Let me begin by saying that I spent Saturday at the NASCAR Hall of Fame in Charlotte with some really awesome people. We had folks from their early twenties to somewhere around 80. Most I have known for a long time and some only from that visit, but it was abundantly clear from the beginning that everyone in our group was there for the perspective they could gain from the fourth floor where all of the historic artifacts are housed.
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RacersReunion Group Visit August 22, 2015[/caption]
Oh, there are historic race cars on "Glory Road" when you enter the Hall, there is a theater, which starts your journey by showing you how the sport began, and how it reached the stage it is now. It is, of course, a completely biased trip through the NASCAR imagination of history, but some things can't be changed, nor should they be.
Bill Blair, Jr. and his wife, Shelia, were a part of our group and, as with every encounter with Mr. Blair, I learn more and more first-hand history of the sport than is available through the history books. Bill's Dad was an early pioneer of the sport and did, in fact, assist Big Bill in getting the sport going in North Carolina. Bill, Jr. has worked on race cars from his earliest days. One thing that always pleases me is when Bill talks about Jim Paschal, with whom he worked in the 50s. I always liked Jim Paschal, always pulled for Jim Paschal, but Jim was not an easy one for fans to get to know. He came to the track, did his job, and disappeared soon after the race. He was a great driver, but he was not the publicity hound many in the sport were and are. Listening to Bill's stories of Jim Paschal only increase my admiration for Mr. Paschal. My admiration for Bill Blair knows no limits. There is the matter of the simulator match race at the Hall on Saturday between Mr. Blair and myself, but I'll allow Bill to comment on that.
There was a time, and I've addressed this before, when being at a race was number one priority with me. When my cousin Debbie was to be married all those years ago, (she is my Uncle Bobby's daughter) she wanted me to be in her wedding. She came to me months in advance to find out which weekend I would NOT be at a race and that is the weekend she scheduled her wedding. Had I known, at the time, that the tuxedo of choice was a banana yellow one, I would have probably called Big Bill and asked him to schedule a special race for me as he had done back in the day to allow the big money man of the hour to get the points he needed for his car to win the championship. If any pictures from that wedding still exist, I hope they never make the light of day on RacersReunion for surely the yellow tuxedo will be long remembered after the feathered cowboy hat is forgotten.
Back in the day, my first day of school was always the Tuesday AFTER Labor Day. I always showed up for classes sunburned from being in the infield at The Southern 500 in Darlington. With my ear still ringing from the roar of the engines for 500 miles, I rarely heard what the teachers had to say on that first day, but then first day ramblings of teachers are often overlooked by the excitement of being back with friends we may not have seen all summer. There were still races to attend after school started and a new season starting with the new year. I didn't really go by semesters; I went by race schedules.
I was not what one would call a "scholar", although I did exceptionally well in English, History and Public Speaking. I was atrociously awful in math, any type of math, as well as any science. My real downfall in science began in the eighth grade when a classmate asked the teacher what would happen if you were shot in the heart by an arrow (it was close to Valentine's Day) and the teacher said that if you didn't pull the arrow out you would be ok. I took immediate exception to that statement and from that moment on that teacher and I were mortal enemies. I'm not exactly sure why I have such problems in math but it has always been that way with me. I do remember the life insurance agent my Mother and Father had given all us kids a multiplication brochure that showed us the "Times Table" from 1 times 1 up to 10 times 10. My sole purpose for that table was to memorize each series of "Times this" so I could do well on the elementary school math tests. I never really had a problem determining that a 100-mile race on a half-mile track consisted of 200 laps.
I have already told you all about turning down VIP tickets to the Speedway Club for the 600 in May. Just last week I turned down a ticket offer to the Southern 500 at Darlington. Such events, even five years ago, would have been unthinkable for me. To even consider not watching the Bristol night race on television would have been such heresy as to make Martin Luther look like the next candidate for Pope. This past Saturday night, no television in my house, nor radio, sought out the race. The only mention of the race in Sunday's paper was that the race concluded too late to make deadline for Sunday's edition. It was mid-afternoon Sunday before I logged into the sanctioning body's web site to see that Joey Logano out dueled Kevin Harvick for the win. The bright spot for me in that report was that the JGR Yodas all seemed to have issues. Much was made, however, of the fact that young Mr. Kyle Busch remains Chase eligible with only three races remaining before that insult to purist race fans begins.
