AMERICA'S CUP 2013

usa (black) new zealand (red)

The America's Cup racing ended yesterday with an American win. I watched videos of five of the races, the 19th the last. The ones I saw were 6, 7, 15, 16 and 19.. To say a sailboat race was exciting sounds like saying a toad race is. I've always liked to see America's Cup races on tv, though seldom have. I recall the beautiful, sleek boats of the Fifties and Sixties, much like the slick Indy cars of that time. Along came the computer; boats and cars changed, as did planes and everything else. This year the boats were catamarans with 130 foot masts. The only difference I could see between the two boats were the size of what I think I remember called jibs, the small sail in front of the tall sail. They were different sizes, and a little bit different shapes. These were hi-tech to the present moment. Instead of the hulls skimming over the water, the catamarans had thin blades with a little wing at the bottom that sliced through the water raising the hulls of the catamarans into the air for nearly no resistance. These boats sliced through the water at 45 to 50 mph in a good wind. The skill of the dozen or so people operating each boat equaled a pit crew in NASCAR races changing tires, filling up gas, peeling a layer of windshield film, in twelve to fourteen seconds. The crew on these sailboats never stopped their all-out physical activity. They had to go into this race with a great deal of physical stamina, at least as much as it would take to play a soccer match or basketball.

I found it actually thrilling to watch the sailboats cut the water, leaving two narrow wakes that look like contrails from above. I have a powerful love for sailboats. They have attracted my attention all my life. I love their beauty, that the America's Cup sailboats are every year the cutting edge of the latest technology on aero and hydro dynamics at sea. A psychic told me I had a lifetime as a pirate in the North African part of the Atlantic and Mediterranean in the 13th Century. This is the only explanation I can figure for why I've loved sailboats since childhood, like I loved pirate movies in childhood. Even liked to dress as a pirate for Halloween. I've been on a few small sailboats, just enough to find that learning to sail is complex and fun, too complex for casual sailing. There is the truth that a boat is a hole in the water you throw money in, and I've never had nor wanted enough money to throw a large portion of it away. I like documentaries about circumnavigation in a sailboat for one. I think of that something like the Adamson's in East Africa knowing lions so well they could trust their knowledge to keep them safe among lions. Setting out to go around the tip of South Africa and the tip of South America in suicidal rough seas takes knowledge so subtle that the one operating the boat has full confidence in understanding the sea, the wind, the boat and self. It takes comfort with solitude to circumnavigate the globe solo.

The America's Cup racing teams are hyper athletic. One of them on the American team was said to be a winner of four Olympic gold medals. These are people dedicated to racing boats like NASCAR drivers dedicate every moment to racing. These people stand out in front of everybody else in their field. It takes dedication and work to get there and to stay there. They verge on flawless like the car race pit crews and our tv football games. Pro football is so tight by now that winning is a matter of making the least mistakes. It's the same with baseball. It's the skill I watch when I see a tv football game or baseball game. I see somebody hit a home run with a ball that he has to decide whether to swing at or let it go by the moment the ball leaves the pitcher's hand, the ball going 90mph. I wouldn't even see the ball. If I'd been on one of those catamarans, there would have been no place for me to get out of the way but to jump over the side. No room for passengers. The best thing for me to do is go to youTube, write americas cup 2013 in the box and pick a race to see. According the to the two men doing the talking during the race, moment by moment, like talking about car races, intelligent guys who understood high speed catamaran racing, America's Cup, the history, the rules, this may have been the most neck and neck race since the beginning. I'd rather see the youTube video than actually to have seen it from the shore of San Francisco Bay amidst the throng of people, parked cars, two sails in the near and far distance, mostly far, and that's it. I liked listening to these two guys talk about it for their knowledge.

 The American team came back from starting out with eight losses, and made that up plus the one, race 19, it took to win. Congratulations to the American crew. The New Zealand crew deserves congratulations for being so difficult to defeat. The crew was the equal of the American crew and the boats equal, too. The American crew took awhile to get in tune, but when they got there, they were unstoppable. It came down to race nineteen neck and neck. Even to have lost that race doesn't mean much. It was only by 35 or 40 seconds. That's not even a minute behind. The two teams and the two boats were so equal that it made a truly exciting race. The two men doing the talking were blown away by what good races these were. One read a tweet they'd received from somebody who said something to the effect of -- you never told me your sport was like this! The announcer said, "It's not like in your grandfather's day," meaning, I presume, the Fifties when America's cup was a sailboat race before catamarans and computer designs. Then, the hull rode on the water; now knife blades slice the water while the hull, itself, streamlined as a knife blade, flies above the surface. Watching the boats fly over the water brought to mind watching two NASCAR drivers running around a curve side by side at 150, perfect control. This sailboat race represented for me the image of near perfect control of self, as close as is humanly possible this year.

