BABY DOLL AND THE BULLDOG

vada, 3

Went to Vada's house Sunday to see the race on tv. I had not seen her in four weeks, maybe five. They returned day before yesterday from a week at Myrtle Beach, Vada looking like the Coppertone girl. Crystal said Vada spoke to everybody on the beach. Crystal's attention drifted and she found Vada talking with some people nearby, eating a cookie they'd given her. Everyone told Crystal Vada was the cutest thing there ever was. I said, "She is. They recognized it." Vada is a spirited child; life energy beams from her laughing or crying and every emotion in between. She cried several times today, not getting her way. She's pushing the envelope, stepping over boundaries, asserting herself. I picked up Baby Doll and said I wanted to play with Baby Doll. Vada snatched Baby Doll away and said, No! Another time I said I wanted to play with Baby Doll. No! A little later, I told her again I wanted to play with Baby Doll. OK. Dadu and I bent over in our chairs cracking up. This child has a natural-born charm. When she misbehaves and is spoken to about it, she can charm you into getting over it. I don't mean to imply other babies are not so cute. This is the baby I know in this time of my life. I walked in the front door upon arrival. Vada was standing beside the coffee table, looked at me in puzzlement, staring like she didn't quite know what to do. At the moment I didn't get it, but see it now that my hair has grown out and my chin has a goat beard since she saw me last. She's only known me with short hair looking like a retired cop. She stared like she was stuck in place. Dadu said, Aren't you going to say Hi to TJ? Vada ran to me, I picked her up and we hugged. I told her I love her. She held the hug for a long time, relaxed into it and I held her until she wanted down. It was an endearing moment, one of many with my real live baby doll.    

 

vada examines baby doll's toes

 

 Jeff Gordon won the race straight up and smoked a few thousand dollars of Goodyear tire rubber spinning black circles on the track. He made a lot of noise arousing the crowd to ecstatic cheers as loud as his roaring pipes. We watched golf awhile. Justin is a golfer. He is studying while he watches the pros hit the ball. I'd brought Melvin with me. He lives nearby in Whitehead, his truck isn't working well at the moment, inside a week he'll have a replacement. I went by and picked him up on the way to see the race. Vada loves Melvin like she loves me. I said to her when I put her down, Melvin's here. She ran to him, he picked her up and held her for a long time. He is round and roly-poly. He's a big teddy bear that hugs her in turn. Melvin's wife, Ellen, works at a daycare place. Melvin said when he picks her up after work, he goes early, sits on the floor and plays with the kids. The kids love him. Melvin is free enough inside himself to adore kids and they adore him back. I saw his other daughter, Hailey, 13, same age as Beth, before we left the house. She was wearing a tshirt that said, LIVE YOUR LIFE. I thought: the gospel in a fortune cookie. Later, when I took Melvin home, his girl, Beth, came running out the door as soon as he stepped out of the car. She jumped on him, gave him a big hug. She'd been away with a Girl Scout adventure for a week at the coast and returned while he was gone. She's a charming girl with fire red hair. He calls her Pumpkin. Melvin is somebody who becomes more interesting for me the more I know him. I've seen along the way there are people who seem interesting at first, but as you know them they diminish down to nothing. Others, who sometimes don't give any appearance that something is going on inside besides tv, turn out to be more and more interesting as time goes by. Every time I'm around Melvin I learn something new about him that blows my mind. He comes on like somebody who is neither here nor there, doesn't seek attention, comfortable in the back seat.

 

vada's little mermaid sunglasses from the beach

Justin, Melvin and I go to the basement to smoke cigarettes, or outside on the porch, to keep the house free of cigarette smell. Crystal would prefer her house not smell of cigarette. We respect her. Crystal, who does wedding photography, had a shoot on Sunday, which she often does, leaving Vada with Dadu, her baby name for daddy. Vada would play with Baby Doll nearby, sit on the laps of each one of us, attracted to our circle of attention, us sitting in the mancave corner laughing at funny stories we'd take turns telling. In a time when Justin took Vada upstairs and was gone for a spell, Melvin and I talked. High school came up and he said he had a good time all through high school. He said, "I was the mascot," explaining why he had privileges in school. I asked what he meant by mascot. My first thought was something like the San Diego chicken. He said, "I lettered five years in cheerleading." That one really took me by surprise. The team was the Bulldogs. He dressed up in a bulldog costume as part of the cheering squad. I did not see it coming. I lit up, wanted to hear more. Melvin is short and stocky; it wouldn't take much to make him into a bulldog. He said the other kids, the teachers, administration, the jocks, all thought he was the coolest guy in school. He said, "I didn't have any enemies." He had privileges such as freedom to skip class if he didn't want to go. His name those five years was Bulldog. Even the teachers called him Bulldog. Everybody called him Bulldog. He said he had a Nissan station wagon with big speakers in the back seat area, "You could hear me comin." The car had a foot-wide stripe of primer paint along both sides. A friend painted "Bulldog" in the primer stripe on the fender. He said, "My car was Bulldog too." 

