A Day at the Stock Car Races

I had never been to a stock car race before, even now at the verge of being twenty one I had not yet discovered the hickish joy of watching cars go vroom vroom! around a track. However when I heard my uncle’s girlfriend had taken up stock car racing and was to be competing I couldn’t resist the invitation. I had never met her but did hear she rarely went over forty-five miles an hour on the highway, and this is in Maine, the state were cops don’t appear to exist and people routinely drive eighty miles and hour down straight flat roads, going somewhere not terribly important. The thought made me smile.

When I arrived I forked over the awesome sum of five whole dollars and received a big black stamp on my hand. The place was small, as I expected it to be, considering it was smack dab in the middle of the boonies. As I walked in I heard cranking over the speakers the Hick anthem of the South Sweet Home Alabama. Strange, when I imagined going to a stock car race I always had that tune playing in my head. After that song was over a slew of other rockabilly hits went rip roaring off the speakers and into my hesitant ears.

I guess stock car racing is like evacuating the Titanic. First come the women, then the children, then the men. I watched a bit puzzled when the women came out for the first race. I wasn’t sure if I had come to see a stock car race or if I had in fact paid five dollars to see some sort of strange demolition derby. None of the cars looked like they should be running. Some of them were missing entire back ends and none of them had support cages. When my uncle’s girlfriend came out onto the track the announcer said her name and I noticed immediately her car was the best out of the whole lot of them. It didn’t have a dent in it. I later found out why.

As the cars warmed up I got colder. In the middle of Summer I can still shiver off pounds. It’s an unfortunate thing. I watched every one of the vehicles and had to smile. I looked at each car and examined their injuries. I suddenly knew why people watch races; crashes. Everyone likes a good crash, except of course the car. As I watched I couldn’t help but notice that half the cars on the track had their numbers spelled out in duct tape. Wonderful!

And then it was time for the race to begin. I crossed my fingers and cheered for 00No or “double O No” as they were calling her. It didn’t take her long to loose position. This was the most tepid race I could imagine with each woman going perhaps forty miles an hour and still Double O No managed to not only fall behind into last place but she was also lapped by all the other cars. The sad part of the whole bit was that her engine was a third more powerful then everything else on the track. I’m not sure if she came in last or if the two cars that up and died during the race came in last but either way it was a sad bet.

After the women came the children. I say children not as some sort of demeaning comment on teenagers but as a literal description. Apparently in the boonies of Maine it is a perfectly acceptable practice to strap your kids into wieldy fast moving vehicle and watch them slug it out in an eighty mile an hour game of bumper cars. Most of these kids, barely tall enough to see out the windshield and reach the petals at the same time, were driving cars that looked like they’d been picked up and toted off by several hurricanes in their lifetime. Many were missing parts, not little parts, but entire sections. Most had no windows, save for a windshield, probably sealed in with Elmer’s glue. The youngest driver on the track was an eleven year old boy, third or fourth generation driver, practically still wearing diapers and yet he was one of the most daring drivers I had ever seen. He sped out from the start line like a bat out of Hell and in seconds flat he was in third place. I watched in amazement and cheered when he started to pull into second place but then the audience let out a collective gasp. He’d pulled too hard on the turn and went flying off the track like a pissed off matchbox. This didn’t faze him a bit and he pulled himself out of the sandbank and drove right back on the track and tried catching up. In doing so he spun off the track again. This time his confidence was crushed and he accepted the fact he was going to come in last place no matter what he did.

After this came intermission where I ate half of a fried dough and shivered off whatever calories I just consumed. My mother who had come with me fetched a pink fuzzy bathrobe out of the car and proceeded to wear it inside out with his garish cotton candy pink and white stripes glaring out at the crowd, inside-out, insisting she wanted the fuzzy part on the inside.

“Oh no one cares what I wear. Half these people don’t look much better!” And the sad thing is she was totally right about that.

When the men finally came out the races really began. I watched in amazement as more assless cars made their way out on the track, their tinfoil frames flapping in the wind and their duct tape bumpers simply smiling. This is when the real races began. No longer did the cautious and courteous nature of the women exist and no longer was there a babysitter in the passenger seat of all the drivers. Not surprisingly the eleven year old was back to compete in this race and he meant business. All the cars sped angrily out of the start line edging closer to the front, as did the eleven year old but again he spun off the track and this time he killed his beautiful brand new hood. I guess he was already on his way to looking like all the other cars, two or three of which spluttered out and died on the tracks again, only to be pushed off after another race delay. Several cars spewed smoke and one’s inner wheel turned bright red like the glow of molten metal. Now things were getting interesting!

I was really enjoying myself by the time the main race came in. Now men, women, and children competed together as one. More cars died, more parts went flying, more cars spun wildly off the track, and this time there was a pile up! There also was my uncle’s girlfriend who only beat a complete newbie woman by a hair. She got second place and was only nearly lapped this time. Oh no!

When the winners pulled into place it didn’t come as a surprise to learn that the first and third place winners were eighteen year old boys and the second place was the eleven year old’s father. They each gave winning speeches in Maine accents so thick that I thought one had a whole bag of marshmallows in his mouth. I had no idea what he was saying but he seemed happy. The last kid gave an Emmy winning acceptance speech thanking everyone he had ever met in his lifetime for everything. People were starting to leave by that time but it wasn’t over.

Next came the last of the events, the ramp races. The ramp races weren’t so much races as much as they were excuses to beat the life out of perfectly innocent street lemons. One car looked out of place though. It looked brand spanking new. All the junkers took less then graceful leaps into the air and crashed on the ground but this wasn’t good enough. The shiny new car for some reason felt he had to outdo all the junkers and sped as fast as he could over the ramp flying in the air and nearly tearing off his own bumper upon landing and making a nasty bit of damage. When the announcer asked the driver about this part of the race he merely laughed. He had just gotten that car new off the lot that day and now it’d probably need a few hundred dollars to fix it. Shame! The races were all over now and I retreated back home where a pair of sweats was waiting for my chilled body.