In the Blink of an Eye Read online

  One particular day, I wasn’t too happy about making the trip. I didn’t want to go at all. And I whined all the way to Henderson.

  My friends were having a big bicycle race that day, and I was missing it. On the way back, I told my mom she had ruined my whole day. Mom reminds me of that even now and says that I was being a little bit dramatic. That could be true. When we spend time together these days and I get ready to leave, Mom will still sometimes say: “See you soon. Don’t let anybody ruin your day.” We get a good laugh out of that one.

  I always admired the way my mom loved, respected, and supported Dad. I mean, life wasn’t easy for either of them. Her role in the family—working a job, being home to take care of us, cooking, cleaning—was tough. I appreciated the strength of character she had. I don’t think her day-to-day life was much fun back then. But she always found ways to give each of us the attention we craved.

  Dad was working hard and climbing the ladder at Pepsi. He’d get to the plant at five-thirty in the morning to make sure all the trucks were loaded up and ready to go. By the time he got home at six each night he was pretty well worn out. There wasn’t any playing pitch and catch with him in the evenings. He was about done for the day.

  After working all week, Dad looked forward to the weekend. Sometimes those weekends included going off to the races with Darrell. I was just a little boy when Darrell started racing in NASCAR. So I never got to make any of those guy trips. I’d be stuck at home with Momma.

  Man, that killed me!

  I wanted to be at the races too. I didn’t understand that I was just a kid and didn’t belong on the road with the guys. I was already a huge fan of the sport. Or as much of one as I could be, considering my favorite sport wasn’t on TV hardly at all. Occasionally, you could catch a few laps of NASCAR action on ABC’s Wide World of Sports. They would squeeze a race in between sumo wrestling and the World Ping-Pong Championships. But that was about it. And as you kids may have heard, we didn’t have the Internet back then.

  But I did get to go to the races some. And what I saw there made me fall in love with NASCAR.

  We used to get Stock Car Racing magazine delivered to the house every month. As soon as Dad was done reading, he would let me have the magazine. I couldn’t wait to get my hands on it. Every month, there was a poster of a driver and his car in the center of the magazine. I pulled those posters out and hung them on my wall. All of them. Richard Petty, David Pearson, the Allisons, Cale Yarborough. There was even one of my hero, my brother Darrell. But I was mostly only able to see DW race on the local track. What I wanted more than anything was to see my brother racing against the stars of NASCAR.

  With Dad off at the races and Mom knowing how badly I wanted to be there too, she cut a deal with me. If I didn’t complain too much about being stuck at home with her, she would take me to listen to the races on the radio. Like I said, back in the seventies there wasn’t a whole lot of NASCAR racing on TV. But there was one way for us to follow how Darrell was doing. A radio station in Clarksville, Tennessee, carried the races every weekend. We couldn’t pick it up in Owensboro. So Mom and I would get in the car and drive down the road toward Tennessee. When we could pick up the signal from that station, we’d pull over and listen to the race.

  Can you imagine? Driving an hour so we could listen to a race on the radio? With your mom? Things have changed quite dramatically since then. If I told Macy that’s what we were going to do one Sunday afternoon, she would be like, “Yeah, right, Dad.” But I thought it was so cool. Mom knew how much that meant to me. And other than a little gas, it was probably a cheap way to entertain a little kid on a Sunday afternoon.

  One of the first things I recall doing with my dad, just him and me, was on Sunday mornings when I was eleven or twelve. We didn’t go to church much. But Dad and I started going to McDonald’s. When we first began doing that, we’d each get an Egg McMuffin. And when we were finished, we’d both still be hungry. So Dad got us each another one. We both ate the second one, but that was too much. So we started ordering just three—one for each of us and we’d split the third one. Dad would cut it right down the middle with a plastic Mickey D’s knife.

  That may not sound like much. They were just Egg McMuffins. But those Sunday-morning breakfasts were the first thing I remember that my dad and I ever shared.

  He seemed to like it too. Those trips to McDonald’s became a Sunday-morning ritual for the two of us.

