Hemby Bridge, NC – Usually I try to find a story within a story even when I’m trying to write the greatest story of all time… Me winning…
But there weren’t any awesome, amazing, sad, exciting, depressing, truly inspirational stories that went on in the Carolinas this weekend when the Northeast and far far South invaded the Carolinas for Pete’s double weekend at Carolina and Cherokee.
All that really happened was great sprint car racing.
And in all honesty, that’s something I has a fan, crew member, sponsor, promoter, and driver from North Carolina have always dreamed of.
I usually wake up on Sunday morning and scan the message boards, scroll through Facebook posts, look for Twitter updates, etc etc… reading about all the awesome sprint car races that go on throughout the world while trying to not look at dad and say “We live in the wrong part of the country.”
But… we have this one guy.
Pete Walton and the United Sprint Car Series have been providing the Southeastern United States with the most exciting dirt track racing for over twenty years. Everywhere we go, we hear our names on the radio while we’re on our way to the track. We see our cars on posters in restaurant bathrooms we’ve never been too. And five miles before we get to the track, we see a massive ass banner with “Winged Sprint Cars” this way.
The only thing that sucks about that one particular banner is my team is always late, so we get stuck in the fan traffic.
Every weekend with the USCS is pretty special. Us Carolina sprint teams never know what’s going to happen. We still get goose bumps when we know we are lining up beside Gray in a heat race. Oh crap, Danny Smith is starting behind me, what do I do? Hagar and Crawley are starting in front of me. I just got done watching them on MavTv an hour again. Some guy flew all the way from Washington State to the Queen City to win this race? Someone drove all the way from Canada to beat me at a local track that I’ve only raced at once.
I waited on dad to drop off his last load of sand at the concrete plant on Friday since my crew members have regular jobs now. We showed up last like most nights but I always have the brother saving me a spot so we never have to wonder for a place. I signed in and told dad to pull ‘er in as I like walking around.
As I gently placed that arm band around my hairy wrist, I looked off in the distance and saw nothing but sprint cars. It was one of the greatest sights this one-eyed guy has ever seen and I couldn’t imagine seeing this one a weekly basis.
I can only imagine that one day everyday will be like this.
I was going to come up with a clever line to end my typical story there… But I wanted to add one more thing.
I didn’t make the dash at Cherokee or the Mystery dash at Cherokee. So I went and sat in turn one to gauge entry. One of my dad’s best friends saw me and came down to chat. I asked him how last night’s crowd was and tonight’s. He said the fans are truly starting to love sprint cars down here.
He in turn asked me a question… “What did it feel like chasing down Terry Gray and Danny Smith in traffic last night at Carolina?”
I told him… “I felt like a sprint car driver…. And it was fucking awesome.”
The end… OR maybe the beginning…