Latest / Kenny Wallace Media / Is Wisconsin Local Racing Dead?! | Coffee With Kenny

Transcript

Is Wisconsin Local Racing Dead?! | Coffee With Kenny · Kenny Wallace Media

• 0:03
  Happy Friday morning, everybody. The king.
• 0:09
  King Louie is in his seat. Hey, Louie.
• 0:13
  Louie, the legend. He don't want nothing to do with
• 0:17
  us today. Like I said, a man on his
• 0:19
  throne. All right, yesterday had this
• 0:29
  man from Wisconsin, I'm going to leave his name out of it.
• 0:34
  Had this man from Wisconsin get a hold of me.
• 0:39
  This man called my brother Rusty's motorcycle company and
• 0:46
  he said, hey, I need Kenny Wallace's phone number.
• 0:51
  I have one of his trophies when he said QuickTime in the Bush
• 0:56
  series at Indianapolis Raceway Park, beautiful trophy.
• 1:01
  I had given this trophy to Carl Wagner.
• 1:04
  We lost Carl a while back, but Carl is a great motor builder
• 1:10
  from Wisconsin. I believe Carl Wagner's from
• 1:13
  Wisconsin. So anyway, this man is an older
• 1:18
  man, he said. He said, Kenny, I'm 76 years old
• 1:22
  and, you know, Carl passed away and I was a good friend of his
• 1:25
  and I was in charge of a lot of his stuff.
• 1:28
  This now this is what the man told me.
• 1:30
  And he sent me a picture of the trophy.
• 1:32
  And sure enough, it's a beautiful trophy, glass and
• 1:37
  stainless steel on the bottom. And I'm laughing.
• 1:41
  There's Louie. He playing hard to get.
• 1:44
  So anyway, I said, yeah, I'd love to have that.
• 1:48
  And I don't know how the trophy got to Carl because it's a
• 1:54
  really nice one. So anyway, you know, as as it
• 2:00
  always goes, the older people want to talk.
• 2:04
  They just, you know, they're retired, they're getting a
• 2:06
  little sad. And he makes the statement, he
• 2:08
  goes well before I die, if I die, this this trophy will just
• 2:13
  end up in the trash. So he's very nice man.
• 2:16
  Well, he starts talking to me and he starts telling me how
• 2:23
  Wisconsin short track racing is dying and he said the only track
• 2:30
  left is Slinger for local racing.
• 2:34
  Now all of you Wisconsin people, I need you to respond because
• 2:39
  this put me in shock. I've always considered Wisconsin
• 2:44
  the racing capital of the world, the state of Wisconsin.
• 2:49
  I mean, we're talking Dick Trickle, Matt Kenseth, Joe
• 2:54
  Shearer, Alan Kwiki, Tom Reffner, you know, all the big
• 3:03
  boys respond right here. Go ahead and Add all your
• 3:08
  Wisconsin racing heroes. Scott Wimmer.
• 3:13
  Scott Wimmer, my buddy Chris Rice used to call him Wimma
• 3:18
  because he was from Virginia. Hey, Wimma, Scott Wimma.
• 3:21
  Scott was a good race car driver.
• 3:24
  But anyway, this older gentleman said Kenny local racing is dead
• 3:32
  in Wisconsin except Slinger. Is this true?
• 3:37
  I've heard this from everybody. So I'll, I'll just take it at
• 3:43
  its face value, meaning I'll just take it as what what
• 3:46
  everybody says. OK, I'll, I'll, I'll take it as
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  it's true. So we, we still have the Slinger
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  nationals. We still have Slinger going
• 3:57
  good. But is it true?
• 3:59
  Is, is all Wisconsin racing pretty much by the wayside?
• 4:04
  Is local race tracks, Are they gone?
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  Do they not run local anymore? If so, that's extremely sad to
• 4:11
  me because once again, I think all the people in Wisconsin, I
• 4:16
  think they're extremely smart. It's sad to think that Dick
• 4:20
  Trickle, Tom Reffner, Marv Marzovka, hard to believe those
• 4:26
  geniuses. You know, they those guys in
• 4:29
  Wisconsin are so smart that they could make chicken salad out of
• 4:35
  chicken. They were good.
• 4:38
  So I said, man, that's unreal. Well, all the people that are
• 4:43
  older, they, they start getting a little negative sad.
• 4:50
  So all of a sudden out of nowhere, you know, I'm confiding
• 4:54
  with him, meaning I'm, I'm agreeing with him.
• 4:57
  I'm going, oh, that's really sad.
• 4:59
  I can't believe that, you know, So then all of a sudden he wants
• 5:03
  to make himself feel better. So he says to me, what happened