  God bless Ronald and that aggravating Hamburglar too! We were sharing more than a breakfast sandwich. We were sharing stories about my life. We’d talk about school and racing and just normal stuff. For some reason, we never talked about girls, though. A wife and two kids later, I’m still waiting for the birds-and-bees story to be told to me.

  But for the first time, I felt a real connection with my dad. I was growing up. We found some things in common. He was noticing me. And I loved the attention.

  CHAPTER 2

  HEADED SOUTH

  I was like most little kids in this way: I hated getting up in the morning. Most every day of the week was about the same. Up crazy early. Fight for time in the bathroom. Head out the door with a crappy attitude, destined for another boring day of school. I didn’t know much, but I knew one thing. I didn’t like any of that routine. Those days always seemed to go from bad to worse.

  But one Wednesday was different from all the other days of the year. It came in mid-February. That Wednesday, I couldn’t wait to get the day started. Instead of me chasing the number 10 bus down Greenbriar Street, I was out at the corner in plenty of time, the first one there.

  The sooner I was on the bus, the sooner the school day would start and the sooner lunchtime would arrive. That’s how I had it figured. On that particular Wednesday, I wouldn’t be staring at a plastic lunch tray with mystery meat and two sides in the Stanley Elementary School cafeteria. I’d be looking for Mom and Dad in the hallway outside my classroom, our four-door Chevy Caprice Classic loaded and idling at the curb out front.

  When the lunch bell rang, Mom and Dad were there and ready to go. “I’ll bring y’all back some pictures of the cars,” I’d tell the other kids. With that, I was down the hall and out the door. We jumped in the car and took off toward Daytona Beach, Florida.

  Forget the fact that I was getting out of school for a few days. It was where we were going that was the best part. We were heading to the Daytona 500, the annual kickoff to the NASCAR season, what I considered to be heaven on earth. And us Waltrips weren’t your average, ordinary fans. One of us was in the race. Not only was my brother DW competing, he would be contending too.

  It was about a twelve-hour drive south from Owensboro to racing’s holy land. Dad would drive straight through the night. The ride was a bit of a challenge for a little kid, to say the least. We listened to whatever Dad wanted to hear on the radio, and he smoked a lot. Heck, Mom would smoke too, and she didn’t even smoke. I guess she thought, “If you can’t beat ’em . . .” I just rode in the back and complained. A lot.

  What else did I have to do? I didn’t have anybody to play with. My brothers and sisters didn’t make this trip. It was just me in the back. And man, did my parents get on my nerves. It was cold outside and Dad would rarely crack a window. With all the smoke, I could barely see where we were going. About the time he would finish one cigarette, he’d light up another.

  And he had this Roy Clark 8-track tape that I hated. At first. The more I heard it, the more it grew on me. There was one particular song I loved to hear. It was called “I Never Picked Cotton.”

  I never picked cotton,

  But my mother did and my brother did

  Sorry. I digress. Hope you enjoyed that sweet Roy Clark tune.

  Anything to pass the time on a smoky ride to Daytona. You know it was a long way down there if I memorized the lyrics to Roy’s cotton-picking song. And I haven’t forgotten them yet.

  Dad was a trouper though. Between his cigarettes and coffee, he never needed to rest.
With just one stop for gas, eating the sandwiches Momma packed, we made really good time. We hit Daytona early Thursday morning, checked into the hotel, and got a couple of hours of sleep. By seven A.M. we were heading downstairs for breakfast.

  By the time we sat down for some bacon and eggs, I could already feel it. Daytona was NASCAR. This town was all about racing.

  The Daytona Beach News-Journal was full of articles about the 500 and full-color photos of the racing action and the drivers. Pictures of race cars in a newspaper! How cool was that? Back home there was never a picture of a race car in our newspaper. I only got that once a month when Dad’s magazine would show up.

  And Thursday was the best day to get to town. Speedweek was wide open. The cars had been on the track for a few days by then. They’d be lined up and ready for the qualifying races that afternoon. Dad never wanted to miss the twin 125-mile qualifying races, and I didn’t either. He would always say those races were the best ones of the week.

  After we got done eating, it was time to head to the racetrack, my favorite place to be. That long, smoke-filled drive on Wednesday didn’t matter anymore. In fact, it was totally worth it. Plus that ride was probably the reason I never started smoking, which is a bonus.

