For those not steeped in southern wisdom, not having a "pot (latrine, loo etc. specifically to collect a bodily fluid, urine, but commonly known by a three letter word, beginning with "P")" or a "window (as part of a dwelling) to THROW it out" is a measure of one's economic health, or (actually) the lack thereof. You'd be poor as Job's turkey,(y'all can thank Dixie for that one too). And, according to my dad, such an existence was the ultimate and only reality and destination of stock car racers.But, if ever there was a case of the pot calling the kettle "black", this was it. See, ever since I could remember, my dad had gone to Darlington, and Daytona, and Wilkesboro, and Martinsville, and Bristol, and every two-bit cow-pasture race track in between. And, was a stock-car driver-owner-mechanic HIM-SELF! I'd been chasing him around dusty Carolina ovals since I was about 12, (proudly) wiping the clay off of the windsheild and outta the screen in front of the radiator on every caution flag. Lugging a cutting torch cart through the brambles, and retrieving a 3/4 ton Ford truck rear end, was routine. As y'all will recall, it took TWO 3/4 ton rears to make a Frankland quick change unit. You had to have the two "short" sides.........remember? In our area, lovely derelict oyster trucks, lumber trucks,and even the quintessential Carolina pulp-wood trucks were all worthy candidates. There must have been a natural law requiring derelict oyster trucks to be as far off of the paved highway as was possible, and to be throughly over-grown with weeds, briars, and sandspurs. And all, gloriously, were. None of that mattered at all, when you're 12 years old, and helping your dad "build" a race car.Time had passed. The wonderful 1960's had become the uncertain 1970's. Even dirt racing had changed a little, and was under attack from a powerful Florida foe. I was 18 that Sunday afternoon at Leland (NC) Raceway; the following Monday morning, I would commence my collegiate carreer and life would never really be the same. Guess it was my "American Graffitti" moment.Leland had been rained out the previous Saturday night, and on tap was a "big money" race. It was a hot late August Sunday. Earlier that season, dad had deceided the newly paved Myrtle Beach Speedway was just what we needed. We were moving on up, "gettin outta them mud-holes............" he explained. We'd run the 1971 and '72 season with Dan Scott and NASCAR at the beach, and, accordingly, all we had were asphalt tires. Ever the racer, dad reasoned that a day race at the Leland dirt track would result in a very dry and hard pavement-like surface, and we "could" actually have a chance. Man, that's wantin' to race a'int it!That all sounded pretty good to me, too. So, we pull into the pits at Leland, towing our sanitary Chevelle NASCAR late model sportsman, with its 10" slick tires. Couldn't help it, as we towed along the pit lane, but the first thing I noticed was the width of our competitors tires. We'd only been gone from dirt for a couple of seasons........but WHERE did those wheels (on every car) come from..........they were THIS wide.........and the tread patterns, what was THAT all about? Started to feel a butterfly or two.And one other littly thingy-wingy we had NOT thought of.................once the race started and the track dried-out, the dust was incredible, track officials would red-flag the race and re-water the track. Really. Paradoxically, it was at this precise moment that our tires would kick in and we could really start moving forward. After about the third cycle of this watering-with-the-race-underway, dad flew into the first turn on the ensuing re-start. The car never took a set, but slid side-first over the 40 foot high (with no retaining wall) Leland Speedway second turn.The race was red-flagged, and I ran to the scene, as I'd done countless times before. The car was right-side-up. Good. Dad was climbing out. Good. But the front end had serious damage, the right front wheel/spindle/whole 9 yards was gone. Not too good. Dad mentioned something about he did not know "how many times it had flipped on the way down the bank..........." Musta flipped in the air, I thought, as the roof was totally un-scathed. The windshield was intact, too. The wrecker loaded what was left of our race car, backwards, on our trailer and we got home about dark that Sunday night.As I drove the tow truck home, making note of the weirdness of it all, with the car sitting backwards on the trailer, nobody said too much. We'd lost, badly. I did not, and could not, have known, but that afternoon had ended our era. Finished. It was over, never to return. All the years of chasing race cars, and stripping out bodies and busting knuckles and getting cut on sheet metal was over. There's a time for every season, and for us, this was it.Dad sold the car, wrecked and everything. The next morning came and I was a college student. Then, dad was fatally injured when his plane crashed, as he was returning home from the 1976 "American 500" at Rockingham.......but on the way home from the Leland Raceway, that Sunday afternoon, dad left no room for doubt, if I had any ideas of messing with race cars...............it would NOT be a bright future. "Son, you won't ever have a pot to pi$$ in, or a windurr to throw it out.............." he sounded like he meant it, too.