 

*

GOOD READS

It is a time in the life of looking back over the life as a unit in time, a series of chapters, each one leading to the next. It just now occurred to me for the first time that I could divide it up into chapters and give each chapter a name. That could be very interesting in terms of interior examination. This one I'm in now I could not have foreseen, nor any of them. Each chapter followed the one before in the continuum. Russian writer Anton Chekhov wrote a short story, My Life, that is an allegorical summary of his life as a housepainter instead of playwright. I find I'm in a time of the life when I want to reread certain books. Chekhov is one. Patrick White another. Tolstoy another. The Greek playwrights, Shakespeare, Joyce's Ulysses, John Berryman's poems, Robinson Jeffers' poems, Elizabeth Bishop's poems.. A lot of the books I've read have been special friends. I like being able to see my books. The spine in the bookshelf with the title and author on it is a reminder to me of what I found inside it. The world has so many really good writers, it doesn't do to even try to  know who they are, let alone read them all. I'd like to read Camus again, everything. And Wallace Stevens again. Kazuo Ishiguro's The Unconsoled again. There are so many.

I've enjoyed so many books so incredibly much that I look back over some of the titles happy to have made the acquaintance of whoever it is. Chinese dissident writer Xao Xingjian gives an in-depth look into living under the Chinese bureaucratic system that penetrates everywhere, and the brooding dark cloud that covers the entire land. Mo Yan's Red Sorghum tells the story of the Japanese invasion of Nanking before ww2. The devastation was so intensely cruel it is still an issue of contention between China and Japan. At the moment I'm reading NASCAR Legends by Robert Edelstein. He also wrote Full Throttle, the story of legendary NASCAR driver Curtis Turner. Also reading in Chris Hedges' War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning. I like the prose style of these two writers equally, Edelstein and Hedges. They write of radically different themes and are very different personalities. It's their prose styles I like. Both are sparse with their use of language, pared down to clarity like Danish furniture styles. Edelstein writes about the people who race cars on weekends. He tells the history of car racing at the same time he tells other stories, like in the one book, Curtis Turner's life. Turner's life pretty much amounts to the history of the beginnings of track racing. Edelstein's writing is fast and exciting in the reading. He writes with such involved engagement you feel like you're on the inside of the story, seeing it subjectively. It's a you-are-there sensation.

     Coming back around the straightaway, eighty laps into     
     a hundred-lap event and nearly in the lead, Turner
     suddenly blew two tires at once.  He jerked and spun
     and the car slammed hard into the wall, now wrecked
     beyond racing use. A fantastic run had come to an end.

     "But the people were just ecstatic," Naman said. "They
     were standing and screaming. They felt they saw something
     you only see once in a lifetime."

     Turner navigated the now-broken car into the pits during
     the yellow flag, got out, ran across the track, jumped back
     over the guardrail, and returned to his plane with another
     wave. By the time the field was taking the green flag once
     again, he was gone, off into the night like a specter.

      ---from page 58 of NASCAR Legends by Robert Edelstein

 

 

I offer this as an example of a few paragraphs I enjoyed reading, and it's all the better in context. If I did not read, I would have missed Robert Utley's biography of Sitting Bull, which I think of as one of the more significant books of my lifetime. I've read it twice and could happily read it again. I haven't really examined what it is that made reading so important when it wasn't anything to anybody in my immediate or extended family. I was "the reader." Mother and grandmother read to me pre-school, children's stories, bedtime. At age 4, the war was over, daddy came home, no more being read to. All the fun went out of everything. I was not allowed to read in the house if it wasn't homework. Finally, by my senior year, I was living in the garage and could read all I wanted. I didn't know what to read, so I read novels current movies were made from, Ben Hur, Splendor In The Grass, Doctor Zhivago, and then I heard about the beatniks, On The Road and Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac. Found Allen Ginsberg's Howl in a bookstore in Wichita. I felt like I'd entered the Bohemian zone going into a bookstore. It was somewhat overwhelming. It was another world from any I knew before. The atmosphere was new to me; it has a bright glow in my memory, like intense lights inside. Then I discovered Henry Miller, whose Tropic of Cancer was made a big deal of by the Supremes because it had the word fuck in it, the 1950s. That's not all Miller wrote. The Tropics were just the beginnings of one of America's great writers.

I'm enjoying going back over poetry books, picking one up and reading in it casually for awhile. One I intend to spend some time with soon is Robert Lowell's Notebook 1967-68. I'd like to spend some time with Elizabeth Bishop, the French Surrealist poets, Ted Hughes, Rilke, Neruda, whose bones were recently exhumed to see if he'd been poisoned by the Pinochet American puppet government. He had. I'd like to go back through Harold Pinter's plays. The Caretaker has been in my mind recently as one I'd like to read now. It happens in an attic. Two brothers and a vagrant. Pinter's plays are some of the great enigmas of the 20th century, along with the plays of Jean Anouilh in France. I like to be able to read a history of China and come away with at least a cursory understanding of the country and its culture. It seems like a renascence of fiction is happening in China now. I like being able to read contemporary Chinese fiction and poetry. I like being able to read a history of Africa that starts with geology. I like to read fiction and nonfiction from all over the world. I see inside a given culture,  people live, what's important to them. Naguib Mahfouz's novels of Cairo come from a world quite other from mine. And discovering Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk was as satisfying a discovery as when I first read Mahfouz. I love discovering a writer who really lights me up, like RK Narayan of India. He tells a beautiful story. I'm glad for whatever it is in my past that gave me the reading bug. Reading has been the primary blessing of my life.

 

 

I'll not read all these books again. I'll go on like usual and read whatever I feel like at the moment. The books sit on the shelves in my mind representing many hours of some of the best enjoyment of my life. 

