Even before I started racing, all those nights were spent in the infield of racetracks, now ghost tracks, and some without so much as a footprint left on earth. The infield was my territory. I could watch the races by walking from vantage point to vantage point and I carefully watched the really good drivers to see what I could learn. I never did learn to power slide a car like Tiny Lund or Junior Johnson, but I truly loved watching them do it. I almost could make moves on the track like Lil Bud Moore, Harry Gant, Joe Penland, Sam Sommers, and others, but the moves they could make would get them in Victory Lane. Never happened for me, but it was fun anyway.
It was 1990, I believe, when Charlotte ran the first Winston under the lights. I attended that race as the guest of R.J. Reynolds due to my affiliation with radio. Other than the first race I attended, at five years old, this was my first time in the grandstands. You see, my Grandfather and my Uncle took me to my first race and they sat in the stands because they weren't sure I would like it and they figured it would be easier to leave if they didn't have to cross the track. After that first time, they never worried about me liking it anymore. I was the one, that very first night, who didn't want to leave the track. They took me into the pits after the race and close to the cars and drivers. Drivers were dirty from the dusty track, and the cars smelled of hot oil, hot rubber, and some even from hot radiators. But for me, it was all like expensive perfume from Paris that the rich ladies were supposed to spray on themselves when going out. I absolutely loved it.
But, still I remember the lack of real lighting even in the pits. Flashlights were the routine for pit stops, IF a pit stop was necessary. Watching the race from the infield was watching cars disappear for the mini-second it took to get from one light pole to the next. After my first race behind the wheel, I realized it was not really a problem for the drivers because the darkness was covered so quickly you never lost the light.
Back to 1990 and that night in May at Charlotte Motor Speedway. R.J. Reynolds seated us in prime seats down near the turns one and two area. The view of the track was spectacular, to say the least, but I was not even prepared for the change when darkness came and the track lights came on. The entire track was bathed in a soft light, every inch, and the darkness receded around that mile and a half quad oval. The infield, however, was still, for the most part, the dark domain with which I was accustomed. The race was won that night, as I recall, by Dale Earnhardt. I don't remember too much else about the race but I remember driving home thinking how far racing had come from the dimly lit half-mile and quarter-mile tracks of my youth. What I had witnessed that night was something I would never have imagined 10 years before that. As we all know, many tracks have now joined the ranks of lighted venues where big track night racing tries to compete with local short track night races.
Last season, I attended a race a Sumter Speedway, near my hometown, and was in the infield as a guest of one of the teams running that night. It was an incredibly awesome feeling to return to that familiar locale. Although I had been to Sumter a couple of times over the past three years, I sat in the grandstand, mostly because the infield was for participants and families. I noticed that Sumter speedway is well lighted, but not nearly like the NASCAR big tracks, obviously. The feeling of being there, under the lights, in the infield with the competitors, is almost impossible for me to put into words. There is emotion, of course, but more than that, there are memories. Memories of so many nights at so many tracks over so many years. All the years with Uncle Bobby, and then all the years after I started driving myself to races.
The year after my first attendance at the Charlotte Winston, I watched the second Winston on television. When the overhead shots were shown, it was as though I was looking at a necklace of sparkling diamonds displayed on black velvet. The lights didn't "twinkle" but the sparkle in the night gave the appearance of such. It was hard for me to sit there and watch a race on a track that size, under the lights, and not think of my nights and days at Columbia, Savannah, Newberry, Augusta, Rambi Raceway and the long list of tracks where I became first a "tween", then a "teen" and finally a grown man.
I guess being somewhat involved with the ghost track site Dan Hinson has set up, my nostalgia is more apt to turn to those days when what are now ghost tracks were vibrant, almost living landmarks. I remember always getting to the tracks early so we could watch the cars come in, most on open trailers or tow bars. I remember usually being almost the last one to leave the track, several times with the last team pulling out as the lights were turned off. Oh, I had long ago figured out ways to get into the pits and by age 12, I was a constant in the pit area. I think finally the NASCAR officials just accepted me as some refugee from a reform school and let me slide by. Funny, how in later years, these same men became my really good friends and I could even call them by their first names. Pete, Dan, Bert and others.
All these thoughts come to mind today because I read something on a sports feed last week that really rang my chimes. The baseball All-Star game, for the first time in its television history, earned less that a 6.0 share in ratings, with a 5.6. Get that, a 5.6. With rare exception, NASCAR would pay big bucks for a rating OVER 2.0. I'm writing this Monday afternoon so I don't know the New Hampshire ratings, but if attendance is any indication as witnessed from the overhead shots, I am wondering if the ratings will even break the 1.0 mark.
I mention this because I can remember the 40-watt bulbs, high on the light poles at the tracks I attended growing up. I can remember the romance of the sport then, the personalities that drew folks to the sport and the tracks. The bulbs may have been 40 watts and the dust may have been thick, but there was an ambiance at those tracks that not one track currently on the NASCAR circuit can match. I miss those dimly lit arenas. I miss the dew on the infield grass in the lateness of the evenings when racing was over. NASCAR grew from those venues. The 40 watts became massive lighting miracles that can even light a 2.5-mile track where speeds exceed 200 mph. Yet, the true light of NASCAR is fading. The glow is no longer there for me, or for most of my contemporaries. I still watch because I'm a fan. But I would rather spend a day at the historic events I am so fortunate to attend than the entire speed week at Daytona.
I am a part of the 40-watt club. It is true that my eye doctor has instructed me to wear sunglasses, even under stadium lights, due to a macular degeneration issue. I have to do that at my grandson's soccer games and while some of the parents look at me like I'm some kind of nut, my grandson and his teammates think it's cool. But the thing is, if I were at the 40-watt tracks, I wouldn't need the sunglasses. I probably would need a comfortable place to stand and watch the cars race from one shadow to another. NASCAR, your brightness is fading. Fading almost faster than I can measure. All the brightly lighted tracks on the circuit are but mere energy wasters if there is no one there to witness what you are calling racing these days. Don't let your lights go dim and then be extinguished forever. I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer but I can see what is happening, even wearing sunglasses under a 40-watt bulb.
You know, you can even see the tear on my cheek under that 40-watt bulb.
