Latest / BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show / Speaking of Life in the Fast Lane (Steve Post, Part 1)

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Speaking of Life in the Fast Lane (Steve Post, Part 1) · BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show

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BreakFix's History of Motorsports series is brought to you in part
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by the International Motor Racing Research Center, as well as the
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Society of Automotive Historians, the Watkins Glen Area Chamber of
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Commerce, and the Argettsinger family.
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I'm always a big sucker for the story where the small town
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guy makes it in the big time.
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And our featured speaker today is that, quintessentially.
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I'm also a big fan if the small town guy happens to be from this area.
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And by this area, I mean Southern New York, Northern Pennsylvania.
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Mr.
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Post is a guy who, as a kid, grew up on the dusty bull rings of Five Mile
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Point Speedway and Pencan Speedway.
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And once the small town guy who made good is a fellow that I know, that's
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pretty much the trifecta for me.
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I've known Steve now for probably close to 25 years, I think.
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He was a tremendous guy then, he is a tremendous guy now.
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It's taken us three years to get him here, in part because he just
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has such a crazy, crazy schedule.
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And what I'm most happy, and what I think you guys are gonna be Really
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interested in hearing about, you're going to hear about NASCAR and
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drivers and all of that cool stuff.
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But this is really Steve's personal journey.
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This is really the story of a guy from Halstead, Pennsylvania
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who made it to the big time.
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There's eight people that announced for Motor Racing Network.
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And Steve is one of them.
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Small town guy who made it on the big stage.
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Local guy who made it on the big stage.
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And a guy I know personally.
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That's it for me.
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I'm going to introduce Mr.
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Steve Post.
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Thanks very much.
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Thanks for coming.
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Steve.
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Alright, thanks Kip.
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Thank you.
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As Kip has talked about, it has taken about three years to put this
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together, and I'm really shocked that Kip would want to put it together.
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As he mentioned, we've known each other about 25 years, and Kip did bus tours.
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And I recall one of the early bus tours we did was a group
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from the WeGo Racing fan club.
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We went to New Hampshire.
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And the shocking part that Kip would have me back is because I
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was surprised he let me on the bus to return from New Hampshire.
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Back in the day, I enjoyed frosty cold beverages.
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And in many cases, I enjoyed multiple frosty cold beverages.
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So, we're riding in this bus trip to New Hampshire, and this was when
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Stroh's Beer introduced the 30 pack.
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Oh, are you kidding me?
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30 pack of beer.
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So I break out a 30 pack on our bus trip to New Hampshire.
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We get to New Hampshire, we park across the street, and over into the racetrack
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is six lanes of bumper to bumper traffic.
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So we're playing Frogger, trying to get to the traffic.
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I have what I'm taking into the racetrack of my Stroh's 30 pack in
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one of those really handy styrofoam coolers with a nice string handle on it.
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I get halfway through playing Frogger in the six lanes of traffic, the
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handle breaks, the cooler hits the ground, and beer goes everywhere.
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While not wanting to waste the investment in the beer, I do the best thing that
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I know what to do, and I pull my shirt, and I'm rounding up beer cans while all
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the cars are tooting their horns and people are laughing and cat calling.
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And I probably got six or eight of my beers near my shirt there.
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And I look up and here's Kip over along the fence line, just keeled over,
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laughing, laughing out of just the sheer moment of me trying to round up
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my beers, laughing out of embarrassment that this is part of his people.
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These are his group.
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And here we go.
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One of the finest examples.
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So first off.
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Kip, I'm glad you let me get back on the bus to return from New Hampshire,
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and I do appreciate being here, and I'm glad everyone has joined
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us here on this snowy, frosty day.
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So the story kind of starts like this, and it starts with an announcer.
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Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.
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This is Dusty Doyle welcoming you once again to Five Mile Point Speedway, your
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home speedway of the Southern Tier.
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I was a little kid, and my life and my passion began every
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Saturday night with those words.
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Dusty Doyle, five mile point speedway, going to the races with my father.
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And I loved being at the racetrack.
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And I loved listening to Dusty Doyle announce races.