*  

ROUND AND ROUND IN TEXAS

 

 

It was a night race at Texas speedway that I think is somewhere near Ft Worth. It was a good race. Only one incident took place, a blown tire that sent the car into the wall then sliding along the wall backwards with the brakes on. Much talk about the new cars this year. The drivers say they are "fun" to drive and "faster." I don't know what has been done to the cars this year that makes them so much better. My thinking is it's in the handling of the cars. Already, their speed is held back by the track itself, so they don't need much faster cars. Maybe they mean faster response to the pedal, like twisting the handle grip on a motorcycle, acceleration right now, which I think is already the case. I see the cars are going around the curves faster than before, especially notable at Martinsville and Bristol. The cars function on the half mile track like it's a one mile track. They go faster on the short tracks than ever before, and they do the same on the 2 mile tracks. I've noticed at 150mph+ they don't lose traction so readily when they touch anymore. I saw one guy pull it back when the rear wheels lost traction. I don't see that often. I've seen Kyle Busch bring the car back to traction after wrestling the steering wheel just right. His ability to bring a car back to traction has made him the driver I follow with the most interest.  

 

 

 

 

Kyle Busch won Saturday night's race with a solid run. He was bearing down on it from the start to finish. He and his brother started the front two, both with the best times in the timing runs the day before. Perhaps one of the aspects of car racing that draws me to it the most is that infinite unknowns lurk throughout the course of a race. Nothing can be predicted until the first one crosses the finish line. Kyle Busch won the race with the best car and the best driving. It's not every race that a driver's car is up to stepping out in front of everybody else. The cars have endless variables in them that can either work right or go wrong. The drivers too. One of them had stomach flu and was unable to finish the race on account of it. From the first green flag to the checkered flag there is no knowing what will happen in between. It's like basketball and football, hockey, any competitive sport in that no two games are anywhere near the same. Jr Earnhardt was creeping toward the front of the pack, coming into being a serious contender, then shit happened and he was set back two laps in time lost getting a repair in the pit.  

 

 

 

 

 

Here is Kyle Busch leading Truex Jr to the finish line. Busch won by simply outrunning everybody else. That's what it takes to win. Talking with the microphone when it was over, first words KB spoke was to point out the crew did it for him. They deserved the coca~cola to take a swig from for the camera as much as he did. The cars this year are beautiful in a whole new style of beautiful. I appreciate the beautiful designs of race cars, cars made to go 200mph+. The body shapes are designed with computer now for the least resistance in air flow. They fly like birds through the air and swim like fish in water, streamlined and light-weight cutting through the elements that become physical at certain speeds. I've noticed they have bigger flaps that turn up to help slow the car down when it needs to in a hurry. Bigger spoiler too, the wing that goes across the back of the trunk lid for better stability at high speeds. The drivers interviewed are excited about how much better this year's cars hold the road. I've noticed this year on the 2 mile tracks where they run between 150 and 200 the cars don't lose traction so much when they touch. It used to be, when one car touched  another, look out.

 

 







 

 

 

"Is that where they drive and turn left, drive and turn left?'

"Yes, that's where they drive and turn left."

 

"Is that where they drive around in circles?

"Yeah, that's where they drive around in circles."

 

Like my grandmother said about merry-go-rounds,

"You get on and go round and round.

When you get off, where you been?"

 

Hey, y'all, it's a race. A circular track is a contained space

to simulate a straight line across Texas. It's simply a race.

 

 

 



 

 

*

HAVE A LITTLE DRINK ON ME

The Sunday afternoon race happened in California, a two mile track. 200mph was their speed all the way around the track. They'd go into a curve at 200+ and come out of it at 175 thereabouts. They were aggressive today from the green flag all the way through to the checkered flag. It was a good run. No bad wrecks. One driver lost traction and his car careened with locked brakes directly into a wall at probably 100mph, straight on. It lifted the car up in the air. The driver was put on a stretcher and taken away in an ambulance. I'd say it jarred him pretty good. A flat tire from time to time brought out the yellow flag and pitstops. The end fell right into Kyle Busch's lap. He was running third behind two whose names I forget battling it out in a neck and neck run for the finish line. One bumped the other and they both lost traction. Kyle Busch zipped past them and Jr Earnhardt right behind him making it a surprise win for Busch. He is the driver who catches my attention most. I've seen him lose traction several times and he kept it in the road. He has a special skill for getting his traction back. He's like somebody good at sand trap shots in golf. I was glad to see him get the win.

I was glad to see Jr Earnhardt get a good second. He is evidently top dog in points now. He's good at keeping his points up and not winning. Since Senior's death, Jr hasn't been an especially aggressive driver. He places well every time, but doesn't appear to be lusting for first so much he'll drive crazy to get it. I can't pretend to be anything but interested in passing, but I think I've seen a difference in Jr Earnhardt's driving since Senior's fatal wreck. He seems to have caution running side by side with his winning spirit. He's the driver I catch myself pulling for in every race. I pull for Kyle Busch too. And Tony Stewart. At the end of the race Stewart tore into somebody whose name I don't remember, hit him a couple times it looked like, and was hauled away by his teammates, one on each arm. He was boiling. This guy on the track had blocked Stewart from getting by him and the move screwed Stewart up. He certainly believed he had cause kick some ass, even if it is on tv. I like Stewart's spirit. I was glad to see no big wrecks occurred. A few spinouts. I hated it for Clint Bowyer when his engine blew. The cockpit filled with smoke and him doing 180 coming out of a curve. I don't know how he breathed. The car took its time coming to a halt, smoking tires and tearing up turf, smoke billowing out the side windows, the cockpit a dense cloud of exploded engine smoke. It took him awhile to get outside the car when it came to rest. I began to wonder if he might be dead from the smoke. He crawled out and stood upright.

