Yout get tired just listening to everything that Harry Gant has going on these days.

He works 50-60 hours a week tending to maybe 200 head of cattle on his 400-acre farm. He's replacing fencing. He's remodeling three rental houses he owns, building garages and porches. And, as if all that wasn't enough, he does a few appearances here and there for Manheim Auto Auctions, which sponsored his last Busch Series entry.

Courtesy/harrygant.com

Harry Gant

"I'm working on the farm," Gant said. "I'm replacing a lot of fencing I built about 15 years ago. I spend nearly all my time over there, and I have some property that I own that joins the farm, and it's got three rental houses on it. I've got a building that goes with one of those houses that used to be a body shop, so I rebuilt all of it and concreted different places, put new doors in ... the whole big deal."

The only thing he's not doing is attending a lot of races. At first, just after he retired as a driver at the end of the 1994 season, it was intentional. He had to get racing out of his system, once and for all.

Although Gant did run 11 Craftsman Truck Series races in 1996, he has largely stayed away. It took him about two years to get completely "race free" as he calls it. When he made appearances for U.S. Tobacco, parent company of his longtime Cup sponsor Skoal, Gant would ride his beloved Harley Davidson to the track if at all possible, do his two-hour grip-and-grin session and be done with it.

He rarely, if ever, made his way into the garage.

"I done it on the start [of his retirement] just to keep away," Gant admitted. "I did a lot of appearances for U.S. Tobacco. I worked for them up until this year, and they would send me to [an appearance] outside the racetrack in a big tent, a museum thing, they had. I did about 10 or 15 races a year, and then the last few years, it dropped down to just doing 10.

"A lot of car owners were calling me right from the start, when somebody would get hurt or somebody was changing rides. When they needed somebody right quick, they'd call. I just turned 'em all down. It was gonna get worse, and I was gonna end up stepping back in a car. I knew that right off. So I kept away from the garage and the racetracks. I don't go to any."

He attended a pre-race event at Lowe's Motor Speedway late last season, but left before the green flag.

"They had invited everybody who'd won that October race ... even Charlie Glotzbach from way back," Gant said. "They introduced us and took us around the racetrack in a flatbed truck. I left when the race started, came back home and watched it on television. That's about the nearest I've been [to actually attending] a race.

"I've just stayed away from it, the first years there, just so I wouldn't get back in. I knew I would, if I would be around it. I just had to stay away. That helped a lot, not going around. Then, I got used to not thinking about going to the racetrack. I got settled in. You had a lot more time. I had a chance to do a little announcing, but that'd be the same deal as racing. So I just stayed away. I thought that was the best thing to get free and clear of it."

The 66-year-old Gant is simply too busy living the good life, working and spending time with his four grandchildren. One grandson and one granddaughter are 16, one grandson is 14 and the youngest grandson is 11. It's been fun for Gant to juggle their sports commitments, and his oldest grandson made the high-school varsity football team as a sophomore.

It's the good life, all right.

"I just wanted to be home," Gant said. "Our ballpark here has about three or four fields, I reckon. They'd be all of them playing at one time, from T-ball all the way up to the real fast pitch. That was every Thursday, Friday and Saturday. I wanted to be there. My oldest grandson ... is a pretty good football player. But they play on Friday nights and you have to travel a good bit when they get in the playoffs.

"That's what I'm doing. I decided I'd stay with them. I missed my two daughters growing up. I didn't get to do anything with them, so I decided now we can all go to the ballgames together and watch my grandchildren play. That's what I do. That's the reason I didn't get to racing."

Not only does Gant not attend a lot of races, he doesn't make it a point to get to a television if one happens to be on. If he can catch a race on the tube, fine. If not, he's comfortable with that as well.

"I watch a little racing, but it seems to be a lot different," Gant said. "I don't watch it too much. I watch a little on Sunday, but I quit racing to go visit my mom, the children and other people on Sundays. I don't sit and dwell on watching races all day."

The sport he once knew has changed in a great many ways. The Chase changed the way champions are crowned, and Gant can take or leave it ... preferably leave it. Then ... there are the cars, which in Gant's opinion have been tinkered with, cut, raised, moved over, lengthened, shortened and tweaked far too much.

"I'll tell you what my honest opinion is ... and I told [NASCAR president] Mike Helton this," continued Gant, "even when I quit racing with the [Chevrolet] Lumina, it was pretty much just a regular Lumina. With the Oldsmobile, [the manufacturer] would send us sheet metal, and we'd use it.

"Now, they've started letting them do so much to these cars. They let you run a four-door car, but make a two-door out of it. The Ford Fusion ... that's an intermediate car, a little four-door, halfback thing. The Monte Carlo is the only car out there that's a two-door. They let you add a foot to the hood to fit the motor.

"They made a Dodge the ugliest thing I've ever seen in my life. They let 'em put the grille down where the bumper's at. They all look like they've run under a tractor-trailer and smashed the nose down. They've got this big problem ... aero push, aero push. Well ... if they would run 'em the way they was supposed to be, there wouldn't be no aero push. You wouldn't even need no Car of Tomorrow. ... I don't like that at all."

Gant is one of the lucky ones. Many who leave the sport seem lost without it, but Gant has been able to move on with his life. He's healthy, healthy enough to outwork men nearly 50 years his junior. He broke a few bones during his career, but he's far from an invalid.

Honestly, the best thing that can be said for Gant is that he's content. Good for him.