Does "Short Track" Mean "Pay Back"? 10/24/2014 |
I bid
you welcome gentle readers, and a warm welcome goes out as well to our assigned
reader of all things NASCAR. Are you really seated comfortably in the beautiful
Fan and Media Espionage Center, or are you perhaps earning brownie points in
one of Charlotte’s houses of detention by scanning documents for any derogatory
statements made by irreverent scribes denouncing anyone named France? Wherever
this morning finds you, we do hope your stay is a pleasant one.
And... this
week, we're off to Pretty Little Martinsville, this lady's all-time favorite
track. Good morning Clay, and thanks for having us all back another time to the
best little track by a railroad track. It's been a long time... almost 20
years... since I've visited my little jewel, nestled cozily just under the Blue
Ridge Mountains on Highway 220 in Martinsville, Virginia. Much as it is here in
Georgia, autumn should be in full Technicolor display about now and the far-out
forecast for the weekend is for perfect racing weather.
For any
fans that are new to NASCAR this year, forget everything you saw and heard last
week at the Alabama Demolition Derby. If you were at Talladega, you could only
see parts of the race... or conversely, parts of the wrecks... because that
track comes in the giant economy size, 2.66-miles around with banking that
seemingly goes straight up and down, perpendicular to the ground below.
The
upcoming race is at Martinsville, the antithesis of Talladega. The latter is
the largest track on the NASCAR circuit, while pretty little Martinsville is
the smallest. I've always seen their proximity on the schedule as my reward for
surviving Talladega without suffering cardiac arrest. Come Sunday, you'll be
seeing stock car racing as it was intended to be, with 43 snarling mechanical
beasts trapped in the confines of a track only .526-miles
around, and flatter than a stomped-on ant. Despite the best efforts of man and
machine, she remains pretty much a one-groove little lady, so passing is
accomplished compliments of the chrome horn, and it happens a lot. Talladega
may have "big ones", but Martinsville has lots and lots of
"little ones", letting quantity substitute for size. You can have a
hundred pennies, or you can have a dollar. It's all the same, but you'll never
get that dollar to jingle, so the pennies are much more fun!
Remember
all the fuss and furor back at Charlotte a couple of weeks ago that ended up
with everyone mad at someone and a few mad at everyone? Well gentle readers, do
keep some of that in mind. Last week at the giant track in Talladega, it would
not have been a great idea to wreck the entire field at over 200mph in an
effort to deliver a message to someone you felt offended you the week before.
But this week... this is Martinsville... and it's a well-known and accepted
tradition that short track equals payback.
NASCAR
will undoubtedly tell you that there is no such thing as payback, and even if
there is, they frown upon it mightily and all offenders will be summarily
boiled in oil... or put on double-secret NASCAR probation for the rest of their
mortal lives. Don't buy it! They love it! They survive on it! Check the
highlight films you'll be seeing as the race draws nearer. All you'll see are
wrecks, and most every one is payback for something that happened last week,
last month or even last year. Racecar drivers are like elephants; they have
long memories, and payback is the reason God made short tracks.
Martinsville,
with her tiny size and odd concrete corners, provides the best chance to "tweak"
the foe and get away Scot-free, as the small wrecks and spins come so
frequently that it's hard to prove mal-intent on anyone's part. It's just
"short-trackin'."This scribe is never one
that watches a race... any race... just to see the wrecks, but just as at last
week's host track, they will happen at Martinsville; they always do and always
have. The huge difference is that with today's stock cars, equipped with
numerous safety devices and running on tracks buffered by the life-saving SAFER
barriers, the wrecks, at least when they come at the much slower speed of a
track the size of Martinsville, are no longer feared but can be rather comical
at times.
Uh-uh, before someone
drags this out from behind the sofa, I'm well aware that it was here at
Martinsville that we lost 9-time Modified Champion and NASCAR Hall of Famer,
Richie Evans, but that was many years before SAFER barriers or HANS devices were
even ideas, and it happened in an open-wheel modified car, not an enclosed
capsule stock car. Richie, like me, was a New York State home boy and we remain
proud to this day of all he accomplished. May he rest in peace.
But despite having claimed Richie, Martinsville today is seen as a safe, sane
and tame little bull ring that drivers either love or hate, with no feelings
in-between. That is usually the description of a great track for racing.
Well
now, would you just look at that! There is not one word in the preceding text
about the "Chase", about "Grids", about
"Brackets", about "Contenders", about
"Eliminators", about "Final Four" or any other stick and
ball term currently being twisted in an effort to make it fit the sport of stock car racing. We that
love stock car racing are proud of what it is and equally proud of its
simplicity. We don't need the NFL, NBA, NHL, PGA, PBA,
WWE or any of the rest of alphabet soup to describe our sport. It's RACING! He
who gets there first, wins! Racing on a short track... it just doesn't get any
better than that, especially when that short track is Martinsville! Let's go racin'!
Time now
for our Classic Country Closeout, and this week, since we race at one of
NASCAR's original tracks... the ones that saw NASCAR-sanctioned stock cars race
there back in 1949... I thought I'd take you back to the really early days of
Classic Country, say to the 1920s and 1930s perhaps. Some time back, mention was made of a singer
named Vernon Dalhart, one of the original recording artists of the Country
genre. Here's a sampling of Vernon in the very early days, singing his version
of "The Big Rock Candy
Mountain."
It
doesn't even embarrass me to tell you that he was never at the top of my
favorites list, but that was the way most music reproduced back in the 1920s on
that new-fangled invention, the Victrola. We've come
a long way Baby!
Next,
let's hear something from one of the most famous Country recording groups of
the era, the Carter Family... A.P., Mother Maybelle
and Sarah were the original members. Younger sisters joined later, as age and
talent permitted. This was one of their biggest hits. Please enjoy a 1935
version of "Can the Circle Be
Unbroken."
Another
"great" of that era was the "Singing Brakeman" also known
as the "Mississippi Blue Yodeler", Jimmie Rodgers. This is one of his
saddest, but I've always loved listening to it, both by Jimmie, done here in 1929,
and later by Hank Snow, who did his best to recreate every song ever sung by
Rodgers, his life-long hero. This is "Hobo
Bill's Last Ride." Please enjoy...
I could
play and listen to recordings from this era for something nigh on to forever.
These were the songs that still lingered on into the early years of my life,
and there are so very many treasures among them. In our journey back through
time, we can't overlook the undisputed King of Country Music, Roy Acuff. I suspect this one may have crept up into the 1940s,
but it most certainly was Roy's biggest hit and the song he'll be forever
remembered by. Here is Roy Acuff singing "Wabash Cannonball."
~
PattyKay