The Bud beer commercial of the Clydesdale horse and the guy that raised him from birth, Stevie Nicks' singing. It's like a whole story in half a minute. I don't get tired of seeing it. It was one of the SuperBowl new commercials, the one most talked about. For my way of seeing, it's the best commercial I think I've seen. It makes me wet-eyed every time I see it, once a week. Three years later the horse spots him in the crowd. I like the brevity of how the whole story is told in just a few moving images like snapshots. It's moving in the heart. The fun part is that I have to think about it to remember what beer it advertises. Bud is not a beer of my choice. I've had plenty, drinking with other people and that's what they had. I don't mean to say I'm above it. Yellow bubbly water doesn't satisfy my palate when I want beer. I don't require bigdog beer either. I like the middle range in beer, same as in wine. I tend to like a German beer about the best. Not big frothy Beer Haus mug beer, but bottled beer from the grocery store in Sparta. They have a good enough selection for me. I so seldom buy a sixpack that I don't remember last time. The girls at the register in the grocery store must think I'm religious because I don't buy beer. Only beer I've had in several years has been Red Oak brewed in or near Burlington. It satisfies how I like beer to taste. Can't get it at the grocery store. Soon I'll be driving by Burlington, will stop and maybe pick up a box of bottles to use my Red Oak bottle opener on that I use for keychain. Have a Red Oak party of one. Drink away my frontal lobe, get down on the floor with Caterpillar and have a talk.

My thinking is, why pee all night to get to a certain place in the head when I can get there in a hurry with some good 100+ proof liquor and not pee so much. Wine is fine, but liquor's quicker. I don't see any point in wasting time getting there. Go straight there and keep it there in moderation right on through. I like to put up my sail, catch the wind and go. Then ride with the wind, not a race, just a nice gentle flow. I don't like hangovers and puking. I've learned where the lines are for both. By this time in the life I never drink enough to have a headache of any sort in the morning. Two drinks of good liquor and I have no hangover. Three and I do. Three makes me a little wobbly too. Four makes me not want to get up out of my chair for a long time, sit back and let other people do the talking; that is, if I don't get on a talking jag. I only did that once that I recall. And Oh Lordie how I embarrassed myself, not so much what I said, but the nonstop jabber that never ended. I couldn't stop it. I talked like a spoiled child. Bad headache in the morning. That behavior happened in the younger years of finding the boundaries. I was a bit of a slow learner in the boundary department. Early on, getting shit-faced was worth the hangover. Later, it's not. That still leaves me plenty of room to enjoy good liquor. A couple drinks of some super fine hard liquor is what I call candy. I like it straight. I like the bite. Of store-bought liquor, Haitian rum satisfies me about the best, and Wild Turkey Rye.

I don't mean to suggest I drink regularly, because I can't afford to. Though I like having something for a sip now and again mainly for the flavor, for the candy of it. Like I have some within reach I've not touched in probably two weeks. Had a sip then. It was a few weeks or more before that I tasted it. You don't have to worry about me pulling an Edgar Allen Poe dead drunk on the side of the street. To get that helpless out in the open in public with no backup is something I can't allow myself. Nor can I go to a blackjack dealer and throw away thousands of dollars, even hundreds, even any. I'm not interested in money enough to gamble. I like the George Thoroughgood song, I Drink Alone. Can't drink anyplace but at home anymore. That's ok by me. I prefer to drink at home anyway. I think it's somewhere in my horoscope that I don't like being out in the world in a totally vulnerable mode. Like in Murphy's Law, if something can go wrong, it will go wrong. I like to have some conscious control when things start drifting in that direction. I don't want to be like a college student guy I saw some years ago walking across a suburban street plastered drunk. His foot hit the curb, he flopped face down on the sidewalk, plop, right in front of me. There was nothing to do but leave him alone. At the suggestion of help he became belligerent. I figured he was where he wanted to be, successfully shit-faced, face down in his nose's blood on the pavement. Patience for stupid white men is not one of my virtues, and I walked around him.


*

SATURDAY AFTERNOON RAMBLE

I've been complaining about the weather over the last weeks. Today I must exclaim delight. The temp is up to 65, gentle breeze, enough to keep wind chimes swinging outside the open door picking light tunes, bringing to mind Japanese composer Toru Takemitsu. Wind chimes have an Asian sound to my music ear. Anyway, old world Asian. The new Asia is about like the new West characterized by noise and pollution. I saw a photo a few days ago of pollution in Beijing, at least as bad as Los Angeles  It looked something like the pollution inside a nascar stadium during a race, an upside down bowl of pollution over the bowl of the seats and the track. At a race, it is exhilarating to smell the pollution of fuel, burnt rubber and the roar of forty-some cars louder than an auditorium concert by The Cars. In an urban situation, the same smell and noise is irritating. There again, context. Interpretation according to context. At a race, the noise and the pollution that burns the eyes is thrilling. Standing on a street corner waiting for the light in a fog of exhaust fumes and rubber molecules, eyes burning, it doesn't feel right to live in such conditions.