• 5:08
  to NASCAR after he got done telling me why Wisconsin racing
• 5:17
  has has died during this whole time.
• 5:21
  He's telling me, yeah, there's just so much more to do.
• 5:25
  That's why Wisconsin racing has failed.
• 5:27
  You know, society has changed. The kids are just doing other
• 5:31
  things. They they're on those damn
• 5:33
  phones. So then later on he goes, hey,
• 5:37
  Kenny, what what happened to NASCAR?
• 5:42
  And I said to him the same thing that happened to Wisconsin auto
• 5:47
  racing. There was dead silence.
• 5:57
  Sometimes misery does not like company.
• 6:04
  So when when one thing fails, you don't want the other to
• 6:07
  fail. So except NASCAR is still alive
• 6:13
  because it, it had enough money, it was big enough.
• 6:18
  And now, you know, there's that old saying if, if you can hang
• 6:21
  on long enough, if you can hang on long enough, you might, you
• 6:25
  might just make it so NASCAR has had enough money.
• 6:31
  They've been hanging on long enough that it's turning now and
• 6:35
  we're no, we're no longer going to see the 250,000 people
• 6:39
  grandstands, but we're seeing NASCAR survive because it was
• 6:45
  big enough and now it's leveled out and it's actually doing very
• 6:50
  well. However, a short track when the
• 6:56
  kids leave and they don't want to go local racing no more.
• 6:59
  These kids, they don't even want a license.
• 7:02
  They're not in a hurry to get a driver's license.
• 7:06
  That's one thing that man said. These kids nowadays, they're not
• 7:10
  in a hurry to get a license. That's why Wisconsin racing has
• 7:13
  failed. Kids don't even care about cars
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  anymore. So when he said to me what
• 7:21
  happened to NASCAR, and I said the same thing that happened to
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  every local track in America, kids, kids don't like cars
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  anymore. You know, games, games on your
• 7:36
  phone, games, you know, on your iPad, just gaming has taken
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  over. So respond right here.
• 7:47
  Respond right here. How is your local track doing
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  now? I know that Oswego's, you know,
• 7:52
  hanging in there and our local tracks are hanging in there, but
• 7:57
  there's no local track that we have.
• 7:59
  I mean, you know, Vermont that you know that the widow maker,
• 8:05
  it's still hanging in there, but you know, as your track survive
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  is the bottom line. All right, I thought I'd share
• 8:17
  that story with you. We're getting ready to go on one
• 8:21
  last family cruise. Wish me luck.
• 8:23
  We're leaving right now. I'm going to go ahead and I
• 8:26
  don't think I'm going to shave. I just get in the shower and
• 8:29
  we're on Carnival Cruise Line, all thirteen of us, but
• 8:35
  Brittany's pregnant, so there's there's our 6th grandbaby on the
• 8:39
  way, so that means 14. You ready to go?
• 8:43
  Yeah. I need to correct you.
• 8:45
  It's not one last, it's the first with the kids.
• 8:50
  What does that mean? Means it's not going to be our
• 8:53
  last cruise. Well, I meant for the year.
• 8:57
  Oh, we're still. No, we're still going in
• 8:59
  December. Anybody wants to come with us?
• 9:01
  Come on. Do not mess with her cruises.
• 9:06
  She still loves cruising so much.
• 9:08
  I do. All right, one last cruise
• 9:12
  before race season starts and then we're going on another
• 9:14
  cruise in December and, and Kim wants you to come with us.
• 9:19
  So go to call me, call her call Kim if you want to go on our
• 9:23
  cruise in December 704361 7116. That girl loves sun, loves heat.
• 9:34
  I'm white as hell. I'm white freckly.
• 9:37
  She's got that beautiful German Indian skin.
• 9:42
  She she's got great skin. All right, everybody respond
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  right here. What happened to Wisconsin
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  racing? And is it true that kids don't
• 9:54
  even care about cars anymore? Happy Friday.