Fast Cars, Family and Fainting Goats
General
Today's Charlotte paper (and That's Racin') carries one of those rare, in-depth, offbeat athlete pieces by the paper's rare, offbeat sports columnist., Tom Sorensen. It's one of those pieces you seldom see anymore, mostly about the athlete's personal life away from the sport. In this instance it is driver, David Ragan and I learned a heck of a lot. The story confirmed my suspicion that he was Ken Ragan's son, but beyond that I knew nothing of the young man. I've copied the whole thing because I think that regardless of who you may pull for, you'll enjoy this kind of "behind the scenes" writing. I think NASCAR would be well advised to find 5 or 6 talented writers like Sorensen and do an in-depthoffbeat piece about all of its drivers. People would read stuff like that as opposed to the "fluff stuff" we get these days. Anyhow, here it is and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. I will now pay more attention to this young driver. Note the quote about the lack of discipline in Kyle Busch's childhood.
We all love racing, family but cop cars and fainting goats?
THATSRACIN.COM OPINION By Tom Sorensen - 07.16.11 CONCORD
David Ragan was about to win the Daytona 500. He was leading on the restart and he wanted to remain there during the final laps. To slip in front of drafting partner Trevor Bayne, he dropped from the tracks high line to the low line. The move clearly violated NASCAR rules. But its a violation NASCAR invokes as frequently as the NBA invokes traveling. Yet NASCAR waved its black flag, Ragan retreated to 15th place and his opportunity to win the years biggest race was crushed. Ragan showed his displeasure by slapping his steering wheel of his Ford Fusion. Heres a driver who is 25, has been racing Sprint Cup since 2007 and, despite his 90-year-old grandmother praying for him back in Henderson, Ga., had yet to win. Jack Roush, CEO of Roush Fenway Motorsports, the team for which Ragan drives, calls the loss horrifying and devastating. He adds: There was pressure from the team, the sponsors, fans and family, and he let it slip away. But Ragan didnt scream at NASCAR for enforcing the rule, didnt scream at his crew because he needed somebody to blame and didnt scream at the world because everybody saw the mistake. David is like nobody I have ever met, says his longtime girlfriend Jacquelyn Butler. Hes a 40-year-old man in a 25-year-olds body. Says Ragan: I think losing your mind and cursing out the pit crew, thats all show. That doesnt do anything for me. I try to stay level-headed and thats just the way youre brought up. Thats the way youre disciplined as a kid. Kyle Busch wasnt disciplined as a kid. Hes the best driver on the track right now, in my opinion, and he goes off sometimes and he has to apologize later. Thats the way he is or Tony Stewart or (Juan Pablo) Montoya. It doesnt mean I have less desire because I dont have a cow if something crazy happens. I try to keep everything in perspective. Sometimes people look and say, Thats your weak point, and You dont show enough emotion. Ill argue that. No frenzy for Ragan When Ragan returned to Daytona 15 days ago and won the Coke Zero 400 his post-race interviews were devoid of the expected I finally won frenzy. Interviewers tried to get him to jump and shout. They failed. The way we grew up we were raised not to show a lot of emotion, says Brett Ragan. We (he and David) dont say, I love you to each other. Brett is Davids cousin. They grew up in Unadilla, Ga., a town 45 miles south of Macon without a stoplight, police force or McDonalds. Brett, a set-up mechanic for Carl Edwards, bought a 2,500-square foot house with Ragan in a subdivision in Huntersville. They cut their own grass and do their own cleaning. Especially when our parents come to visit, says Brett. Ragan, who will start 26th Sunday in the Lenox Tools 301 at New Hampshire Motor Speedway, would be in the Chase if the Chase began now. And this would be good. We need athletes to cheer, and we often choose athletes that remind us of who we are, or who we think we are. When I met David, he was driving trucks part time, Jacquelyn Butler says. If he changed after he started driving Cup cars, his dad (Ken, a former Cup driver) would be upset, and Id smack him. But hes the same guy. A humble existence If I had Ragans money I, too, would live as humbly as I could except for the house on the lake and the Porsche in the driveway. I absolutely hate my house, says Ragan. The road that connects him to the rest of the United States is torn up, and getting to I-77 is like getting to Kentucky Speedway. If I could do it over, I would build a shop and put a 1,000-square foot living quarter above it and live there until I get married, says Ragan. I dont have a TV in my room. I wash clothes and sleep there. We might have 10 things in the pantry and water and Cokes in the fridge and we eat out every meal. As if to prove it, Ragan