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The Dusty Doyle isms that were out there.
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When a car came off from turn number two, he would go up,
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up, up, up, up the backstretch.
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And you know that he was making time.
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You may or may not have been, but Dusty Doyle sold you.
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That car is going into turn number three faster than any car in the
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history of Five Mile Point has ever gone into turn number three.
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One of my favorites is a mysterious character named Andy.
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We're under caution.
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We're coming through turns three and four, ready to go green.
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And the phrase was, Andy, let him go!
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We all wondered who Andy was.
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The flagger was not Andy, the flagger was Joe Winterstein.
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Who's Andy?
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But every time we'd go green, Andy, let him go!
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And there is actually a Facebook name, Andy, let him go, out there now.
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In tribute of Dusty Doyle.
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The Dusty Doyle isms that were so much fun.
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When the heat rays would roll out and there was 13 cars.
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He would say 12, and another car because it's not good luck
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to say 13 at the racetrack.
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It was always that.
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And when we did that moment at the beginning of the night, ladies and
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gentlemen, will you please stand?
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Let's remember who we are, what we are, and where we are for one
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stanza of our national anthem.
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Dusty Doyle isms, an announcer that had a passion for racing, a guy
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that I never met, but a guy that had such an impact on me along the way.
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My roots in racing go back actually before I was born.
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My father, who is father of ever, I wouldn't put him a year or a decade, my
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father was a mechanic, there was a racer in New Milford, Pennsylvania named Buzz
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Gulick, and Buzz's grandstunts still races along the way, but Buzz Gulick
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raced locally at Pen Can, and my dad was a mechanic on his car before I was born.
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Dad decided at some point that raising a family and they were doing some
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horse showing and some other things that maybe it wasn't compatible with
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working on a race car, so he decided he was going to take the family and take
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us to races, and that's what we did.
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We went to races virtually every night of my childhood along the way.
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It was an amazing childhood.
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It really was.
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And we would go Saturday nights to Five Mile Point Speedway.
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Pen Can was our Friday night track, but in that era, in the early 70s,
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Pen Can was very hit and miss.
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Some year, one club was running it.
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Another year, another club was running it.
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They'd start in May.
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They'd end in August.
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They'd start in August.
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They'd end in September.
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It was very hit and miss.
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So a lot of my memories We're from five mile point Speedway
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down in the Binghamton area.
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And so many great memories.
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We think about racing and we talk about racing now.
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And one of the bygone events that we used to have in racing that I don't see
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too much of anymore are kiddie rides.
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We don't seem to see that too much anymore.
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I think they're important because I remember riding in Wally Locke's J
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10 car at five mile point Speedway.
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And that's 45 years ago.
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I remember climbing in and sitting on the side rails.
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And the rumble of red Harrington's modified was 45 years ago.
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I remember kiddie rides.
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I remember at Penn Can you'd line up along the fence and a car would pull up and you
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didn't have a choice who you're getting.
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I got the chance to ride with Mike Colston in his car.
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The flagger threw us all in the back of it and we went into mud up to
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our knees riding with Mike Colston.
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And I remember those moments, those kiddie rides, those moments.
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45 years later, it meant so much to me that developed this passion of racing.
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Grew up going to Five Mile Point, we would sit on the backstretch.
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We would sit over in turn number three, there was a barrel down at the end of the
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back straightaway, and we would stand on it, it was a big water barrel, big, long
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water barrel, and we would stand on it.
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David Brush, one of my friends, He was the shortest guy, so he would stand in front.
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I'd stand next.
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My brother John would be there or whoever else we would all kind of fall
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into line and we would watch bigger than life names, wheel cars around
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a racetrack guys with a name like Chuck Akulis and Carl Bubby Nagel.
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How about that name?
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Man, there is a great, great race car driver.
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Old Bones, Dave Kniesel.
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Wow, Clark Summit, Pennsylvania.
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Kniesel Speed Sport.
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Man, there's not a cooler guy on the planet than Dave Kniesel.
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Frankie Mears used to come up.
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That was the kid.
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That was a protege of Dave Kniesel.
