Fired Up

There’s a story in every conversation in the South. We soak in these embellished recollections. They form the fabric of our culture. Subject matter is as ubiquitous as weeds, from discussions about nicknames to ne’er-do-wells. The story that follows occurred on a sweltering Saturday night in August several years ago.

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Frankie drives a race car. He has one good eye. The other one is a marble. He sometimes removes it for shock value. Some say he’s hell on wheels, and on this particular Saturday night he passes through the prophetic fiery furnace and lives to tell about it. Here are the details.

Four of us pile into my car and head for a night at the Golden Isles Speedway, a respite from the boredom of dog days that descends on the island in August.

The parking lot is a dusty pasture. It’s jammed with pickups and motor homes, Harleys and race cars. Not sleek Indy cars, but backyard, home-built stock cars, sheet-metal alter-egos expressive of the drivers. Rear bumpers are emblazoned with the drivers’ messages: Eat My Dust, Never Satisfied, Kiss This and Back Off Dude.

We’re guests of Frankie’s father, the track owner. We get to view the racing spectacle from the enclosed VIP overlook suite. It preserves us from the red-clay dust that soon covers the general admission bleachers. It’s catered with Saturday night country cuisine: burgers, barbeque and beer.

Maybe you’ve never been to a half-mile oval, red-clay dirt track. It’s a counter-culture, parallel universe in many ways: the spectators, the drivers, the mechanics and the groupies who follow the circuit. We might refer to them today as the ‘alt-right’ crowd. Their life perspective bears about as much resemblance to an urban dweller’s perspective as kissing a woman bears to marrying her.

The 500 horsepower, souped-up rebuilt racing machines burn 112 Octane fuels. They stage up on the track, bumper to bumper, their raw engine power fills the sultry air with supercharged, unfiltered noise. The flag drops and it’s every man for himself. Around the clay-packed oval they run in a pack akin to a herd of demon-possessed swine, never far from the ultimate abyss.

Each race is called a ‘heat.’ Cars compete in their particular class. Somewhere around the fifth heat the crowd settles down and begins to fall into a trance of too much of the same-old-same-old. But then it happens.

On the second turn a car explodes into a fireball just as the herd reaches its top speeds of 125 mph. Car number 14, owned by The Swampers, erupts in flames. Frankie is ‘kissing his bumper,’ and his car is engulfed in flames as well.

The air becomes electric; the crowd leaps up in frenzied ecstasy, shouting wildly. The drivers are pulled out of the windows, their fire-retardant suits flaming but preserving them from certain death. The fire lights up passions and breaks up monotony.

We slip out of the suite down to the pit area to survey the damage to cars and drivers. Already the racing teams are recanting the near-death experience to an awed crowd of gawkers, clearly cooking up the ‘I-was-there’ near-death story for everyone to take home.

I find Frankie to get his take on the event. He seems undisturbed by it all. I ask him about his perspective of life where death is present at every turn. He shrugs and says that ‘here and now’ is all that matters to race drivers. There’s no past, no future, just the present moment.

He takes me over to his charred racing hulk and emphasizes his point of view.

“Look, do you see a rear-view mirror in my car?” He asks.

I look. There’s not one. I ask why.

He laughs and says, “We’re race car drivers, we come to win. Out there, on the track, there’s no looking back. Victory is ahead, not behind.”

I consider there might be an advantage after all for a fellow with only one eye and no rear-view mirror. Such a philosophy might have application for a variety of life issues.

The spectacle drones on. About midnight we have our fill and call it quits. We drive back to quiet lives on the coast, each bringing a remembrance of the night’s events for the framework of our own story.

As for mine, it’s all about one eye and no rear-view mirror. I’ll supply my own fiery details.



Bud Hearn
Copyright
December 5, 2016