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Authors: Sloane Crosley
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into the heavens, an arena of Babel echoing with the din of a hundred thousand screams. Karen handed over her camera, asking me to snap a few shots of her and Kahne. Side by side astride the ambling F-150, they were like the king and queen of the parade. Karen beamed, her two grand well spent.
When our trip around the track ended in the infield, the MC was already talking up the impending race. "Who thinks we're going to see some retaliation today? What do you think, guys? Are we going to see some retaliation?" He drew out the last word heavy-metal style, enunciating every syllable in a kind of lascivious battle cry.
Ree-tal-ee-ayyy-shun!
Ron Ramsey, the most conservative of the three Republicans then running for governor of Tennessee (during the campaign, he suggested that religious freedoms did not apply to Muslims living in the United States), delivered a plea to the "God-fearing, NASCAR-loving, red-blooded Americans" in attendance. He asked them to vote for him and to spend lots of money at the track. Kahne and the other drivers hopped out of the truck beds and headed to their cars, some of the classier ones stopping to shake hands with the drivers of the F-150s, all employees from nearby Ford dealerships. I went to help Karen down from the truck, reaching over to release the tailgate. She dropped a heavy hand on my shoulder, shunted me aside, and, with surprising nimbleness, swung her body out and over to the ground below, landing with a solid dismount. She walked off, pausing only to look partly over her shoulder and spit out, "I have a truck at home, buddy."
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I watched some of the racing from one of Bristol's 179 skyboxes. At that height, the cars appeared to revolve in a single band of multicolored light. The effect was beautiful, a bit hypnotizing, and abstract. When I spoke to Freddie Hayter, a local who had been to every NASCAR race in Bristol's forty-nine-year history, he said he didn't like the skybox suites. "A race fan needs to be in the middle of the crowd. He needs the sound, the smell. The people in the suites are not true race fans; they're corporate people. That's not a place for someone who has been to ninety-nine races in a row." Hayter was certainly an authority, so I descended to the grandstand, to a spot midway up a section named for Darrell Waltrip, just above turn three.
Officially, Bristol announced that the speedway had fallen 22,000 tickets short of selling out. But that figure was likely far greater. Following the race, a headline in
Sporting News
would ask, "Empty Seats at Bristol a Sign of NASCAR's Apocalypse?" And in the ensuing weeks, almost every track experienced its lowest turnout in years. At the Dover race entire sections of the grandstand were closed off and covered in giant advertising banners. Although some 140,000 fans showed up for July's Brickyard 400, in Indianapolis, twice that number had attended the race three years ago.
The fans who sat in pairs and groups around me stirred a bit when a driver attempted a pass, or they lifted their beers together in a salute and drank each time a favorite driver rounded the track. But only when there was an accident of some sort would they stand up and cheer. While the race was under green, I could
feel
the rumble of the forty-three engines, even from my seat hundreds of feet from the track, and it was far too loud to carry on a conversation. Besides, almost everyone wore headphones, either listening to a radio call of the race or using a scanner to tune in to a team's transmissions. Others, like me, had stuffed foam plugs deep into their ears.
Sitting in the row in front of me, four guys in their late twenties were smoking cigarettes and drinking Bud tall boys, occasionally casting what seemed suspicious glances my way. The one closest to me, with a wispy goatee and greasy black hair, gave me a quick, un-smiling nod. Finally, during a cautionâa car bounced off a wall and two other cars barreled into itâas the race slowed
When our trip around the track ended in the infield, the MC was already talking up the impending race. "Who thinks we're going to see some retaliation today? What do you think, guys? Are we going to see some retaliation?" He drew out the last word heavy-metal style, enunciating every syllable in a kind of lascivious battle cry.
Ree-tal-ee-ayyy-shun!
Ron Ramsey, the most conservative of the three Republicans then running for governor of Tennessee (during the campaign, he suggested that religious freedoms did not apply to Muslims living in the United States), delivered a plea to the "God-fearing, NASCAR-loving, red-blooded Americans" in attendance. He asked them to vote for him and to spend lots of money at the track. Kahne and the other drivers hopped out of the truck beds and headed to their cars, some of the classier ones stopping to shake hands with the drivers of the F-150s, all employees from nearby Ford dealerships. I went to help Karen down from the truck, reaching over to release the tailgate. She dropped a heavy hand on my shoulder, shunted me aside, and, with surprising nimbleness, swung her body out and over to the ground below, landing with a solid dismount. She walked off, pausing only to look partly over her shoulder and spit out, "I have a truck at home, buddy."
Â
I watched some of the racing from one of Bristol's 179 skyboxes. At that height, the cars appeared to revolve in a single band of multicolored light. The effect was beautiful, a bit hypnotizing, and abstract. When I spoke to Freddie Hayter, a local who had been to every NASCAR race in Bristol's forty-nine-year history, he said he didn't like the skybox suites. "A race fan needs to be in the middle of the crowd. He needs the sound, the smell. The people in the suites are not true race fans; they're corporate people. That's not a place for someone who has been to ninety-nine races in a row." Hayter was certainly an authority, so I descended to the grandstand, to a spot midway up a section named for Darrell Waltrip, just above turn three.
Officially, Bristol announced that the speedway had fallen 22,000 tickets short of selling out. But that figure was likely far greater. Following the race, a headline in
Sporting News
would ask, "Empty Seats at Bristol a Sign of NASCAR's Apocalypse?" And in the ensuing weeks, almost every track experienced its lowest turnout in years. At the Dover race entire sections of the grandstand were closed off and covered in giant advertising banners. Although some 140,000 fans showed up for July's Brickyard 400, in Indianapolis, twice that number had attended the race three years ago.
The fans who sat in pairs and groups around me stirred a bit when a driver attempted a pass, or they lifted their beers together in a salute and drank each time a favorite driver rounded the track. But only when there was an accident of some sort would they stand up and cheer. While the race was under green, I could
feel
the rumble of the forty-three engines, even from my seat hundreds of feet from the track, and it was far too loud to carry on a conversation. Besides, almost everyone wore headphones, either listening to a radio call of the race or using a scanner to tune in to a team's transmissions. Others, like me, had stuffed foam plugs deep into their ears.
Sitting in the row in front of me, four guys in their late twenties were smoking cigarettes and drinking Bud tall boys, occasionally casting what seemed suspicious glances my way. The one closest to me, with a wispy goatee and greasy black hair, gave me a quick, un-smiling nod. Finally, during a cautionâa car bounced off a wall and two other cars barreled into itâas the race slowed
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