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And Frankie Mears, he could roll a race car around a racetrack.
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Larry Catlin from down in Waverly.
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Turquoise number 88 coupe.
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What a beautiful race car.
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He won a lot of races in that number 88 coupe car.
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Toughest guy in the world in the history of all of motor sports to pass.
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This is no offense to Dave Marcus and no offense to Ryan Newman, but if you pass
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Gordy Isham at five mile point speedway, you really accomplished something.
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I ran into years ago, Andy Belmont, who raced in the Arca series.
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And I ran into Andy down at Daytona talking about the Arca series.
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And I said, ham from five mile point speedway.
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And he says, I'm telling you what he says.
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I lost 15 years of my life trying to pass Gordy Isham.
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And those were the heroes.
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Those were the racers.
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Those were the big names that we love.
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Those were the big names that we followed along with my
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first recollection of a race.
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And I appreciate there's a Facebook group.
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I went on there a couple of weeks ago and ask, and I think I've
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got the dates on this, right?
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Would have been 1971.
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Would've been the Spring 100 or Miller Dodge 100 at five Mile
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Point, and a guy by the name of Pete Cordes scored the win in that race.
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Blue number 68, bigger than life, Pete Cordes, Walden's floor covering on the
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race car, and Pete Cordes won that race being that was maybe my first memory.
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That became my guy.
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I was a Pete Cordes man, eight years old, but six years old when I first saw
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that race, but I was a Pete Cordes guy.
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My dad, he liked Bubby Nagel.
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My brother was a Chuck A Coolest guy.
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David Brush, he liked Dave Canizel.
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I was all in for Pete Cordes, and I loved watching Pete Cordes race a car.
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Pete Cordes, my hero as a childhood, bigger than life.
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And I just loved watching Pete Cordes score and race cars
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around Five Mile Point Speedway.
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Away from the racetrack, my life was all about racing as well.
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I would take little matchbox cars and line them up around a carpeting, or on
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the floor, and I would announce races.
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I could say the same things that Dusty Doyle said.
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I could say the same things that Cal Arthur over at Pen Can or
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Jimmy Bevins at Pen Can would say.
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There is no way in the world I could sound like Jack Burgess's voice
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ringing through the fairgrounds at the State Fair in Syracuse.
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I would do anything in the world to hear Jack Burgess's voice ringing
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through the fairgrounds at Syracuse.
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Sadly, Jack is no longer with us.
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And even sadder yet is that at that fairgrounds they tore that
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thing down and it's just unreal.
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But all of the voices that I would listen to.
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And I love the way they described races.
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Joe Murata had some great, great lines.
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I love Joe Murata.
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I could listen to Joe Murata call a race.
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Roy Sova, friend of mine up at Oswego Speedway.
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And I love the way announcers called the race.
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And it was a passion of mine on those little matchbox cars.
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I would use Dusty Doyle's lines and Joe Murata's and Jack Burgess's lines.
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And I would love that.
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Another part of my childhood was on Thursdays.
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When all the other kids were riding bikes, or climbing trees, or in the
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creek playing, or doing whatever, I would sit by the mailbox, waiting
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for the gator racing news to arrive.
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Gotta get a gator!
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Oh, I lived for Thursdays when that gator, I would tear into that, and
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I knew the next hour of my life was reading through, taking me places that
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I had never dreamed I would go to see.
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Gotta get a gator, and I'm telling you, Pete the Mailman, that poor guy When
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that gator didn't arrive on Thursday, you want to talk about a kid walking back
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in the driveway cussing out a mailman.
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I was that kid cussing out Pete the Mailman when that gator
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didn't arrive on Thursday.
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Saturday afternoons, the ritual in the family was me sitting on the front porch.
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Where I lived, between Halsted and New Milford, you could see
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both Highway 11 and Highway 81.
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And there they would go, the Kniesel Speed Sport Hauler with Dave Kniesel
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headed to Five Mile Point Speedway.
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Oh ho, we knew we were in for it then, when Dave Kniesel was gonna be there.
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There goes Norm Norton, there goes Doug Holgate, going up there.
