Where is ... T. Houston?

Tommy Houston has a fool-proof plan to keep Jason Keller from breaking his record for most career starts in the Busch Series.

Just shoot him.

And then Houston laughs. He's joking, of course. Nobody, but nobody, can tell a story and enjoy it so thoroughly quite like Tommy Houston. You could sit for hour after hour listening to Houston spin a tale, and the time would go by just like ... that.

Jason Keller

• Setting the record
• By the Numbers
• Countdown to 418
• 10 Questions
• Career Busch Stats

Years ago, Houston spun Tommy Ellis out of the lead on the last lap at Indianapolis Raceway Park. Afterward, Ellis helped tear down Houston's pit stall. Literally. According to legend, Ellis was looking for a match. Or a lighter. Whatever. He was really gonna make things interesting and set the whole danged place on fire.

As Houston describes the scene, he laughs harder and harder. You do, too. When Houston is on his game, and he's always on his game, there is no better interview in all of motorsports.

That said, Houston is just one race away from being surpassed for most Busch Series starts. He has held the mark since April 5, 1988, when Dale Jarrett missed an event at Langley, Va. Both drivers had run the first 184 races in the division's history, and Houston would go on to make the starting grid for its first 360.

Not until March 5, 1994, when Houston failed to qualify at Richmond, did a Busch Series event go off without Houston in the field. Keller tied Houston's mark of 417 career starts at Kansas and he'll attempt to pass it at Lowe's Motor Speedway.

"Yeah ... it's gonna happen and I'm happy for him," Houston said of Keller's breaking the Busch Series start record. "We've still got a pretty respectable record. Kevin Harvick's gonna break Mark Martin's all-time win record. He's quite a few races from it, but that's what [records] are there for, to be broken. As time rolls on, that's progress."

Houston, who today owns rental property at Holden Beach, N.C., as well as doing some welding and pit-cart construction at his Hickory, N.C. shop, is part of a hard-core racing family. He raced, and so did his brother, Hal. And Hal is the father of Teresa Earnhardt. All of Tommy and Martha Houston's three sons -- Scott, Andy and Marty -- were involved in Tommy's race teams to one extent or another, and Andy and Marty would go on to purse driving careers themselves.

Andy ran 22 Cup races for car owner Cal Wells between 2000-2001 and has more than 120 Craftsman Truck Series starts to his credit. He's currently a spotter for the Morgan-Dollar Motorsports truck operation. Marty also raced Busch and Trucks, and today works in research and development for Gillett-Evernham Motorsports.

Scott served as his father's crew chief in the latter stages of his career, and now works for Charlotte-based Multi-Shifter, which manufactures battery handling equipment.

Tommy and Martha have six grandchildren, three boys and three girls, all under age 10.

"It's like ants or something ... they all head in a different direction," Houston said, again with a laugh. "A couple of them want to hang out in the shop. A couple of them want to hang out here at the house with Martha. A couple of them want to hang in the pool and swim. They're just all over the place. We love 'em. They're just precious to us."

As many stories as Houston could tell, that many and more could be told about him. One longtime denizen of the Busch Series garage points out that Houston was prone to ... ahem, cough ... stretch the rules a little bit.

Or a lot.

"If he denies it, he's lying," the snitch said with a grin.

Houston's response is simple. Don't single him out. If he did fudge under the hood here and there, others in the garage were doing so as well. Asked who had the most legal car back in the day, Houston said, "Probably somebody that wasn't winning races. That's exactly who it was."

After running his last Busch Series race in 1996, Houston missed the sport "for about five years." He qualified a truck at Las Vegas in 1999, and realized he hadn't lost anything as far as his ability went. His departure from the sport was more than that. It was brought on by the economic realities of the new NASCAR.

"When I got in that truck and took off, it was like I had raced last week," Houston said. "I hadn't lost nothing. It was just an economical fact that we couldn't continue with the kind of dollars that we had. Me getting to the age I was, it just didn't make any sense. That's why we decided to do something different."