By Dee Briggs, Production Guide
I don’t get the NASCAR thing.
This is what I tell people who bring up the subject. I don’t know if this is some pompous rendition of my pseudo highbrow tastes not to be linked with my Joe Six-Pack buddies, or just a vain attempt to steer the conversation into something I am more comfortable talking about. Say… golf. Not as manly of a subject, but my dad never taught us the finer points of engine maintenance, or knowledge of things like torque or transmissions or even horsepower, for that matter. Basically, because he didn’t know himself. How did horsepower come to be the standard anyway? I can’t comprehend Secretariat and 199 of his pals doing 100 mph on the interstate. So I don’t get NASCAR.
But I am a Richmond boy. So there are degrees of misunderstanding when it comes to this sport. Our sport. Sure, I make the same old lame jokes about too many left-hand turns, or how Calvin pees on Chevrolets and Fords, but I do know who is leading in the points race. I know what restricter plate racing means. I understand that Junior Johnson started today’s version of drafting because his car was too slow. So there is a history there.
I grew up not far from what used to be called the Richmond Raceway or the Fairgrounds Racetrack, which is now known as RIR. Anybody growing up in the 70s in that area remembers the tree outside the fence on the backstretch that you could climb to catch a free view of a race. With a good perch, Pearson, Baker or even King Petty swapped paint for your adolescent amazement. I remember the boos that followed a Darrell Waltrip win, a precursor to similar sentiments expressed today when Jeff Gordon passes under the checkered flag. It is learned: Pretty boys need not apply.
But while some things stay the same, others change like expired milk. The insane explosion in the popularity of NASCAR has reared its Medusa head. Drivers shamelessly hawking everything in sight from rat poison to Viagra. Fans dipping into their John Deere fund to pay the exorbitant ticket prices. Filthy old race tires selling for thousands on e-bay. Children indoctrinated in the radical religion of plastering one specific driver’s face on their clothes, schoolbooks and beer coolers. Forsaking all others, his will be done on Sunday afternoon. Massive RV’s stuck in race traffic, cooking our natural resources like some Mad Max wagon train of yore, steeped into the distance as far as a drunken red eye can see. Politicians using all their clout, and taxpayer money, to curry favor with NASCAR into allowing us the privilege of paying for their multimillion dollar Hall of Fame. The aim being to attract more of these fine misguided redneck pilgrims to our metropolis.
I once sat in a rain-soaked crowd at RIR during a race delay, listening to a Virginia Tech football game unfold on my headset. When I loudly winced at a Cincinnati touchdown, I had fans tapping my shoulder from all sides asking me the news. After revealing the sad truth, I was called some sailor-sounding disrespect from these true blues. Or true reds. Seems following football, instead of the race forecast, was an unforgivable sin in their worlds.
I feel as if I am still banished from the inner circle of stock car racing patronage to this day. Which is kind of the way I want it. Because I don’t really get today’s NASCAR. Still would have been nice to win that Hall of Fame competition, though.
