COUNTY FAIRS AND RACES

(I wrote a couple of posts almost a week ago, but got distracted and didn't get them sent right away.)

As I am sitting here watching the Indy 500 race, it has me thinking about how I first began enjoying car races, which leads me to think about other things.

It all started with county fairs. Dad would take me along to the stock car races at a fair almost every year when I was a kid. Even though we didn't know any of the drivers, it was exciting. After we got a TV in the 1950's, we watched televised races, leading to watching NASCAR races today, and always the Indy 500. After awhile you get to recognize many of the drivers and have some favorites.

When I met my second husband, stock car races became an every Friday night date at a race track 30 miles away. He and his brothers always had to bet 25 cents on each race. They would each pick a car to win and often those cars would end up not finishing the race, but it made things interesting. We always sat between the 4th turn and the finish line, and saw many spectacular accidents there. Thankfully no one was ever seriously hurt, though a few had to make a trip to the hospital to be checked out.

Part of one race night there was a 2-driver race. That meant there were two drivers in one car; one did the steering and the other did the accelerator and brake. That made things interesting! Neither man had complete control, making it difficult. I wonder how much time they had to practice doing that.

Always a part of those Friday night races was sprint car racing. That was new to me and not my favorite as those cars are so loud and had a high pitched whine. Ear plugs were necessary for me as I wanted to keep my hearing! They were exciting though, and the drivers were very competitive. It always amazes me that those drivers survive some of those crashes, when the car is totally demolished.

That was a dirt track so it got quite dusty and we were covered in dust by the time we got home. If it was wet, we often got hit by small pieces of mud that got spun up by the racer's tires. That was not fun. We always sat close to the top of the bleachers, which was as far away from track level as you could get, so those mud clumps traveled quite a distance.

Enough of racing. I will talk about county fairs in another post.