KEEPING IT IN THE ROAD /-\ BRISTOL

bristol 17march2012

picture thanks to nascar website

 

I drove to Glade Creek today to see the Bristol race at Justin and Crystal's. I stopped at the grocery store and bought three pizzas and some potato chips. Vada and Melvin would be there too. Just before I arrived, maybe three miles before I reached the house, fog had set in. It wasn't bad. I thought nothing of it. Later, however, driving home at 9:30 in the dark, the fog was still around. I decided to take Hwy 18 because it has yellow reflectors in the centerline that help on a foggy night. And I didn't know if the fog might be localized or general over the whole county. It was everywhere. A year or so ago I was given a GPS device for the dashboard of the car, which I took for a novelty at the time, given that I seldom go anywhere that I don't know where it is. I found on the drive home tonight the GPS helped tremendously in fog so thick I could only see two car-lengths ahead. I drove between 25 and 35, only a few other cars on the road, none behind me. I could see on the GPS the curves ahead. This is the greatest advantage I've found for it. Sometimes I just use it for the fun of it. Times like tonight I rely on it like it is a device that really does make driving better. I can tell when the road will go straight for awhile and it will tell me where to turn when I can't see the stop sign or the intersection.

 

All the way home, 19 miles, I was a little disconcerted, driving quite a lot slower than usual, so distances between points I recognized seemed quite a lot farther than usual. That was the most disconcerting aspect of the drive. Anticipating the next curve to the right or left, it taking longer than usual, made me sometimes wonder if this was the right road. In the fog, only the curves are recognizable, because there is no landmark to go by. Driving up the mountain, the last 3 miles of the trip, the fog thickened, and keeping all four tires in the road became the primary concern. At one point after driving upward the road leveled out just before an upward curve to the right. The headlights could not see the level part until the car leveled. I had to stop, because the road vanished. Even though I knew exactly where I was in my mind, I couldn't see anything but white. I found the edge of the road and set in motion again, staying between the two ditches, thinking if somebody were riding with me they'd be shitting pellets. It was another test of what I've learned after living half my life, most of my driving life, in the mountains. I'm checked out on driving on ice and in fog. I've passed the mud test many times. The mud test is when driving up the mountain is a mudsling on the road that is gravel in the summer and mud in winter.

 

I take driving on ice, snow and mud in fog and rain a challenge, a tournament of one scored by you make it or you don't. I think of it as a Zen archery experience where you have one arrow, one chance to hit the flying bird. I do not want to walk home in drizzling mist and fog in 40 degree night because the car left the road and I can't get it back on the road, like a wheel in a culvert or just leave the road. Sometimes I'll keep a chant going, keep it in the road, keep it in the road. There are times that I don't want to let my attention waver for half a second, so I remind myself over and over in my mind to keep my mind on what I'm doing. All the way home, I was praising the GPS on the dashboard for being my seeing-eye. I thanked my friends Lucas and Judy Carpenter several times in spirit for the gift of this incomprehensible gadget that really does make a difference. And it comes from a satellite, even through the clouds and fog. A GPS is the deal for driving in fog. I've driven the Parkway in peasoup fog with and without the GPS. It makes a great difference in that I can see when the road will be straight for awhile and the curves as I'm approaching them. It relieves the stress of staying in the road when I can barely see the road. Tonight in Whitehead I was driving along around 20mph and saw a deer standing in the road looking at me. I was easily able to stop. She looked at me awhile. The young one was standing beside the road this side of the fence. It looked at me like a deer in the headlights and followed mama to the other side of the road, nothing urgent.

 

It was a good race at Bristol. Kasey Kahne won. Something has changed this year. The cars ran the track at over 100 mph through the curves. Bristol being a short, half-mile, track, they don't get going at 200 like at Talladega or Daytona. Bristol used to be fender banging, bumping side to side and front to back, but this year they were going faster than usual and it seemed more like at least a mile track. The bumping and banging at Bristol did not used to cause the cars to lose traction and spin out, but this year it seemed like a lot of times when cars touched, somebody would lose traction. Right away Tony Stewart blew his right rear tire that slammed him into the wall. It happened to a few others. They'd be driving through a curve, then pop, into the wall they'd go, outta control. All the driver can do is hit the brakes and hope he doesn't get hit but a few times. At Bristol I feel like I can see the cars outrunning one another. On the long tracks they get going at top end and often get in a long line where nobody can pass anybody because they're all going as fast as they can go. At Bristol there is room for maneuvering that I don't see so much at the longer tracks. Bristol feels more like a race where I can see strategies better, and it generally feels more like a race, a real run to be the first to the finish line when all the cars are equals and the drivers are equals too. Winning is a matter of strategies and entire team efforts. The driver is just one aspect of it. Every part is equally important; the driver, the car, the mechanics individually, the pit crew individually, the spotters individually, the strategists individually, too. Every individual involved, including several I wouldn't know about operating the communication technology between driver and staff.

