Remembering the days of old
By Dale Earnhardt Jr., Special to Turner Sports Interactive
May 29, 2001
10:59 AM EDT (1459 GMT)
Commentary
As we roll through 2001, the 20th century seems more distant everyday.
Forget the 90s. In my mind, I'm heading back to the 70s and 80s when NASCAR was
putting the finishing touches on the foundation that we stand on today. I
can't help but look at how things have changed.
With everything just a mouse
click away, it's really easy to over-indulge in the newest technologies and
forget where we've been.
Looking back on those days puts NASCAR's Gary Nelson back in the pits as a
crew chief. It's back when Todd and Brad Parrott were just a couple of punk
kids gluing lug nuts before the race. (By the way, you are both still punks!)
Instead of crowded and rundown motels, drivers and crew chiefs now spend their
nights during race weekends in plush motor coaches and souped-up luxury RVs.
My new motor coach is wicked cool, but those days spent in hotel bars with
the boys on the crew are hard to forget.
I can see James Hylton and many other drivers wheeling an open trailer into
the garage area. Those that had enclosed car haulers kept a backup motor in
what is now the lounge area.
You wouldn't find anyone foolish enough or
wealthy enough to be carrying a qualifying motor on board. Most of the tracks
didn't have a fenced-in garage area, and even fewer had tunnels.
Hell, at
Bristol, the haulers were parked outside the track. The most amusing part of
the weekend was watching those fellas bring the pit boxes across into the
track. Some of them would always lose control coming down that steep banking!
I traveled to many races in the 1980s, but I was too young to remember what it
was like in the 1970s. I do all I can to get a feel of what those days were
like. I even have a Beta-format VCR to watch the old tapes, and it's still
kickin.'
Do yourself a favor and watch the '79 Daytona 500 if you get a
chance. The TV commentators refer to my father as "a cotton head from
Kannapolis."
Richard Petty won, and we all know the ending where Cale
Yarborough and Bobby Allison crash on the last lap and then get into a
fistfight. Driver feuds would last for more than a few races back then. Sure,
we still feud, but in this age of big sponsors and big media coverage, we
aren't so quick to act on it.
It's what you see during the entirety of these races that is so intriguing to
me. Chrome bumpers and window nets no more durable than the shirt on my back.
Only the crew chief had a headset to communicate with the driver, and not all
of the teams even had that. Damn, those single-layer driver's suits were cool
for those times. What I would give for a Goodyear jacket from back then!
More memories include my father's annual party at our house on the lake. We
hung with our friends like Joe Whitlock and Doug Richert while "Life's Been
Good To Me" by Joe Walsh poured out of the stereo speakers. (Our couch in the
living room was orange, believe it or not.)
One thing I wanna know is what year was it at Darlington when they finally
thought two lanes in the corner were better than one? Have you seen the races
from the 1960s there? I thought that track was tough now, but I can't imagine
only one lane. Those guys were crazy.
In 1980, Benny Parsons drove to victory at Ontario, Calif. (I've got that one on
tape Benny!) My dad showed me the land where the track once stood during a
race weekend at Riverside in '87. Riverside was eventually plowed up as well
to make room for a mall.
I remember riding down the road in my mom's 1978 Monte Carlo, Fleetwood Mac
playing on the radio, and nothing mattered but ice cream. I will always miss
those times as they fade away.Twenty years from now these will be the good
ol' days. "I remember when I was only 26 and we ran only 38 races a year..."
I guess I'm kinda like Jimmy Spencer, I never forget.
From the school of hard knocks,
Dale Jr.
Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s diary appears periodically on NASCAR.com. The opinions listed here are solely those of the writer.
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