consumes one of the two spinach feta cheese wraps with eggs he bought at Starbucks a few hours earlier. To play back a tape of a more than two hour interview is to hear chewing. Where do you keep your plane? I dont have a plane, Ragan says. I can catch rides with Jack (Roush) on the team planes and all my teammates have their own planes. They can get home faster than I can. Humpy Wheeler, the former president of Charlotte Motor Speedway, is a friend of Davids father. Wheeler told Ken Ragan that David needed to put some meat on his bones. So Wheeler talked David into buying a bike. When David finished pedaling, Wheeler talked him into putting on headgear and 18-ounce gloves. Theyd box 30-minute rounds. Ragan would come home with his nose bloody, his arms numb and his mom, Beverly, wondering why her husband said so many nice things about Wheeler. Theres no doubt in my mind that David would make it as a pro boxer given enough amateur bouts and good coaching, says Wheeler. Ragan is 6-0 and 150 pounds, somewhere between skinny and lean. Always an athlete, he played high school football (quarterback and cornerback), baseball (catcher) and basketball (point guard). After 10th grade, he stopped to focus on racing. Beverly had watched Ken race (11 years in a Cup car) and worried. So Ken offered a deal: Give up racing, son, and when you turn 16, you can have a brand-new Corvette. The decision was easy. A country boy David is good for the sport, says Wheeler. Racing just needs to let people know who he is. "The place where he is from in Georgia is classic NASCAR 1949. The people go to dirt tracks in Cordele. Drive Ford F-150 pickups with shotguns in the back window. Guys sit around eating boiled peanuts whole, hull and all. "Old stores with rusty screen doors, oiled floors, rounds of cheese and Brown Mule Chewing Tobacco. People still blame communists for metric bolts. How can anyone brought up in this environment be anything but humble, God-fearing and a person who still says, Yes sir and No sir? That is David. The small-town courtesies are not a surprise. The humility is not a surprise. The absence of a plane is not a surprise. The four fainting goats and two miniature donkeys are surprises. Get out of the car at Ragans 15-acre Concord shop and there they are. See, I was driving and I saw a sign: Fainting Goats for Sale, says Ragan. And I said, How much for four? $110? Just something different. Theyre good for conversation. I dont think any of the other drivers have them, Brett Ragan says. Ragan and Brett live a mile from Lake Norman. Brett estimates theyve been on the lake, at most, four times in the seven years theyve owned the house. Ragan is more likely to wash the miniature donkeys and feed the goats. The goats are called fainting goats because, when startled, they freeze for 10 seconds, and usually fall over. When Kyle Busch has a confrontation with another driver, even he hasnt tried this. I dont know about living with David, says Roush. Hed drive a woman crazy with those goats and donkeys. He buys them because theyre cheaper than horses. Butler, Ragans girlfriend, loves animals as much as he does. A UNC Charlotte graduate who works as a veterinary technician, shes 23. And shes not as patient as her boyfriend. Shes starting to put the heat on me, says Ragan. Im holding off as long as I can. Is it true youre pushing him to get married? I mean, weve dated five years, says Butler. What do you expect? And always, cars Outside Ragans shop is a 1931 Ford Model A so perfect it looks as if it just rolled in from the spa. Inside the shop, on the floor, is the trophy he won in Daytona. Next to it is the Sunoco flag he borrowed for his victory lap. Theres a bees nest from his grandmothers house. To preserve the nest Ragan covered it with hairspray. In the garage is a beautiful red 1985 Ford fire truck, formerly a member in good standing of the Rushville (N.Y.) Fire Department. I was on eBay one night I buy a lot of stuff on eBay, says Ragan. I like deals because Im cheap. I saw this thing for $4,000 bucks or something. It has 14,000 miles on it and runs great. "Fire trucks are kept indoors, theyre taken care of and no one wants them. We dont have use for it other than washing the parking lot once a year and putting in weed killer and spraying the gravel. You ever use it to pick up a date? I would, he says. I would do something like that. Near the fire truck is a 1938 Ford, a UPS delivery truck that ran a route in Chicago. There's a 1948 Willys Jeep that Ragan drove as a kid on the family farm in Georgia. And he has old race car like the one his grandfather drove in the 1940s. Ragan has a second shop. An elderly neighbor lets Ragan use her old garage a few miles down the road in Kannapolis as long as he keeps it up and cuts her grass. Outside, there are bullet holes, presumably from a nearby range. Inside, beneath a blanket, is a yellow 1966 Corvette convertible so stunning that you want to