some great moments.
In my younger days, I was obsessed with cars. But I didn't care much for them when people had hot-rodded them. I didn't understand why, for instance, you'd take a perfectly nice '57 Chevy and stick a big ugly scoop on the hood, redo the interior, and all that sort of business. The historian influence was in me even then: the car should be a reflection of its times, or so I thought. I didn't care much more racing cars; they seemed unreal, exotic, too artificial. But, my age was in single digits. I remember asking for this racing car playset one Christmas; it included a plastic wind-up version of a NA$CAR-ized Chevy Caprice, a two-door version of the car we had. My first act was to rip the racing decals off it and try to turn it into a "stock" stock car. I didn't like the big logos and what all on it. I just wanted a normal car.
In the background was the occasional racing thing going on. Everybody knew who Richard Petty was, because he was just so darn famous, showing up in the STP commercials and everything. Cale Yarborough wasn't far behind, because for a while he was sponsored by Hardee's, and Hardee's restaurants were all over the South like kudzu. Darrell Waltrip, his youthful brashness still at full volume, his hair still in that sort of goofy bowl style, was hard to miss. Stubborn, indestructible Bobby Allison was still out there, too, plugging away and winning races. I knew who these folks were, but somehow they didn't matter that much. They were famous people who drove cars, and that was the extent of it.
There was a period when we'd go see anything with Burt Reynolds in it, so I remember going to see Stroker Ace when it came out. (I now own it on DVD, and while it's a terrible "adaptation" of a terrific book, it's still a hoot to watch to see so many famous racers in their younger days...and a memorable, profane cameo by Ken Squier.) We'd also watch The Dukes of Hazzard each week, though the significance of the Dukes' racing aspirations was completely lost on me. (The fact that Waylon Jennings was the narrator was a little more interesting to me, as were the bungling antics of Boss Hogg and Sheriff Roscoe.)
My father didn't like the idea of going to a car race (I remember him making some crack about "I don't want to go watch these cars go around like mice in a circle"), but he did listen to racing on the radio. Sometimes, we'd go out for a drive on Sunday afternoons, and my father would tune in the car races on the radio. On other lazy afternoons, car races would be the only thing on television that was halfway interesting. For whatever reason, we watched the 1985 Daytona 500, and the memory that sticks out isn't Bill Elliott's win, but Lake Speed's emotional interview after a surprise second-place finish by his little team. (I didn't understand the context back then.) There were other little things, too; for instance, I vaguely remember the flamboyant shooting star that was Tim Richmond (mostly thanks to an Old Milwaukee commercial I must have seen a hundred thousand times in 1985), and folks like Darrell Waltrip and Dale Earnhardt would whiz by in the background of my awareness. And some guy named Kulwicki kept getting mentioned a lot on our local stations, too.
(Tim Richmond, by the way, is another too-forgotten character who fascinates me. The relationship between him and crew chief Harry Hyde was the basis of another laughably regrettable movie about racing, one that came out in 1990 that was basically the same movie the same star and production team had done three years before, but with race cars instead of fighter jets. Why are there so few good motion pictures about racing? For my money, the only movie about racing in the last 25 or 30 years that's come anywhere near being accurate, oddly enough, is Talladega Nights. But, I digress.)
In 1992, I got a call from a local radio station. I'd submitted a resume the previous year, and a new program director had gone through the files and found it. My first job was running the board during the Motor Racing Network and Performance Radio Network events. I was a young college student, very idealistic, and car racing represented a lot that I wanted to leave behind. But, it was a paycheck, and I figured that if I started with the drudge work, things would come in time. The first race for which I worked the board was the 1992 Busch race at Watkins Glen. Over the coming weeks and months, I was at the board when a lot of things happened. I remember being there when Davey Allison had his frightening wreck at Pocono. I sat at the board that afternoon, wondering if I'd just heard the radio announcers describing a fatal accident. But, sure enough, he grunted back to start the next race, and I remember all that drama.
Somewhere, I still have most of my MRN cue sheets from back then. For whatever reason, I saved them, and I'm glad I did. I'll have to go through them and figure out which moments from that great season I got to hear as they happened. The worst part of it is, though, I wasn't interested. I had no love for the sport then. It might have helped had we had a television in the control room. Had I been able to watch the races on television (which would not only have necessitated a television, but also cable, which I doubt our cost-conscious station owner would have allowed), I might have been able to build some interest. But, it didn't happen. I also didn't like that car races were unpredictable, that delays and cautions prolonged my stays at the board, and that throws to the locals from the networks could happen very quickly and with little notice. And, oh, did I hate rain delays.
To this day, I regret that I wasn't interested, because 1992 was a season like few others: the drama of Davey Allison in a year full of triumphs and danger; the retirement of Richard Petty and the debut of Jeff Gordon; and a tight race for the championship that went down to the last moments of the season's last race, and was won by a stubborn, determined independent in a story Hollywood couldn't have scripted. I didn't work that race; I was on the early Sunday shift at that point, so I missed history being made.
In early 1993 I was put back on race duty, and this perceived 'demotion' led to my eventual resignation from the station. (I was young and full of myself.) The one memory I do have is broadcasting that year's Daytona 500, which I remember for no other reason than watching it on the little television in the AM control room, and watching Kyle Petty and Bobby Hillin get into it (which starts about 6:45 into this clip). Again, because I had no context, I couldn't understand why those two were getting into it, and because of that, it took me a long time to like either one, really.
I got out of it in March 1993 and didn't pay much attention. But horrifying things happened that brought it back to my mind. A few weeks after I quit, Alan Kulwicki was killed. Then a few months later, so was Davey Allison. Those were names I'd heard week after week, and even if I didn't particularly care then for the sport they were in, they were still names I knew, still people who were real somehow to me. And, abruptly, they were gone.
Tomorrow, thoughts about motorsports in my life since radio. The theme of "inevitability" comes up. Stay tuned.
