"Do you want to know what racin' is? I'll tell you what it is. Racin' is beer and cigarettes," crackled a gravelly voice from down front. Cigarette in one hand, beer in the other toasted our way with a wry smile and ask-me-more wink.
Skint knuckles. Leather face and wrench hardened hands. Half deaf for sure. One wonders what years of sniffing burnt oil might do to a person. Those all nighters under the Pontiac, tearing down, bending rules, banging out sheet metal, dogged to find an edge. Slap on a loose number three from a bucket of turpentine. The Warrior spirit. Pumpin for a payback.
Saturday nite brings sweet relief, rich with therapeutic opportunity. Car talk and scheming. Tire pressure. Fumes. Ceaseless tuning. Hot laps easily turn adrenalin into a volatile fluid primed for the tiniest spark. Abruptly, chit chat disappears under a volcanic roar. The ground quakes, sternums shatter, eardrums disintegrate. Clouds of red dust billow from the dimly lit oval hiding the elbows and sucker punches, rubbing door to door, man-machine against man-machine, sprayed down by hot oil, teeth start grinding grit. A car separates from the track and slides away. All dash for the opening, each with a score to settle. "There's chaos in turn three!", bellows the announcer as a mass of wreckage piles high and tumbles over the fence…
"Icarus, my son, where are you," cried Daedalus
As exhausted dreams settle back to Earth.
Title: © 1977 Pontiac TransAm. r1109-17
Series: Racecars
Location: Ashe County, North Carolina
Date: Friday 9 June 2000
NASCAR as poetry. It's Doctor Flowers with the best play by play I've ever heard. Yes, I heard all that! The dreams and the engines... cars colliding with tempers.
Love that #3 crouched in the grass, ready to pounce. This one's for you, Doctor Flowers:
http://www.geocities.com/capecanaveral/hangar/9434/icarmati.jpg
Posted by: Vermont Neighbor | 27 August 2005 at 01:05 PM
I remember it well. We're invited to the Talladega Dirt Track in November, by the way. Guests of one of the competitors.
Posted by: rankin' rob | 27 August 2005 at 05:23 PM