 

At the end, Kahne drifted his car in circles sending up a cloud of white smoke that is moving on wind currents over the state of Virginia about now on its way to the sea. He made it to the "winner's circle" where the first thing he did was go around to everyone on the team and shake their hands in appreciation. He knew that he would not be the star of the day without every single one of them. I was glad to see there were no big wrecks. Several small fender benders occurred, mostly due to blown tires sending the car into the wall. I like to see the winner win and everybody else have their places on account of a race well run instead of several eliminated by chance pile-ups that end the race for the ones caught up in it. Somebody goes sideways in front of you at 150 mph, tires smoking, there you are. Shit happens. Fortunately, the cars now amount to a cage of bars around the driver, so no matter what happens the driver comes out of it all right. Sometimes one gets hurt. Nobody is happy when it happens. That's part of it, too; the dangerous edge makes it exciting for all concerned. Racing motor vehicles is the only sport I know of where occasionally somebody is killed. Once or twice a year a basketball player will die of a heart attack. A football player sometimes gets shot. In nascar races and in all other car races, death is a possible outcome. All the participants came to terms with it when they started racing. I saw Jeff Gordon have an experience last year that I project made him question getting in a car again. If his knees were not wobbling after that crash, he would have had to have been in a coma. He walked away from the wreckage. All that was left of the car was the cage he was strapped into. It will be a good one for him to write about in his memoir.  

 

 

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THE KIDS THESE DAYS

bristol



Good race at Bristol this week. No wrecks. A few yellow flags, mostly debris on the track. Bristol is a tight track, not very wide and only half a mile. 135 or so is top end on the straight away where you hit the gas all the way, then hit the brake for the curve. The track being so narrow, not much room was available for passing somebody. 2 cars side-by-side were difficult to pass when they didn't want to be passed. In this particular race on this particular track it looked like all the cars had the same capabilities, and it looked like just about everybody held their position after a certain point early in the race, and holding your place was the best could be done. Out in front, the front 5 changed positions a little bit, but not much. Jeff Gordon was out in front, then a pit stop put him back to third and there he stayed. He couldn't get by one and two.



Next day, talking with a friend on the phone. Before I mentioned the race, I knew there would be some kind of block-headed opinion to counter it. He's also a contrarian, couldn't agree with you if you had documentation to prove what you're saying. He retorted, "I don't like racing. People just watch racing to see somebody die. I don't approve of violence" Phew! That was a bucket full and running over. Knowing the professor had spoken and there's no going back on adamant opinions, no point saying anything, really, I went on and said, "Nobody died in the race. Drivers don't die in races anymore. They wear seatbelts. The cars are constructed to prevent fatalities as much as possible." I was talking to the wall. Like Bobby Allison got hit broadside in his door at 200 mph. It addled him in a big way, but he survived. Friend has a long, long list of buttons that release opinions like a toy for a 2 yr old--push the cow button, it says, "moo," press the sheep button, it says, "baa."



In my younger years, I made a vow to myself I would never be of the mind that starts sentences, The kids these days.... I caught myself starting a sentence that way somewhere between 5 and 10 years ago, stopped myself and gave myself a talking to. At lunch last time we went, I listened to much about "the kids these days," they're just alike, and it wasn't just some, it was "all of em." I'm thinking: the girl in the 11th grade reading the Iliad and the Odyssey for fun and the boy who quit school after the 9th grade because his probation officer recommended it. (What kind of probation officer would do that? If you knew the boy, you'd understand.) Just alike. The one who read the Iliad and the Odyssey in the 11th grade got her PhD at Berkeley this year. The kid on probation will have been in prison probably several years by the time he's the age of the girl with the PhD. Just alike? Saw a commercial of Michael Jordon on a plane and a dorky white guy saying to him, "We're just alike," and every time he said it, Jordon said, "No we're not." The boy on probation and the girl with the PhD are about as alike as a gas and a solid.



