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10/7/13
JOY IN RACING
It’s not that there’s not good racing anymore. Quite the
contrary.
After 60 years of taking in the action, the most
gripping competition I have ever seen came just this year when the
Swindells, Sr. and Jr., toured the Chili Bowl at warp speed, lap
after lap, that peach fuzz demi-god Kyle Larson dancing off their
front and rear bumpers.
And anyone who watched will tell you
what an over-the-top fabulous spectacle preceded Tony Kaanan’s
gleeful gulp of milk at the 2013 Indy 500.
So why would it be
that the most passion and gaiety of any other show this year came
last weekend at the annual reunion of the Pines Speedway in
Groveland, Mass.? Why would it be that a retro day for gray hairs at
a backyard track shuttered since 1973 would outdraw anything else in
the area?
Sure, there are the canned responses: the sad state of our economy
for all but the gated few; the ridiculous costs of running
competitively virtually anywhere; the unfortunate pall cast over the
sport by recent shenanigans in NASCAR; the intolerance of yuppie
neo-neighbors that threatens the continuation of so many
short
tracks.
What the Pines popularity may be speaking to is a
lost sense of community. Even contentious situations among racers
were often laced with humor and quick wit. Just maybe in these
serious and unsettled times it’s an underlying, special joy about
being a racer that has been ground down.
Case in point. Our
first book here at Coastal 181 was THEY CALLED ME THE SHOE,
the autobiography of one of the East’s greatest modified dirt
slingers. Ken Shoemaker, the consummate tough guy, was dying, and he
described his racing in a gritty way, but threads of humor and joy
ran throughout. Consider this incident, just after he came into the
pits at Lebanon Valley one night from warming up Tony Trombley’s
car. “We were experimenting with tunnel ram induction, and the
linkage was sticking, which could create a dangerous situation.
While we were talking, a guy who insisted I’d passed his car a
little rough, kept putting his nose in my face. I kept telling him,
‘Just let me finish with my car owner, and I’ll give you all the
time you want.’ He wouldn’t quit bothering me. So I excused myself
from Tony, moved Tony aside, and gave this guy a good smack. He flew
right over the top of one of those dual-height roller took boxes. I
figured the situation was over, but sometimes life ain’t that easy.
It turns out that the guy was my son Keith’s automotive teacher over
in Hudson. Oh well.”
And, wow, how about that Rene Charland,
the multi-time NASCAR national champ who died earlier this week! In
my own racing years, I wanted more than anything else to win a
modified show at Fonda, N.Y. It was a tall order, and it proved too
tough for me. But one night I was especially close – and I honestly
thought it would be mine. That’s until, with just a few laps to go,
Rene snuck by me under a caution flag oh so cleverly, and
undetected, went on to win. Quite possibly I have never been madder
at a human being in my whole life. I marched right over to “da
Champ” to give him a piece of my mind (and my broken heart). A crowd
gathered as I approached, and Rene reached for his pocket and shot
me right in the face with a water pistol. With a big grin he
announced, “Kid, nobody f–cks the f–cker!” What could I do but smile
at myself, load up, and start that 250-mile journey home?
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Rene Charland greets a female
fan. Racing season was goosing season.
(From
FONDA! by Andy Fusco, Lew Boyd and Jim Rigney.
Miller Photo) |
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Dave Dion, now a major player in the Living
Legends group down in Daytona, is a former Pines racer who emerged
as one of the Northeast’s most popular late model drivers. Dave
operated on wooden pennies, crewed by his amazing brothers, and in
1978 they had a short-lived but rather adventuresome fling with the
Grand National circuit. A couple of races in, at Richmond, the green
Yankees, on used tires, shocked the Southerners by time-trialing
fourth, behind Darrell Waltrip, Neil Bonnett, and Cale Yarborough.
You can feel Dave smiling when he reminisced with Dave Moody
in their book
LIFE WIDE OPEN. “First lap, second turn, Neil’s car gets
sideways, caught the wall, and spun right in front of me….and
drilled me in the left rear corner. All I could hear was Cale – now
buried in my driver’s door – wide open. He was trying to spin me all
the way around and continue on, and, when I heard that, I locked up
the brakes. I thought, ‘You Sonofabitch, if I’m going, you’re going
with me.’ All three of us slammed into the wall….
“I came
down the pit road at about 100 mph, we pried the fenders back, and I
hustled back out to beat the pace car. Just as I got to the end of
pit road, there was Cale’s wrecked car with Junior Johnson himself
trying to beat the sheet metal back into place. Junior saw me coming
and shook his fist at me. I flew by like I was shot from a canon,
and just as I got to Junior, I stuck my hand out the window and gave
him the finger.
“I’ll never forget the look on his face if I
live to be 150 years old.”
A favorite – and more recent –
example of that old-time, joyous thrill in the outrageousness of
racing was on July 18, 1987 on the shores of Lake Ontario.
Bentley Warren and Doug “the Young One” Heveron were engaged in a
battle royale in the $10,000-to-win Mr. Supermodified title feature
at Oswego. On and on they dueled until into the third turn they
flew, neither knowing that someone had just blown a motor. Oil
treats each of its recipients differently. Bentley took a brutal hit
sideways on the wall, while Doug piled in nearly head-on. There was
wreckage everywhere. Just recently Doug recalled the incident with
Bones Bourcier. “We both clobbered that wall so damn hard. Got out
of the cars and lay down on the track, both of us kind of dazed and
amazed. But then we looked at each other, realized neither was badly
hurt, and started laughing. We’d had so much fun racing those
previous ten laps wheel to wheel we couldn’t help it. The ambulances
were coming and there are the two of us, lying there laughing. I’ll
never forget that.”
May we please have some more of that in
2014?
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