drop to one knee, bow your head and repent even if you didnt do anything wrong. The car was in terrible shape when Ken Ragan bought it after he stopped racing, and he lovingly coaxed it back to life. He sold it for $40,000, with half the money going for racing and the other half into a CD for Davids college education. The Corvette was sold a second time before David bought it back for about $75,000. He gave it to his father. Next to the Vette is a blue 1964 half-ton three-on-the-tree Chevrolet truck in which deliveries were made for Kens auto parts store. Many of the cars outside the shop arent Ragans. Just as some people attract injured pets, he attracts injured cars. Friends who need a place to park them know that he will say yes. A respect for history Between the Corvette and the truck is a big cardboard Dale Earnhardt cutout Ragan bought at a yard sale even though, growing up, he was not an Earnhardt fan. A house or garage around here isnt complete without some kind of Dale Earnhardt material, says Ragan. Everybody has an Earnhardt story. Everybody is a cousin or in-law or went to church with him. Ive learned to respect him a lot. I know more of the story than whats on the outside. Near Earnhardt is a plastic box, and inside the box are racing cards. You know the cards, you see them at the haulers outside the track. The driver puts on shades and crosses his arms and poses as coolly as he can. David's brother, Adam Ragan, is a year and half older and looks cool on his racing card. Adam has Down syndrome. He is a member of the David Ragan Fan Club in every way; his number is 001. Unless hes going to church, he wears a David Ragan shirt, a Roush Fenway shirt or a wrestling shirt. Adam loves pro wrestling. Ric Flair, he says, when I ask his favorite. Ric got him tickets to Wrestlemania in Charlotte, says Ragan. How fun would it have been to live in Rics shoes four or five years? Ken Ragan, 60, says that when David was growing up activities such as riding a bike or dribbling a basketball came easily to him. He saw how hard Adam had to work, says Ken. And he saw that even though Adam was frustrated, he didnt complain. He kept trying. Adam wanted the cards printed, and loves to pass them out at the track. Hes accepted, says David. He likes people and hanging out and stuff like that. He has to struggle every day just living his life. Even a little thing like making dinner. It teaches you in more ways than others that youre fortunate. As Ken and Beverly age, there will come a time when David expects Adam to live with him. Theyll have no shortage of vehicles. Ragan figures he owns 20. The things I buy, if things get tight, theyll still hold value and I can sell them, says Ragan. Potential champion? In Ragans world, cars take precedence over clubs. Brett comes over after work and they get dirty. Chris Dilbeck, another Georgia buddy and racer who runs the garage, joins them. Vehicles are taken apart and put together, and except for the Model A, which has a CD player, the vehicles are what they were. But cooler. The most important of them is the United Parcel Service Ford over at Roushs shop. The contract with UPS will expire this season, and has yet to be renewed. Roush sounds confident. Theres no glass ceiling, he says. David is ready to be a factor in the championship right now. Is he good enough to win one? I think Ive got the talent, says Ragan, as we stand in the Corvettes glow. Ive got the demeanor. I respect guys that are the best in the sport. Jimmie Johnson. Jeff Gordon is still good. Carl Edwards. On a given day, I can beat them. I have. That is what motivates me to keep going. Now, can I do it consistently? I have to get more consistent. We get into a 1960 Ford Fairlane police car. The car, formerly on the police force in Topeka, Kan., was green when Ragan bought it. He and the fellows took out the engine, pulled off the chrome, painted it black and white and joined Andy Griffith Show Rerun Watchers Club so they could get copies of the Mayberry police decal and stick them on the doors. In the show the car usually was a Galaxie, but the Fairlane made a few guest appearances. The 292 Thunderbird engine cranks up immediately. I have an appreciation for American-made ingenuity, says Ragan. Its kind of a shame were getting away from that. I hope someday my kids will understand how great a country we live in and how far weve come since World War II. The auto was one of things that made our country stand out. The country boy drives the Fairlane down a country road. Theres no traffic. Theres also no air conditioning. The Topeka police officers didnt have it, so why should we? He taps a button on the left side of the floor with his foot, and the siren begins to sing. You want to track down some evildoers? Im ready to go, Ragan calmly says. Read more: http://www.thatsracin.com/2011/07/16/69361/we-all-love-racing-family-but.html#ixzz1SNWbOtfl
updated by @dave-fulton: 12/05/16 04:02:07PM