At the track it's not even noticed, except as one more aspect of the race to be thrilled about. Adults rant at kids about rock music is going to make them deaf, and kids don't care. When I'm at a rock concert, I don't care if it makes me deaf. Remember when parents told kids that watching the tv up close would make you go blind? Now everybody looks at a computer monitor closer than any kid watched tv, and nobody went blind. If I were to go to Beijing I'd complain about the pollution and want to be heard where it matters. At a race track, I say, Git-er-done! What a strange mix the modern world has made of us. I believe there is common agreement that the modern world is getting worse instead of better. Even pre-Reagan when Progress was the guiding beacon, it seemed like worse was the direction of the progress, not better. Turns out, it was better because it was dealing with a quickly increasing international population. Like Garrison Keiler says, Doing what needs to be done. We needed more cars, more highways, more houses, more food, more entertainment, more of everything. We're in an economy that the need for More has created, and now the republicans are shutting down the economy for the working people, punishment for electing to presidential office, twice, somebody who does not figure on the social ladder at all, and a democrat at that. The 1% doesn't care. The more We The People are at odds with each other, the smoke screen obscuring the funnelling of our money we work for into corporate Cayman Island, Bermuda and Swiss tax-free accounts, we keep ourselves busy being mad at each other. They laugh, we lose.

In the future it will be questioned why We The People allowed the 1% to take all our money, keep us in perpetual war with poor, defenseless countries, driving them deeper into poverty, taking their money and leaving the American people in advancing poverty. Corporate television is the greatest propaganda device ever on the face of the earth that keeps us believing the false is true and the true is false. It can be used to make us believe anything, even Ann Coulter and the other Faux news deceivers. What kind of society is it that permits a tv station to give out false information as news every day and thrive from it? The most pathetic part is that Faux news is a republican station spewing the republican party line. It's out in the open. Deception is the nature of the republican party. In the last election, it turned out they deceived themselves and less that 51% of everybody else. I have to say it is doing me good to watch the republican party implode like the twin towers. The republican party has done so much damage to the American people in my lifetime that cannot be undone, I want to see them implode fast and get out of the way. Then the democrats would split and the Joe Lieberman half would become the new republican party. There is no point wishing it away. All I can figure to do is deal with it. William Buckley was perhaps the only intellectual I've seen in my lifetime from the republicans, and he wasn't much. He was irrelevant as he spoke, or wrote. But how could an up-front anti-intelligence party with Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter its philosophes have an intellectual?

The falseness we see boiling to the surface like grease has always been with us. It's coming out into the open now to be released in this cleansing time of life on earth. A couple hundred years into the future, historians will look at this time and think we must have been living in misery all the time. And they'd be right. They'll say we're living in enlightenment too, and they'd be right. We'd be even nuttier than we are without Zoloft, Prozac and the long list of mood-enhancing delights we need now. I take it by living rurally surrounded by Christmas tree fields. This time of year they're mulching culls, the trees they can't sell, getting them out of the way and planting all new seedlings. Last time I saw the owner of the land I was told all bright-eyed that they're taking out all the trees this year, like they're doing it just for me. I know better than to believe anything I'm told by certain people and said, "What's next?" No answer. Distracted suddenly. Later for that. Wait and see. All new seedlings is the answer. One thing about the Christmas tree fields, the maze gives the rabbits a chance escaping coyote pursuers. Living rurally is how I handle it. In 1968 I learned not to get involved in anything political. I can't help paying attention to the foolishness of American government, because I'm seeing the process of the undoing of American Democracy from the inside by corporate rule and racism. I prefer to see the process from outside the whirlwind than from in it. Cities have become places I cannot live. The stress of urban living is something I will not allow myself to live with.


*

CURTIS TURNER AND LORNE CAMPBELL

Have been in a reading logjam again. I'm in three books, all interesting, went from one to the other after coming to a standstill about half way through each. Then just came to a standstill. Wanting something to read that makes me anxious to open it again and read some more. These three just dried up on me. Finished one a couple days ago. I will finish them, just needed a break. At the library I saw a biography of early NASCAR driver, Curtis Turner, FULL THROTTLE, by Robert Edelstein. Thought I'd give it a go. First thing I did was look in the index for my friend Lorne Campbell, who knew Turner, was one of his closest friends and his legal mind. His name was not there. I laughed and sent a note to him in spirit telling him he was free. He'd told me this man Doc Morris, involved in early NASCAR, wrote a small biography of Turner years ago. He talked to Campbell about Turner and Campbell told him if he puts his name in the book, he'll sue him. His name never appeared in the book. I doubt it was a fists on hips declaration, rather a conversational notation between men who knew each other well and were friendly. Knowing Campbell, I imagine he told him he'd like his name not to be used, and to seal it with certainty, added the PS, in good humor. It didn't need to be spoken as a warning, because Morris would have known Campbell well enough to pay attention.


