Only traces of past linger in Gordon's hometown in Cali

VALLEJO, Calif. -- It's nothing more than a barren parking lot, overgrown with weeds, dotted by the occasional power pole or garbage bin. A hotel and the roller coasters of a nearby amusement park loom in the distance. But it was here -- or close to here -- where 31 years ago, John Bickford took a shovel and chipped a rough oval out of the underbrush so his stepson could take a few laps in a racecar.

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It was a tiny thing, a 1955 model quarter midget that Bickford had discovered inside someone's barn in nearby Napa, but Jeff Gordon took to it right away. Even at 5 years old, the idea of going fast seemed fun and exciting. So Bickford brought him out to the wide expanse of the Solano County Fairgrounds, a moonscape of open parking areas and chain-link fences, and one of the greatest careers in American motorsports history was born.

Not that you'd ever know it. There is a No. 24 show car inside a downtown museum, and there are always a passel of friends and relatives at Infineon Raceway when the Nextel Cup circuit visits the road course 13 miles away. But there's no sign at the city limits welcoming visitors to Gordon's birthplace, hardly anything at all identifying Vallejo as the four-time NASCAR champion's hometown.

What a contrast that is to tiny Pittsboro, Ind., the burg outside of Indianapolis that Gordon moved to at 14 in the hopes of furthering his racing career. Pittsboro has a road and an Interstate overpass named for its favorite son. The town has held parades for him on his birthday. Walking through the tiny downtown area, it's easy to bump into someone who attended high school with him, or find a business with his photos on the wall.

That's not the case in Vallejo, a city of 120,000 lingering in the netherworld between wine country and the San Francisco Bay area, where the only indication of any pro-24 favoritism is a handmade sign dangling from an overpass proclaiming "Welcome Jeff Gordon -- Everyone Else Go Home!" The place never embraced Gordon, Bickford said, until after he became successful. Even now, that's not easy to see.

"Pittsboro is a small town, he went to high school there, went to the prom, went to graduation, and he was racing all over the place right there close to Pittsboro," Bickford said. "Right there six miles away was Indianapolis Raceway Park, and he raced on TV and the kids would see him and they'd talk at school. They'd go to the different dirt-track races he won, and he'd see them at school the next day. It was a town that really got behind him. I mean, heck, they named a street after him, they've got an overpass on Interstate 74, and all that stuff. He's a big deal to them. It's just different."

It's as if Pittsboro and Vallejo offer two very different parts of Gordon's history, one professional and one private. Returning to Northern California means a trip to the road course where Gordon has won five of the last nine years, and plenty of familiar faces. His biological father lives in the area, as do some cousins who work in law enforcement. Bickford, a Napa native, has family in the region including his brother Tom, who is president of a quarter midget racing association based in Sacramento. (Continued)