Where is ... Patty Moise? (cont'd)

"No ... no, it isn't ... no, but you don't get a chance to drive racecars forever. Nobody does," Moise said. "I don't care how great you are. Nobody gets a chance to do it forever. Then, you make do."

Also keeping her busy the past couple of years has been the construction of her and Sawyer's 28-acre North Carolina homestead. She calls herself the site supervisor, while Sawyer evidently put it a little more bluntly. If he was the financial intake, he said, Moise was the exhaust.

Two years ago in June, the place was just a field. Now, there's permanent and paddock fencing, a main house, a barn, a smaller house, an equipment shed, hay barn and run-ins for horses.

"It pays nothing and was very expensive," Moise said with a laugh. "That's why it was the worst possible job."

Moise's father, Milton, raced on the IMSA, so she came by her love for cars honestly. When she got her first car, she was off and running.

Literally.

"I guess I didn't really ever think about racing until I got a street car, a '75 Camaro," Moise began. "Dad helped me fix it up. It had headers, mag wheels and big, fat tires. I didn't jack it up, though. So there was some class involved. It had a custom pinstriping job on it.

"I went berserk, crazy, racing and chasing, just stupid high-school stuff. I was really lucky not to get killed. Played chicken ... every bad thing you don't want your kid to do in a car, that was me. I really got in a lot of trouble, got a lot of tickets, had a few wrecks."

Wrecks, huh? Do tell.

"One time, we were chasing each other," Moise said. "I was trying to win, ran a stop sign and got hit by a truck."

Moise graduated from Jacksonville University in Florida and in 1981 made her racing debut in three IMSA Stock Series events. The following year, Moise joined the Kelly American Challenge Series. Finally, it was on to the Busch Series for a couple of races in 1986. Her first Cup race came the very next year.

The first time Moise ever raced on an oval track, she was in a Busch Series event at Rockingham. It was heady stuff, but looking back she would've done things differently.

"The Kelly American Challenge Series was 12 races a year, from Florida to California," Moise said. "We raced all over the place, but just 12 times, where Elton at that time was racing probably every Friday and Saturday night at two different tracks for however many months each year.

"That probably ended up being 50 times a year, which was a much better education. If I'd known what I know now, I wouldn't [have] started on short tracks. The only oval track in Jacksonville was dirt, and that's not what my dad did. I raced what was offered to me."

Also making the transition more difficult was a disparity in the acceptance of female competitors between divisions. Sponsored by Kelly Services, a temporary employment agency, the road-racing circuit offered a bonus to the highest-finishing female driver. Really, it was nothing out of the ordinary to have four or five women racing in any given event.

When she moved to NASCAR, however, things were decidedly different.

"The very first Busch race I ran was actually on a road course, at Road Atlanta," Moise said. "I can remember when I showed up at that racetrack, I was the only female driver entered. You would've thought I was an alien that had showed up and landed. Now, a woman comes in the sport, she will not be made to feel quite like that, so I'm guessing that might be a change."

Although Moise hasn't followed NASCAR's Drive for Diversity very closely, she does say that such a program might've helped ease her way in the sport. When it's suggested that she helped pave the way for other women in the sport, Moise concludes rather quietly.

"I never think of it," she said, leaving it at that.