We have all lamented that racing just isn't the same as the sport we grew up loving and which drew us each into a life of excitement and adventure. With each passing race, nay, with each passing lap, it is less and less the sport we once loved. Remember the Firecracker 400 when David Pearson was leading Richard Petty under the white flag and backed off to trick Richard into going by him so David could pull off the slingshot win? Pearson did it too in a quite exciting finish. Now we have to hear about Harvick can't pass Logano in the waning laps of Saturday's race because of the "dirty air". I can't even imagine a time when clean air versus dirty air on a half-mile track was a factor. But, it is "Bristol Baby" and I use that phrase with trepidation because it sounds like something coming from the mouth of D.W.
Remember back in the day when sponsorship were things to be treasured and honored? When the drivers showed up for the local Grand National Race, local merchants would pay to have their names on the quarter panels. Marion Burnside Chrysler-Plymouth would sponsor Richard Petty for the Columbia races and even sponsored him in his first Southern 500 in 1959. Remember the story of now the Petty-STP sponsorship almost never happened because Andy wanted the Petty car all STP red and Richard said no to that, stating emphatically that the cars remain Petty blue. The story goes that when the discussion got to the no compromise point with Granitelli, Richard got up to walk out. It was then that the famous Petty-Blue-STP red cars came to be. Drivers and teams appreciated their sponsors back then and because of their involvement in racing, fans bought the products. What's it like these days? Team owners appreciate the sponsors because of the financial assistance. As for the drivers, really? Watch some of the winners have to look at the stickers on their cars to even give lip service thanks to the sponsors putting up the big bucks.
Remember how we were brand loyal, depending on the brands sponsoring our favorite cars? I've said, many times, that I used STP in and on everything that moved. I had STP stickers on everything! These days, the young lady who makes her living selling her sex appeal to race fans changes sponsors, and even big-bottomed women scramble to their computers to find out where they can buy the fig bars that will be sponsoring Ms. PatWRECK. It is amazing to me.
I think the level of NASCAR's regard for fans has reached the lowest point in its history. Even lower than its television ratings. As someone mentioned in our visit to the Hall of Fame Saturday, NASCAR spent quite a bit of time and money to remove itself from the image of any involvement of the moonshine industry in its history. Yet the Hall of Fame Theater proudly proclaims the start of the sport was the result of moonshiners and revenuers trying to outrun the other. Up on the history floor, there is even one of Junior Johnson's moonshine stills on display. Seems NASCAR is trying to have it both ways, or, perhaps, like much of what they do, it is done to attract the interest of the widest possible spectrum of people. I don’t really know anymore but what is worse, I don't really care anymore.
My Uncle Bobby was in his 80s when he died two years ago. Racing had been his lifelong passion. Although he never drove a race car, he knew as much about engines as did Smokey Yunick and I would say he could drive a car as well as the top stars of NASCAR. I remember watching him wheel that 37 Plymouth "strip-down" as he called it, around the homemade approximately quarter mile dirt track on his Daddy's farmland. When the crops weren't growing, Bobby's engine was roaring around that track. He could power slide that Plymouth with the best of them. One of our last conversations before his death was about how much racing had changed. He had once said he would always be a race fan but in one of our last days together before his death, he said to me that it just wasn't the same. He didn't watch anymore except one of the last times I spent a Sunday afternoon with him in the hospital and we watched a race although I can't recall which one it was. He had lost his love of NASCAR, which I never thought would happen, but then I certainly never expected that I would once more follow in his footsteps. I simply don't care anymore. The best "NASCAR” race I've witnessed in the past several years happened in a simulator during my recent trip to the NASCAR Hall of Fame, Saturday. I raced Bill Blair. As already stated, ask him how it came out.