Lorne Campbell was a wild man just like Curtis Turner, but more in a mental way, while Turner acted everything out physically and emotionally. He had a good mind too. Campbell told me Turner was one of five conmen he'd represented. He missed them. Only one was living then, Hugh Rakes, in Floyd, Virginia. When I say represented, he was their legal counsel and courtroom representative. He had the best conman mind of them all, as he was a conman by the law. They would tell him what they wanted to do, and he would would do the legal work. Campbell made a lot of money in timber over the years. Reading about Turner's timber deals, buying a mountain of timber and selling it before the closing for double or triple what he put into it. This is how Campbell told me they operated. There is no mention in the biography that Turner was a conman. He's called a businessman. If I were writing the bio, I wouldn't call him a conman either. I don't say that in blame. Reading about Turner's charisma with other men for his rugged masculinity, and with women for his rugged masculinity, he was somebody who had to have something going at all times, several at the same time. Brilliant mind with minimum school education. Campbell only went through high school. He studied law for one year with an elder lawyer in Independence, who was also a state senator from SW Virginia, Senator Parsons. He passed the Virginia bar in the last year it could be done before a new law required a law school degree.


I had the opportunity one time to see Campbell in a courtroom. This was in his years between 75 and 80 when his driving was good enough, but he didn't have the endurance to drive all day. I drove him around SW Virginia to courthouses in the different counties where he was representing clients. In Roanoke, in Federal court, he was representing Hugh Rakes before a judge. I usually stayed in the car and read. It wasn't all courtroom. This one day he asked me to come inside and see the proceedings. It had to do with Hugh Rakes selling a mountain of coal to Exxon, which was having, what seemed to me, a legitimate dispute with Rakes. I had never seen Campbell's face so stone-like before. He looked like a marble bust of a Roman general. His face was rectangular in straight lines, deep lines like in Roman likenesses. The face never changed. It was the ultimate poker face carved from stone. He was a good poker player too. He informed the judge of this law and that law, precedents, and had the judge in his pocket from the start with the charisma of his intelligence. In the courtroom, his intelligence had a powerful charisma. It was all intelligence, too, because no charm went with it. It was the same as a speaking Roman statue in a light blue suit. He preferred to go before a judge than a jury, because a jury required theatrics; whereas with a judge, it was straight the law.


Campbell stays in the front of my mind reading about Curtis Turner. The Turner I'm reading about accords perfectly with Campbell's memories of him. We drove by a place near Thomas Bridge, Virginia, somewhere between there and Marion, where Curtis ran on a dirt track in his first years racing. We stopped at a mechanic's shop to visit an old buddy from that time, one of Curtis's mechanics. He showed me a bridge Curtis did his 180 turn on. He showed me places and told of experiences at the parties Curtis gave. It was wide open. I mean wide open by today's standard. The bio, I knew before I opened it, wouldn't go into some of the detail Campbell told me. Babes at all times. Liquor at all times. He told me of a time Curtis landed his plane on main street (hwy 58) in Independence, before they had electrical wires. He said the most memorably beautiful sight he ever saw in his life was in the plane with Curtis on their way to LasVegas, flying over the Rockies. Two horses standing on the peak of a snow-covered mountain. I think it was about age 36 that Campbell experienced the march of the pink elephants in a Marion hotel room. He'd come to his own limit. Had to cut out the liquor. But that was all.


Campbell's spirit left the body 1989, days after the fall of the Berlin Wall and Boris Yeltsen standing on a tank announcing the end of the Soviet system. He said he never believed he would live to see the day. He was at the hospital at New Smyrna, Florida, the next town south of Daytona, city of memories for him. Reading of those times at Daytona with Curtis Turner, I know Campbell was there some of the times, and this well-told account of an American life gives me a broader look into the world Campbell told me about in the hours we spent on the highways of SW Virginia. I asked him one day if he felt like he had a life purpose. It wasn't out of the blue. We talked about these sorts of subjects. He said it was to keep mountain boys out of prison; mountain boys don't belong in prison. And that's what he did. He was known as a lawyer who would "hold your hand all the way to the prison door," meaning he'll keep working every angle he can twist to keep you out, right up to the very last moment. He was good in court. His legal representation was pro bono to anyone from Whitetop mountain in Grayson County. He loved the people of Whitetop. They were his people, the people he loved in his heart, the people whose spirit he identified with as his own.

A rogue, a rounder, a lowlife to the town people, the country people loved him. I learned long ago in Grayson County never to mention his name to town people. Country people light up every time at the mention of his name. It was the country people he loved, loved them so much that in his heart he was one of them. And he was honored that they thought of him as one of them. The town people are about appearances; the country people are about who you are, your character. Rogue he may have been, but his character was exemplary. He told me, meaning it from the same place he meant he was about keeping mountain boys out of prison, the only man he respects is a man who will not rat on his friends. He said it is a rare man, indeed, who would not rat. In Abingdon, Virginia, he called me into the courthouse another time to see a man in the witness stand ratting on people he'd worked with in the drug trade, them sitting there looking at him. The man's eyebrows brooded so low over his eyes that his eyes looked out from dark shadows. It taught me much, just to see his face, what ratting was doing to him, to stay out of prison. It's mighty tempting. Campbell, when he was 19, spent 6 months in prison for refusal to rat on a friend in court.