  It’s interesting, looking back to those races in the mid-1970s. I was just a kid who loved cars. Loved being in Daytona, dreaming of racing on those famous high banks one day. Not only racing on them but winning on them. Back then, I was already dreaming of being out there.

  One thing was obvious: You can’t race if you don’t qualify. That made sense to me. And you could tell by the way those boys raced on Thursday, it made sense to them too. These races were exciting and action-packed. That made them fan favorites. But they also were pressure cookers for the teams and the drivers.

  It was about a fifteen-minute ride from the hotel to the racetrack. And the whole way, I thought about driving through Daytona’s famous tunnel. To get to the Speedway infield, you had to go through a tunnel that went under turn four. To me, that tunnel separated this special place from all that was going on in the real world. I was a boy separated from racing until I went through that tunnel. When I got through there, I would be right where I wanted to be.

  Outside the tunnel is where most of the fans were, up in the grandstand. There were some through the tunnel. They had their campers there and were enjoying the Daytona experience. They were tailgating. But I don’t think we called it that back then. I wasn’t stopping in the infield. But I was heading toward the pit area. I remember thinking, I’m driving through the same tunnel Richard Petty had driven through. And when I popped out the other side, there they were, those famous Daytona high banks. They were so cool to me. I was fascinated by them. Most kids didn’t get it. I tried to explain the Daytona turns to my friends. They just looked at me funny. I would say, “They’re special turns, y’all.” I’d tell them those turns were so steep and tall, I didn’t even see how a car could stay up there.

  That was probably a pretty smart thing for a kid to question. I am still amazed about that place even today. I can’t imagine the faces of people when Bill France, who built Daytona, said, “I’m going to bank the turns at thirty-one degrees. They’re gonna be about three stories tall.”

  Someone check his temperature, I’m sure people thought.

  There wasn’t another place like Daytona in the whole world. The vision that man had to have in order to build something so massive, so unique, so ahead of his time, is just incredible. It’s incomprehensible to me still. He was a genius. The track opened in 1959 and is still the world center of racing today. I bet Mr. France would tell people back then, “Check out the turns. Walk up the banks if you want. But you’ll need to take your shoes off.”

  Or how would you like to have been the dude running the paving machine? He probably said, “You want me to do what?”

  It was enough to send my mind into overdrive. Because things were about to get even better. As much as I loved looking at the track, seeing those cars race around the high banks really took my breath away.

  So fast, so close to each other—what a thrill!

  And right there in the middle of all that action was my brother Darrell, doing exactly what I’d decided I wanted to do.

  CHAPTER 3

  COOL BROTHER

  I loved and admired my brother Darrell. I wanted to be just like him. I decided I was going to be a race-car driver too. I thought, “Man, he’s living the dream! He is racing cars against Richard Petty. And that’s all he does. That’s his job. How cool would that be?” That’s all I thought about. I wanted to do just what my brother was doing. And I was ready to start.

  When Darrell was about my age, late eleven or early twelve, he started racing go-karts. That’s what I needed to do. The first step was getting my hands on one of those babies.

  Getting started racing was going to be tough for me. It took money to race, even go-karts, and I didn’t have any to speak of. I mowed yards and babysat my niece and nephew some. But like most kids, I spent that money on candy or going to the arcade. So I needed some help. Actually, a lot of help.

  It looked to me like Darrell had plenty of money. He could help. When Darrell and his wife, Stevie, would come back to Kentucky, which wasn’t very often, they always had a new car. And Darrell was a sharp dresser. Plus, Stevie’s parents were rich. We sort of lived on the opposite sides of town. And their end of town was much more, let’s say, comfortable. Darrell and Stevie had left Owensboro and moved to Tennessee when they married so Darrell could be closer to the racing action. I didn’t spend much time around him. No brotherly mentoring. No talks about girls or school or life. No playing ball in the schoolyard together. We didn’t have a relationship. I didn’t get to know him until we were both adults.