These are just two cases from "all of em." However, if I were to bring this up at the table, it would be out of order. I'd be contradicting an opinion. His opinions are the foundation of universal truth. Gold plated. That's ok. I'm a moral relativist and he won't have it that morality is anything but black and white. "You'll never have me believing morality is relative!" And I didn't even try. Talking with him has become like talking with a man of my grandfather's generation when I was young. I'm sorry to see friend has succumbed to that way of thinking about himself, and glad to see I have not, or anyway not entirely. Have to allow for unconscious behavior my inner editor misses. This is somebody who calls himself so liberal he's a "revolutionary." That's his word for himself. He put a flower in a National Guardsman's rifle barrel during a demonstration at U of Tennessee "back in the day," when friend was a hippie, a drug addict and a revolutionary. I'm so happy I went to a small school and couldn't pretend any of that nonsense. I wanted to badly, but it didn't take.



So there is not only watching friends and peers die out as one grows older, but watching surviving friends atrophy in the mind starting about age 50 or before. I do not enjoy sweeping statements about the kids today. I've always kept it in the foreground to have young friends, to know some kids. They're not all alike. They're what the older generation shapes them into, and their world is largely so boring--school, homework, television--there comes a time paying attention falls away on its own. I happen to know some young kids very well educated, who pay attention in school and have their own interests. And I know some it would take sticking a gun barrel in their faces to get them to pay attention, and then only for as long as the gun stays cocked. And there's everything in between. I'm glad to say I've come to a place in my advancing years where I don't feel the need to tell younger people how to live. I don't even know what to tell myself how to live.



I look at some of my younger friends, two couples age 28, thereabouts, different cultures, and I see very different people. I don't think one is better than another. I find when I'm with Justin and Crystal I feel no need, even the remotest, to give them any advice on anything. Hail far! It would be more their place to advise me. When it comes to getting along in this world, both of them, individually, have left me way back in the dust. They've already got a few laps on me. I look at them with admiration. I think they have it so together compared to myself at that age, or ever. Then Meredith and Greg have me completely blown away that I even know people so far beyond me as they are. I see them all people with brilliant minds and they're using their minds well. I think, very well. These are kid's I've watched grow up. Whenever I'd start to think a sentence that starts, the kids these days, Justin and Meredith would come to mind and that would be the end of it. I say kids relatively. I could be their grandparent. Better, I'm their friend.


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REDNECKS IN AMERICA

kyle busch after winning bristol


The M&M car won the Bristol race yesterday. It was a good run Kyle Busch made. He stayed up front most of the race and missed the multiple wrecks that happened behind him. Busch ran against Jimmy Johnson and Carl Edwards. The three of them  raced all-out the last 30+ laps. It was a 500 lap race. It was a good race from start to finish. Not many wrecks, and they weren't bad, just inconveniences good for pit stops. I found the above picture at a website, taken after Kyle Busch had made a show of smoking his tires for the crowd, smoking them good, a major cloud of pollution. If anybody politically correct ever went to one of these races, he'd be in continuous shock. The stadium becomes a bowl that holds the exhaust and rubber molecules from the tires. You can see it like an upside down bowl, like the bowl of night, visible pollution that is a bit noxious to breathe. But that's part of it. Rebellion. By God, you wanna see some pollution, I'll show it to ya. The roar is pure rock and roll, maybe even louder than an Aerosmith concert.



Outdoor activities are cranking up, like the car races. Not that sitting in a big stadium is an activity. But walking to it from where you have to park and walking back to the pickup is a major activity. Good exercise. I have been to one of the races, the CocaCola 500 outside Charlotte. The experience sitting in one of those bowls is similar to a rock concert. The sound is so loud it is thrilling. On the tv now the announcers pause for a minute or so and let you turn the volume up to hear the sound of the track. That is thrilling too. Women don't think much of it, but the guys love it. The car races are about as redneck a thing as you're going to find on tv. I've been griping along the way about television paying no mind to the working people. One day last week I sat before Country Music Television, CMT, 4 hours. Saw 2 redneck weddings and one redneck family reuniting--a daughter in a big working class family had got a high opinion of herself, married UP, drove a Cadillac SUV and admitted openly she felt like she was better than them. She was sentenced to I think 4 days and nights camping with the whole family. By the end of the experience, she broke through her stuck-up shell and became one of them again.



