A Voice For The Fans ~ Money Spoke "Loudon" Clear 7/08/2014 |
I bid
you welcome gentle readers, and a warm and sincere
welcome as well to our assigned NASCAR reader for today, somewhere within the
confines of the Fan and Media Espionage Center in beautiful Charlotte, North
Carolina. I do hope your stay with us is a pleasant one.
Usually,
I manage to slip into my columns somewhere the fact that we are dealing with
exactly that... facts. Not today! Today, as I do right around this time every
year, I'll be expressing my depressing opinion of the track on which we'll race
come next weekend.
New
Hampshire International Speedway, as it was known "back in the day",
originally was owned and operated by Bob Bahre and his son, Gary Bahre, though I
believe most of the day to day operations were handled by Bob, with Gary
remaining in the background. Bob's brother Dick, one half of Bahari Racing along with Chuck Rider, also helped build the
track.
Ground
was broken in Loudon NH in 1989, with the track completed for racing in 1990.
For three years, it hosted local racing and the NASCAR Busch Series, and
Winston Cup came calling in September of 1993. For
anyone not named Rusty Wallace, the track provided an instant cure for
insomnia, being flatter than a Mesa top and totally ill-suited for stock car
racing... in this scribe's humble opinion.
From
1993 through 1996, NHIS retained a single date on the Cup schedule, but that
would change with Bob Bahre striking a deal with Mike Staley, son of North
Wilkesboro builder and half-owner, Enoch Staley to
purchase half of that historic old track and take one of her dates for a second
race at his track in Loudon. As noted in an article presented here last
September, the
other half of North Wilkesboro was purchased from the other half-owner, Jack
Combs, surviving brother of original half-owner Charlie Combs. Immediately, new
owner, Bruton Smith, took the second date for his Texas track and North
Wilkesboro Speedway was no more. At the time, NASCAR claimed absolutely no
responsibility for any of those shenanigans, saying their corporate hands were
tied. I called BS then and I'm still calling it today. We all know who controls
the racing in the stock car world, and we likewise know that nothing...
absolutely nothing... occurs without the express blessing of the sanctioning body
we know as NASCAR.
And so it
was that from 1997 until present day, that flat mile in Loudon New Hampshire
has enjoyed 2 races each year on the Cup circuit. Well, perhaps enjoyed is not
quite the correct word. On May 12, 2000, word came to the racing world that the
heir to racing's royal family, young
Adam Petty, first born son of Kyle and Pattie Petty, grandson of
"King" Richard Petty and great grandson of pioneer NASCAR racer Lee
Petty, had been killed in a crash while practicing for a Busch race at New
Hampshire International Speedway. The crash was blamed on a stuck throttle.
On this
coming Thursday, July 10, Adam would have turned 34 years of age.
A scant
two months later, on July 7, 2000, word again came to the racing world that
there had been another death at NHIS, this time young Kenny Irwin, while
practicing for the upcoming Cup race that weekend. Kenny was 30 years old. The
crash was blamed on a stuck throttle.
When
September of 2000 rolled around, NASCAR had found the "perfect"
solution to problems on that one-mile flat track. They issued restrictor plates
for the cars and insisted they be used for "safety's sake." Well,
gentle readers, if racing had been boring and lacked passing at Loudon in the
past, that race on September 17 went above and beyond boring,
with Jeff Burton taking the pole and leading all 300 tedious laps of probably the
most uninteresting parade in the history of racing.
Allow me
to insert an interesting tidbit regarding that race. It was there at NHIS and
about that race that Dale Earnhardt uttered that famous quote now consistently
attributed to Talladega... "Don't
come here and grumble about going too fast. Get out of the racecar if you've
got feathers on your legs or butt. Put a kerosene-soaked rag around your ankles
so the ants won't climb up there and eat your candy ass." He may have
said it at Talladega too; it's a great line... but it was intended to taunt
Bill France Jr. for thinking restrictor plates would somehow cure what ailed
NHIS.
Isn't it
amazing that after the death of that man, Dale Earnhardt, on February 18, 2001,
folks started listening and acting rather than issuing Band-aids for an
amputation? Who would have thought that SAFER Barriers and a HANS Device would
prove to be the cure for stuck throttles?
In 2008,
Bruton Smith and Bob Bahre spoke to each other just long enough for Bahre to sell the track in Loudon to Smith, who immediately
changed the name to New Hampshire Motor Speedway. You see, it is of great
importance to Bruton that the "M" be in his track names because his
corporation, SMI (Speedway Motorsports Inc.) is the first three letters of his
last name, Smith. Vanity, thy name is Bruton!
Once,
many years back, I referred to the track at Loudon as a "Killer
track." I was promptly and perhaps properly stoned by a close friend,
saying that the track itself bore no blame and it was "unfair" of me
to suggest otherwise. Yeah, sure... OK. Because of this track, two young men...
men full of promise for a bright future, and one grand old track... the
"Granddaddy of the short tracks", as she was known, are all dead and
gone forever. You pick the word that best describes that.
And with
that... it's time for our Classic Country Closeout, gentle readers, and for
your listening pleasure I've chosen a pair of songs in which one exists solely
as the answer to the other. The first song is one with a murky past, as the
tune is traceable back to circa 1908 and probably even back into the 19th
century. The words, or parts of them, have been found in several other songs,
but the currently known song was first recorded by Lead Belly, in 1933. Even I
wasn't around then, but the song became a smash hit for several different
artists in 1950, when for weeks on end, the airways were filled with the
strains of "Good Night Irene."
So long did it remain atop the charts that folks started wishing she'd just
take a pill and go to bed!
This version,
one of the more popular of thousands, is by Red Foley and Ernest Tubb. Please
enjoy:
The
second song is one we usually refer to as an "answer song", though in
this case, the answer was 4 years in coming. Perhaps the artist thought it best
to let the craze die down before offering, "Wake
Up Irene." When Hank Thompson first sang "Wild Side of Life", he had no
idea that his song would generate such a huge "answer song" for Miss
Kitty Wells and her "It Wasn't God
Who Made Honky-Tonk Angels." His answer to Irene didn't become that
sort of hit, but it did OK for Hank and I've always loved it. Here then is Hank
Thompson, with "Wake Up Irene." Please enjoy:
Be well
gentle readers, and remember to keep smiling. It looks so good on you!
~ PattyKay