 

vada's tongue

 

Melvin wears tshirts in this time of his life announcing he's proud to be a redneck, keeps a calendar on the kitchen wall of the tv show Duck Dynasty. Middle class people like to look down on the Duck Dynasty characters as obnoxious pigs, but in the working class they're comedy, like Larry the Cable Guy, Rodney Carrington and the other blue collar comics, who are really funny when you understand the culture's humor they appeal to. Many times in our mancave retreats Justin has put on Rodney Carrington cds for us to bend over laughing at. Not many of my middle class (more or less educated) friends could sit through more than two of Carrington's stories. I can watch Duck Dynasty with Justin and Melvin and laugh like crazy. To one part of my mind they're upper middle class actors making a lot of money from a successful gig, celebrities in a society that honors only celebrities. It worked for them. The other part of my mind thinks they're hilarious in a redneck humor way. I applaud them. I don't share redneck political mind, but it doesn't stop me from allowing them their own minds. Their show is a present day I Love Lucy, but funnier. They're playing bulldog for the rednecks. Middle class tends to look down on rednecks, finding them disgusting. I have redneck creds to some degree, in that I appreciate the people, their lives, their culture, their humor, their absence of pretentions especially. It's the rarity of pretention in the working class that appeals to me in a big way, makes me prefer the company of the working class. Some of it is a bit beyond my reach, like there is a criminal element, as in every culture of people living in poverty or on the borderline. I'm not particularly attracted to the criminal aspect. It puts a lot of them in prison, makes them angry people who lose faith in the society they live in, making them all the angrier. Lots of anger issues in the working class. I feel it, I live it, I understand it. I appreciate them. I have learned to regard people I know who have been in prison with the highest respect. Few I know believe I respect them, because nobody else does. For that, I respect them all the more.

 

vada's defiance

 

 

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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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SHOOTOUT @ DAYTONA / 2012 /

          kyle busch's car before the race

This is the car Kyle Busch drove to win the Shootout, first race of the season, a no points race, 75 laps, only first place counts. It just counts for a glory win. The picture was taken before the race when the car looked good. It got banged up in the course of the race, but not enough to slow it down. It was a race like I'd never seen before. From the first wave of the green flag, you could see the aggression in every one of the drivers. Positions constantly changed. No one held the lead for more than a lap or two. One time Montoya, after I thought he was out of the race from the first pileup that sent him to pit row, pulled out in front of the pack, then drifted all the way to the back, right down the middle, cars passing him on both sides. Several of the cars would get up front and drift back. Nobody could hold a lead. Jeff Gordon tried it and he, too, drifted toward the rear. Gordon seemed to make a game of drifting to the back and passing everybody again. I was wondering if he was using the race for passing practice.

Whatever Gordon had in his mind about winning, with 2 laps to go, he was in 3rd behind Kyle Busch. Gordon intended to get around Busch, and Busch wasn't letting it happen. Gordon reached out with his front bumper and touched Busch's back bumper, a nudge to tell him to get out of the way, at 195. The track is the same as ice at such a speed. Busch lost traction, swung wildly off the track inside, Gordon steered slightly upward to get around Busch who was heading toward all the way out of control in a hurry, Gordon lost traction and drifted around sideways in front of the two cars on the outside of him. All have their brakes on, one of them gets smacked from behind, sending Gordon's car up on its side sliding on pavement, a shower of sparks like re-entry of the space shuttle, the car sliding on the upper and lower rails of the driver's side window, wedged between the outside car and the wall, all that fireworks inches from Gordon's eyes that were well goggled.