While reading Curtis Turner's life is a page-turner, a very well written page-turner, telling about somebody who was a friend of a friend of mine, brings my friend who has been gone from this world for 22 years back to mind like I could get in the car and go over and see him right now. When it comes to character, Lorne Campbell was a model for character in my life. He had lived in these mountains his entire adult life, coming here from SanDiego when he was 19, went to jail first thing, came out and took up studying law with Senator Parsons after deciding he wanted to be a practicing lawyer. In his own mind, he was the same as the people he worked to keep out of prison. The guys that skirted the edge of the law were his brothers in the spirit. That was the road he liked to travel. In words he said to me, he believes the American penal system is cruel and unusual punishment, therefore unconstitutional. He couldn't change the system, but he could give it all he's got to keep mountain boys away from its dehumanizing intent. I mentioned this to lawyer Donna Shumate some years later and she said the rub is, it is indeed cruel, but not unusual. He thought it was unusual where basic humanity was concerned. Campbell, himself, was my idea of a full human being, one who lived his life fully.

The day before his spirit left the body he said to me, "I've been looking at my life. Half of it has been good and half of it was bad. I've forgiven everybody everything." I heard balance and knew he was on his way. The view out his hospital window was the bridge from the mainland to the beach where Curtis Turner used to race on the beach and Lorne Campbell had some of the best memories of his lifetime.



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SUNDAY AFTERNOON RACE

     pics taken from the tv by tj worthington

Yesterday was the big race at the one mile Phoenix track, the 500. I felt like it was a neither here nor there race to watch, though I doubt that's how it felt in the cockpits of the cars. I suppose I mean it didn't have much of a dramatic racial character. All the cars are equally well made and finely tuned. All the drivers are about equally trained and equally alert. Nobody could pull away from the pack, the lead changed continually, and it didn't matter who was in the lead at any given moment. It was one of those races that runs its course and then in the last 50 laps they start positioning themselves, moving toward the front, the last 10 laps pedal to the metal. It was also a race of few wrecks.

When something happened, it was usually one car with a blown tire ("sudden air pressure loss") or blown motor, and the ones that went out of control with smoking tires seldom hit any other cars. I don't like seeing half a dozen cars put out of the race randomly because somebody in front of them lost traction. At the same time, that's part of racing. Behind a car on the interstate, a cloud of smoke suddenly swallows the car maybe ten feet ahead going 70, the engine blew and the driver locked the brakes. There y'are, either in the highway patrol car filling out the accident report for insurance, or in the ambulance on the way to the hospital or the funeral home, whichever. 

Justin and I gathered at Chad's place in Pine Swamp to see the race with pizza, "wings," and beer. Well, Chad had the beer. Justin drank coke and I had gatorade. We all like a good race, but I didn't see that any of us was excited, ever at any moment of the race. It was a watch and see race. I hope this isn't the nature of the races this year with restrictor plates that hold everybody to the same speed and don't allow anyone to leave the pack. Though without the restrictor plates they run in single-file lines where nobody can pass anybody, and they run in a line all afternoon. With the restrictor plates they run in packs. Somebody's loss of traction takes half a dozen cars out of the race. Racing has become like other tv sports, so tight that the one making the least mistakes wins.

Surely the races will change as races go by. If these beginning races spell the nature of the races this year, I won't be watching much more. I suspect that applies to a lot of people. I'd rather take a nap than watch a boring race. Chad and Justin are race enthusiasts, the kind that like to punch the air with a fist and holler. We didn't even talk much during this race. It felt like we were watching the cars run round and round the track just to burn high-octane gas at the rate of 4.2mi per gallon. One of the talking heads said something about fuel economy and I laughed out loud. These races are not about fuel economy. There is nothing "green" about them. Considering gas, oil and tires, one of these races probably consumes a full oil tanker. Regular car tires take 7-8 gallons of oil per tire. Those race tires I'd imagine take probably 15, thereabouts. Approximately 120+ gallons of gas per car per race. 40 cars run, and it's 4800 gallons of gasahol, a portion of which is raw white liquor, made by moonshiners, with such high alcohol content it's undrinkable.

Several years ago Justin scored two tickets to the Charlotte 500. It wasn't long before inside the bowl of the track, the bleachers the side of the bowl, the air was pungent with burnt fuel and burnt rubber. The air over the track was an upside down bowl on top of the bowl of the track. Inside that bowl was pollution such that no city in the world has the like. The pollution was so extreme, it was exciting. It felt like power inhaling it. Not a good place for volvo driving middle class PC liberals. NASCAR is definitely not green. I don't fault it for that. Of course it's not green. It's about oil consumption. The noise, too, is so loud it's like a really loud band playing thrash, like Pantera, in a mega auditorium. The kind of sound you don't need ears to hear. These races are a kind of rebellion, like dirty jokes, a sharp stick in the eye to people who figure carbon footprints. Even when a race is boring, a race is a race is a race. It's all good.