The weddings were berserk. These were casual documentaries an hour long apiece, of the preparations for the wedding, one with a fleet of tractors, obviously let to CMT by Farmall, them all being brand new tractors, and nobody in the cast able to afford even one. For the advertising. Both the wedding films were hilarious. Everybody proud to be a redneck. I had no idea such as that was going on. I think of the reactions of middle class people concerning the documentary, The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia, like the Whites are the exception out there all by themselves. They were rednecks and rednecks are everywhere. They are the working class people, the people who quit school or barely made it through and didn't go to college. Secretly, they're people without hope. They're not bad people. A lot of them go to prison, but in America you don't got to prison any more for being bad. You go to prison for trying to make a living by hook or by crook when you're shut out from a respectable job that pays a wage you can live on. The poor go to prison. Unless you're like Bernie Madoff and pist everybody off.



I like my redneck friends the same as my non-redneck friends, who happen to be college educated, as it's college that is the line where redneck stops. Of rednecks I've known, I haven't found but a few that are what you'd call dumb. Just because somebody couldn't afford circumstances to go to college doesn't say anything about their minds. I don't know anybody who hasn't been to college who couldn't make it if they grew up middle class wearing Harvard sweatshirts when they were 10. I was looking at results of archery competitions in SW Virginia on a website a little bit ago. There are an awful lot of names of people who did some really good shooting. I doubt any of them went to college. A quotation I found last week of Oscar Wilde: Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.  Rednecks I know have a great deal of knowledge of that which cannot be taught.



This is where I've come to draw the line between the working class culture and middle class culture, where even gossip circles don't intersect, that the knowledge in the working class is that which cannot be taught. The middle class is characterized by knowledge that can be taught. I appreciate both ways of knowing. When I start to say I prefer one to the other, it comes to mind immediately that it is not so. I don't. It is two different ways of thinking. I think both ways. I appreciate both such that I see them halves of a whole. Rednecks are rough and rowdy because the work they do doesn't afford them a BMW sportscar and a Hummer for the old lady, unless they're dealing drugs on the side, or maybe I should say working on the side. Rednecks only get to work at country clubs. Sometimes the exception happens and it's Beverly Hillbillies redux. What I'm getting at is we're all just people born into every kind of circumstance there is from the slums around the Mexico City dump to the Houston Country Club. The whole rainbow of possibilities in between.



By this time in my life I'm seeing that somebody with a brilliant mind can be born into any social circumstance, the same as with a block of wood for a mind can be born to any circumstance. Whatever our social circumstance we came up in, it's up to us individually to determine the nature of our lives in whatever pool we're swimming in. Too many people who had nothing going for them have come along and made a productive life. Too many people have started out priveleged and let it all drift away. We get for ourselves what we want, even when we live in a slum. It's the inner part that lives our real lives among the people we live among, whoever they are. It doesn't matter if they're rich and decadent or work hard for very little. Who we are is the person inside who sees through our eyes, hears through the ears, thinks by our accumulated experience.



What good or ill comes to us will be the same as the good or ill we act out individually. Our lives are a singular experience in place and time. It's not about how comfortable is the ride, but how we feel about ourselves down in that little cell in the heart where we keep our true self safe from attacks from the outside. The only way to expand out of the tiny cell is to allow vulnerability. Tough decision. I'd just as soon hang on to not being too vulnerable. I've come to believe that to really be able to walk along one's spiritual path guided by the Master, we have to let ourselves be vulnerable sometimes, and that's not so easy for anybody. I remember when I was beginning to allow my vulnerabilities out of the box, there weren't any consequesnces. None of them got hurt. And I felt relaxed about my own soft spots. Eventually it comes to where it's no big deal at all. I'm not there yet and don't know that I know anybody who is. We're all wherever we are along our individual spiritual paths, even when we're not aware that we're on a path. Like in the old mountain hymn, some paths lead to destruction, and some to the pearly gates. I think the pearly gates is clarity within, our little self set free from the cell, free and out in the light above the trees. Free bird.



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