The cluster of the four cars slid along the groove where the track meets the wall, big fire from under the cars looking like it was roasting the drivers in their fire-proof clothes. I guarantee they were feeling the heat and not liking it. I've never seen so much fire in a race. I've never seen the showers of sparks when a driver hit the brakes. It used to be billows of fog-on-the-interstate smoke. Last night it was big showers of sparks turning into big flames right away that lasted so long and looked like they burned so hot there would no way the drivers could want to go through this again, in this lifetime or any other. I wondered what changed. I wondered if it might have been because it was night and the sparks are there by day too, but can't be seen in daylight. Maybe same could be said for the fires, but I can't buy it. I've seen maybe a dozen races in the last couple years, several at night, and have never seen fires to the extent of this race. I've never seen it like this at Daytona. All through the race I wondered why smoke didn't billow up like usual when they hit the brakes, but instead, big showers of sparks that turned into fire. I'd never seen that.

One of the cars slipped free of the cluster, setting Gordon's car free to go wherever its momentum took it. Gordon was as alert as he's probably ever been and helpless, nothing to do but hang on for the ride. Soon after the car slid free it decided to roll over sideways, then again, almost made it, landed on the driver's side and leaned backwards onto its top, hood looking like aluminum foil, the whole car looking like crumpled aluminum foil in red and yellow. He couldn't get out on his own. Took rescuers awhile to get the car turned upright so he could crawl out. He was safe in the very well constructed cage of the cockpit, strapped into his chair that protects him from 3 sides, leaving him room to move his arms enough to work the steering wheel and gear shift. He was secure. Good helmet, the kind that he could probably survive sliding a thousand yards on his head down the track. I'd venture there was a second or two of questioning his own sanity for getting his kicks racing. Or more than likely he's questioned that so many times by now, he's got the answer and keeps on keepin on. Whatever the case, I didn't like to see him out of the race. He is such a good driver, he stands out from the rest, even when he doesn't win. I was anxious to see how he would make it around Busch.

Seeing Gordon set Busch off his traction, I couldn't recall that I'd ever seen him purposely put somebody out of the race like Curtis Turner used to do in the 50s when they drove convertibles with seatbelts. Gordon never struck me a chickenshit driver, so I had to give him benefit of the doubt. At the same time, he knew the track well by then and a whole lot more than I know from what I saw through a tv camera and zero experience at what he's doing very well. The initial thought I spoke to Gordon was, 'man, that wasn't right,' and watched him lose his traction, get caught in a fiery knot he couldn't get out of, then spring free and go for a tumble like in a clothes dryer on HI. On his top, smoke, dripping fuel and oil, just come out of a fire storm, he more than likely felt at least half a second of uncontrollable fear in the raw. But like a man, he could swallow his own vomit and go on like it was fun.

It kind of had the appearance of instant karma. In the time when the Beatles were diving deep, I wondered and couldn't make out what Lennon meant by Instant Karma. I wasn't able to see it then. To be instant, it would have to be simultaneous. Evidently, that didn't compute with my college student understanding at the time, and karma a word I only knew by the dictionary definition. There it was. Simultaneous. This for that. Thinking like an English major, Gordon's total wreck was a good image of Instant Karma. The return was so extreme, like the Karmic Judge (Steven Seagal in a bullet proof vest) hit him with his fist, knocked him to the ground and said, 'Cut that shit out, boy!' It looked suspiciously a karmic return. As a measure of his intent, it was Xtreme. At the same time, going 195, cars wobbly from air currents in a tight pack, it's something like running snowmobiles on ice. A nanosecond's lapse of attention can have immediate consequesnces, too. I can't attribute blame to any of it. It's what happens when cars are packed in tight on a white knuckle flight. It was a major shit happens moment. 

Kyle Busch showed his skill bringing his car back to traction without hitting any other cars, getting back into the race and using some more of that fine-tuned driving skill to slingshot himself .013 second ahead of Tony Stewart by two feet or less. Crossing the line, the front edge of Busch's tire was about even with the front edge of Tony Stewart's bumper. I don't even want to think of what was in Stewart's mind at that moment. It could be about like what might be in Tarzan's mind when the grapevine breaks over a river with crocodiles, in a dream. In that very move, Kyle Busch showed me some driving I can only respect. Twice in the race he lost traction, swerved this way and that, avoided hitting any others, pulled it back to traction and pushed the pedal to the metal. I've seen Tony Stewart take a dramatic win. When Busch pulled by him at the line, like horses by a nose, I just about had to stand up and cheer. If I'd had a hat on, I'd have had to take it off to him. Xcellent win. In this race, a wide open run from the time the pace car left the track, looking like the win would go to the last car with wheels that could roll, in the last second Kyle Busch showed himself to be the man in charge.

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