Another in a series of posts on NASCAR basics. This post doesn't really explain much. It's more of a postscript or footnote...
I just recently finished reading St. Dale by Sharyn McCrumb. I should have read it a couple of years ago, when it was first published, as it combines two of my favorite things in life, NASCAR and the writing of Sharyn McCrumb, but I somehow got out of the habit of reading for a while. I'm trying to get back into the habit, even if just a chapter or two before bed each night. If you love NASCAR, or if you'd just like to learn a little more about it, I highly recommend the book.
St. Dale is the story of the Dale Earnhardt Memorial Pilgrimage, a bus tour to honor the memory of Dale Earnhardt that takes place not long after his death. The pilgrims visit several places, mostly racetracks, that played an important part in Dale's life...and death. The tour guide is Harley Claymore, a fictional washed up NASCAR driver who wants more than anything to get back to the show, to get another ride.
The following scene takes place at the Tri-Cities Airport near Bristol, Tennessee, where Harley is about to meet the tourists who are about to make the pilgrimage. It counters a constant criticism of NASCAR and other motor racing, that it's not really a sport, that it's just drivers going around in a circle...
Harley Claymore found that he was more nervous about meeting this group of tourists than he had ever been about driving 180 miles per hour with Bill Elliott on his bumper and Earnhardt closing fast.
Glad-handling people was not one of his more conspicuous talents. He was not afraid of coming up against a question he couldn't answer. He was more nervous about the prospect of facing a question he had heard so many times that a rude retort would escape his lips before he could stop himself. Candor was his besetting sin.
He remembered an unfortunate encounter with a lady reporter during his racing days. She hadn't been a sports reporter, he knew that. Maybe she had been down to collect recipes from the wives or some such meringue assignment, but he had encountered her at one of the pre-race appearances that sponsors liked to host in hopes of getting their driver more publicity.
The woman in black, swizzle-stick thin and improbably blonde, had tottered up to him on stiletto heels and announced that she was a writer. She named a magazine he'd never heard of, but he nodded and smiled as if she'd said Newsweek. Then she wanted to know if he was a driver. Harley said that he was, and asked politely if she followed the sport.
The woman had attempted to wrinkle her botoxed forehead, and then -- with the air of someone making a startlingly original observation -- she smirked and said, "But it isn't really a sport, is it? Just a bunch of cars going around in a circle for three hours."
"Yes," said Harley. "Yes, it is." He tapped her little green notebook. "And writing isn't very hard, either, is it? Just juggling those same old twenty-six letters over and over again in various combinations?"
In retrospect, he conceded that the remark had not been designed to convert the lady to an appreciation of NASCAR. She had stalked off in a huff, with the word "redneck" hovering on her lips, which Harley didn't mind, because if people are going to think it, they might as well say it, and then you know where you are. He'd ended up going home alone. Maybe the reporter had found someone more willing to humor her. Thinking it over later, Harley supposed that he could have found a more diplomatic answer to the woman's tiresome display of ignorance. Maybe for future reference he should have asked Alan Kulwicki, who had an engineering degree, what technical explanation you ought to give to people who didn't realize that the "simplicity" of the sport was merely their own incomprehension, just as -- to the uninitiated -- opera was noise and modern art a paint spill. The difference was that people felt embarrassed about not understanding music or art, but they seemed almost smug about being ignorant on the subject of motor sports. Stupidity as a status symbol. He never did understand it, but it had long ago ceased to surprise him.
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