  One thing I did know quite well was Darrell’s shadow. Darrell was about all anyone around town talked about. And at home too. His shadow had kept me mostly hidden from my dad. Or at least my desire to become a racer was hidden. He didn’t pay any attention to how serious I was about getting my career started. Of course, I was eleven. Not many eleven-year-olds are serious about much.

  But I was. I was determined to race. The only thing I had to race, though, was my bike. I used to convince all my friends that it would be fun to run a one-hundred-lap bike race around the playground instead of just a lap or two like most kids did. That was more like a drag race, not a NASCAR race. I had a Schwinn, and it was sweet! I remember racing that bike and wanting to win every time. But how was I going to get from that Schwinn to those high banks of Daytona? That’s what I had to figure out.

  Dilemma: Mom and Dad had heard me say repeatedly that I wanted to be a race-car driver. But they just shrugged it off. Their sentiment was, “Yeah, we know you do. So does every other kid in this town. They all want to do what your brother is doing. Get over it and go ride your bike.”

  Also, my problems getting a kart and going racing were more complicated than just a lack of cash. Who would work on the kart? I didn’t know how to do that. Dad did, but he was working his butt off at Pepsi. And Mom’s job at the grocery store was just to fill in the gaps between Dad’s checks and all the bills that come in when you’re raising a family. But at the time, I didn’t really have a clue. I was just a kid. I used to tell Mom, “Just write a check. I know you have some. I saw ’em in your purse.” Don’t be looking in your mom’s purse, kids. It’ll just cause problems.

  I just wanted to race. But how?

  It looked like I was going to have to lob a call in to brother Darrell. I was fairly certain I knew how that would go, but I had to give it a try. I thought he would say no. I just hoped he wouldn’t be mean to me about it and tell me to go ride my bike like my dad had. Maybe if Darrell wouldn’t come up with the cash for the kart, he would at least come up with some direction how to get started. So I mustered up the courage to call Big Brother and see what I’d get for an answer. It wasn’t easy. I hardly knew Darrell. And as I suspected, that call didn’t go
over very well with him.

  “Hey, Darrell,” I started. “Wouldn’t it be cool if there was another Waltrip racing in NASCAR?”

  “Uh,” he said, “what do you want?”

  “I want to be a race-car driver,” I told him, a statement I’m sure Darrell had used many times when he was young and people asked about his dream. “I need a go-kart to get started. Can you help your little brother out?”

  I used the little-brother reference to play to his sentimental side. Smart, huh? Then I continued: “Oh, and I will probably need some spare parts and some tires and other stuff too.”

  I can hear the words he used that day, close to forty years ago, as if he said them yesterday. “You’re wasting your time, Mikey,” he said. “You just don’t understand how much road there is between Owensboro and Daytona.”

  He was wrong there. Actually, I did. I also understood clearly how many cigarettes Dad could smoke on that road.

  Darrell was speaking figuratively, of course. But there was nothing figurative about his answer: no.

  He continued: “All you’re gonna do is waste a lot of your time and other people’s money. You need to concentrate on school. Focus your energy on that. Making it in NASCAR is a one-in-a-million shot.”

  Huh? One in a million? So you’re saying I got a shot?

  But seriously, those were words no little kid wanted to hear from his hero about his dream.

  I totally understand it today. It is such a huge commitment to own a race team. Believe me, I know. Even if you’re just talking about a go-kart team. Plus, I’m sure Darrell knew Dad wouldn’t want any part of this. He’d been through it all with Darrell and knew what a huge time-and-money suck racing was.

  Way before I was born, when Dad had been promoted at the Pepsi plant and moved up from loading and driving trucks to route manager, Big Brother had convinced Dad to buy him a go-kart. Daddy was an accomplished shade-tree mechanic. Or a “jack of all trades, master of none,” Dad would say. I’m sure DW convinced Dad it would be a lot of fun. Darrell also told Dad he would mow people’s grass every day to help pay for the kart. Dad bought that story and then a go-kart—and DW was in business. Either Darrell was a better salesman than I was or yard-mowing paid a lot more back then. Hmm. But either way, they got a go-kart, and Darrell needed to learn how to drive it. So they hauled it to a big, empty parking lot there in town, and Darrell took off.