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TONY STEWART WINS HOMESTEAD 2011

 pedal to the metal

changing tires 

carl edwards laying rubber

tony stewart leader of the pack

tony stewart a'layin it to it

tony stewart as seen by carl edwards

The race at Homestead, Florida, today I had to say was the best race I've ever watched. If it isn't, I don't remember being this satisfied by a race, ever. Tony Stewart's was a win by the best driver and the best car in the race. I like it when it works out like that. One car touched the wall at the end of a turn and lost it, smoked his tires, all the cars were able to avoid him smoking his way down the bank of the track. Another time somebody lost it pretty bad, but was the only car hurt in the incident. So much smoke from the braking tires at 150 mph the car is enveloped and out of sight in the cloud of white smoke. Somebody lost a transmission. That was it for the mistakes. The rest of it was a clean run that was all the drivers going all out. It was a good track with fairly predictable handling for the drivers. It wasn't like a desert track that is hot while the sun is on it and cold when the sun sets, changing driving conditions considerably. The Homestead track didn't seem to have any eccentricities. Yes it did. It had the outside of the track banked good on turns while the inside of the track wasn't banked well. They could go faster riding the wall around a turn. 

It was a thrill to watch Tony Stewart take charge of that race. He started off good, then something from possibly the blown transmission hit his grille, but fortunately didn't get the radiator. That set him back from about 5th place to 40th. He worked his way up to 2nd place. A yellow flag put him back to 5th place. He came out of pit stops a few places back from going in, but he came out aggressive and took charge passing cars like a drunk on an interstate. First time, I think he came out 7th and in one lap was up to third. Last time, I think he came out of the pit 5th and ran right up to first and showed Carl Stewart his ass end for the rest of the race. It was true sport watching Stewart and Edwards giving it all they had. It was their race from the start. Predictions were that it would be their race. But chance has a way of changing things, so the predictions were cautious. Right away in the race it became clear that it was their race. A few other cars would join them after a yellow flag, but when the race was on, Tony Stewart was passing cars. If I remember correctly, and I don't, I think the announcer said at the end that he'd passed 76 cars in the course of the race. 

Toward the end, the last 50 or so laps, it was an all out run between Edwards and Stewart giving it everything, trying to push the gas pedal through the floorboard. It even felt frustrating watching Edwards behind Stewart, unable to gain more than half a second on Stewart's second and a half lead. They paced the pack and had to pass the cars that wouldn't give them the upper lane of the track. They went through the back of the pack so it started looking like they might take the lead a second time. Edwards was back there going with everything he had and Stewart simply outran him. Both of them outran everybody else such that the cameras were on them the whole second half of the race. They didn't run any in-car cameras today. The cameras around the track at Homestead weren't inventive like some of them where you have odd and interesting angles. The photography at Homestead was standard race photography. It was good. I've no complaints. Odd to see palm trees with winter coming on.

I loved watching Tony Stewart. There was a time it looked like Carl Edwards would be unbeatable. He stayed in the front and led the pack a large number of times, making points like crazy. Stewart could have outpointed him if they'd given points for cars passed. I've never paid much attention to any particular drivers. About half the drivers' names are familiar, and half not. I don't pay attention to them so much as I just like to watch the cars run. I don't care who wins. I want the best driver in the race to win. I like a good run like today with no wrecks, no pileups of 15 and 20 cars, no end over end rolling down the track and sliding for half a mile on its top in the grass. None of that. Just a good, solid race. I love a good race. I started pulling for Stewart in the last half of the race when he had already shown he aimed to win this race. Edwards stayed out in front while Stewart was set back several times, and every time came right back to the challenging position. I saw him make one pass that would take your breath if you were in the car with him. He had perfect command of his steering wheel throughout the race. He never made a mistake. His car was in perfect running order. 

I had the impression that Stewart's car and Edwards' car were equals. At the end, Carl Edwards had a mic pushed into his face as soon as he emerged from the car's side window. He told it straight. He was simply outrun. He mentioned Stewart's strategies, which I didn't know what they were, but he did. He noted the strategies Stewart used with more emphasis than the car being faster. Stewart out maneuvered him. Once Stewart got himself in front of Edwards, he just never let Edwards catch up. If Edwards could have gone any faster, I don't believe Stewart could have. It looked like they were both running as fast as they were able to make their cars go. All Edwards could hope for was a mistake from the driver in front of him, who hadn't made any mistakes and wasn't likely to. He didn't. He won the race fair and square as a race can be won. Carl Edwards couldn't do anything but concede, he got beat. It was a tough one for him to gulp down, the big race for hot dog of the year, and he almost had it. Stewart pulled over to the Victory stand and Edwards stuck his head in the window and they had some good words, you could see on their faces. 

Tony Stewart made $10,000 by taking a drink from a Coke bottle handed to him after he squeezed out the window. People above showering orange Gatorade on him, a steady flow of it while Stewart and announcer with mic are talking. Then it started raining and the shower changed from orange to silver. They were already soaked, so they continued to talk in the rain. Stewart was wildly jacked up after all those hours of intense concentration. He said, "I'll be up all night!" He'd won the race, won the championship. He'd performed several hours of flawless driving, making moves easily that were dare-devil moves. He said while they were on a break during rain that he had nothing to lose. If he loses the race he still comes out second in the championship. So he went all the way, took chances he might not otherwise take. The announcer said several times, "he's on a mission." When it was over, the announcer continued to repeat this was the best race he'd ever seen, speaking my exact words. I loved this race like no other I've ever seen. I might call it the perfect race because it was nothing but a race, an all-out race from the first green flag to the checkered. 

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