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.

"This is probably more home in a way," Gordon said. "I have a lot of family here and friends I grew up with from elementary school. I didn't race here. Most of the friends I have around here are friends I went to school with. To me, truly more of my memories of growing up are here. My memories of racing and getting to that next level are Indiana. So it's just different. It's hard to really describe how the differences are. I think it's because I get to see my cousins and my dad and a lot of different friends. I don't have family in Indiana."

Proud papa

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Gordon may have become a racer in Indiana -- after all, that's where he started to appear on television and dominate the U.S. Auto Club ranks -- but his career in racing truly began in Vallejo, from those first rough laps made around the fairgrounds parking lot. He eventually graduated to the indoor events held inside the fairgrounds' exposition hall, a field house with an arched roof, rows of windows and strange 1960s-style murals of eyes painted in the exterior corners.

Inside, low lights hang from the high ceiling, and the ovular path taken by the quarter midget cars is worn into the gray asphalt floor. It's easy to imagine the place as it was when Gordon raced there -- bleachers in the corners, hay bales ringing the temporary racetrack, the double doors flung open and center posts removed so cars could be pushed to and from the garage area outside. They still hold the event every year, and rumor has it that Gordon digs into his own pockets to pay for trophies.

"If he were here, I'm sure he'd recognize it right away," said Fred Cavalli, guest safety supervisor for the fairgrounds, and a man well aware of Gordon's history with the place.

From Vallejo, Gordon branched out. His first race was on a racetrack in Rio Linda, about 50 miles away. He traveled east to Sacramento, south to Sunnyvale and on to Colorado and Michigan as he grew older and his talent blossomed. Some of those places are disappearing -- the track in Sunnyvale is gone, and the venue in Rio Linda is closing after this season. It's the same thing that happened to the old Vallejo racetrack that Bickford once attended, a place that was razed and converted into a housing development. When he last visited the property a year ago, an old gatepost was all that remained of the facility.

"Vallejo is not a racing town," Bickford said, and that much seems obvious. These days the only racetrack is for horses, and the best place to go fast is on one of the roller coasters at Six Flags. California's first state capital is a gritty place, the kind of city where you see men standing outside the open door of a downtown tavern before 10 a.m. on a Saturday. Across from the tidy waterfront stand the idle cranes of the old Mare Island Naval Shipyard, shut down as part of a string of military base closures in 1996.

But the city had lost Gordon a decade earlier. He left home at 14 in search of more competitive racing, came back for a little while, and then left Vallejo for good after completing his freshman year of high school. If he wanted to make it in racing, if he wanted to attract the attention of the right people, he had to move east. Had he lived in Vallejo longer, had he become a NASCAR star while still living here, he might have left more of a stamp on the city. Instead there are only traces, like the breezes blowing in from San Pablo Bay.

"I think when you're 14 and you move away, and you've spent much of your time away from town anyway, and the career you're in wasn't really connected to the town you lived in, it's tough," Bickford said. "You live in Indianapolis and drive in the Indianapolis 500, that's a big deal. But if you don't do anything in Vallejo but a few years of school, the roots aren't quite as entrenched as somebody might think."

Once a year there's the Nextel Cup event across the valley in Sonoma, when Gordon's family and friends gather and his Vallejo roots are on display for all to see. But it all begins to fade again after the race is finished, the champagne is sprayed in Victory Lane, and the team transporters begin the long haul back to North Carolina. All that's left is one barren fairgrounds parking lot, a weedy patch of asphalt where it all began.

The opinions expressed are solely those of the writer.