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And I would sit there and I would check off who's all gonna be
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at Five Mile Point that night.
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Oh my gosh, there goes Dick Longstreet.
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In his late model, that number 97 late model.
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You know what that meant?
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When Dick Longstreet was running late models, it was a race for second.
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That guy had more bounties on him than anybody in the world.
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And I would sit there on that porch on Saturday afternoons.
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And then we'd have those rainy Saturday afternoons where I'd sit there and
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watch the cars go up and I'd sit there and one would go the other way.
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And I was in complete denial as a kid.
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Oh no, the car must have broke down.
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Oh no, no, no, there's no way.
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And when that second car went by, and the third car went by, I lost my mind.
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I'm telling you, you want to talk about a little kid having a tantrum.
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I am telling you, I was done, because we weren't going to the races, because
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the stupid weather had rained us out.
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on Friday nights or Saturday nights at five mile point.
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That was my young childhood along the way.
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We always went to the races and along with elementary school and then in
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middle school and into high school.
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And I think the first Saturday night we would miss some along
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the way because I am telling you, my father, what a wonderful man.
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The only time we would miss races is we were in Canada fishing.
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So we would go to Canada fishing trips and that would cause us to miss some races.
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But the only planned miss that I had that I ever scheduled something else.
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was my junior prom.
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Oh man, I'm going to the junior prom.
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My brother let me have his car.
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Really cool car.
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Wendy Hine was going to be my date along the way.
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I was going to go to the junior prom.
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Yeah, I was sad.
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I was going to miss five mile point, but you know, it's the junior prom.
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It was a disaster.
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I hated the junior prom.
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I had no fun at all and I felt sorry for poor Wendy Hines stuck with me at the
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junior prom so much so that the night of my senior prom while everyone else was
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borrowing brother's cars and wearing nice.
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I was in the car, headed back to Five Mile Point Speedway where
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I belong, and I spent my senior prom at Five Mile Point Speedway.
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I loved racing as a kid, and I mentioned my father.
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We would go on road trips.
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We'd go to Fonda.
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We went up there one time.
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We went to Albany, Saratoga, went to Lebanon Valley, and one of
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the great trips we would go on every year is Labor Day weekend.
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We would load up.
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Bob and Ella Darrell, mom and dad, all of us kids, and we'd get a
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place somewhere up on Lake Ontario.
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Friday nights, we'd go to Rolling Wheels.
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Saturday nights, we'd go to the Bud 200 modified race at Oswego.
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We did a little bit of asphalt racing.
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We'd go to Shangri La a little bit.
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And boy, with the Bud 200, we were regulars there.
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We loved going to Oswego for the Bud 200.
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We'd go to Weed Sport on Sunday night.
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And on Monday, coming back, we would go to the New York State Fairgrounds.
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While kids were running to the cotton candy stands.
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While kids were running to do rides.
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While other kids were running to do this, or listen to that, or see that.
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This guy was a beeline to the ticket window because we were going in
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to watch the Labor Day Classic at the New York State Fairgrounds,
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and we did that many, many years.
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What a wonderful, wonderful weekend of racing with the family, and it
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is something that I cherish forever.
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One of our other favorite events was the Northeast 150.
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Up at Weed Sport.
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We'd go up there and we had our Pete Cordes and our Chuck
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Akulis and our Carl Nagel's.
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The beauty of the Northeast 150 is that we would see Carl
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Nagel racing against Will Kegel.
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Oh my gosh.
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Wiley Will Kegel.
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The Tampa Terror.
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I read about him in Gator Racing News.
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And here he is in front of me.
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Dave Lape.
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He built his own race cars.
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Lapco chassis.
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Oh my gosh.
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Dave Lape.
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What a legend.
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Jumping Jack Johnson.
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Kid AJ Slideways.
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Magic Shoes.
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Mike McLaughlin.
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So I'm sitting there and it's overload for a kid.
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You've got Will Kegel and Carl Bubby Nagel and Dave Kniezel and Pete Cordes and
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Alan Johnson and just overload for a kid.
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It was the Northeast 150.
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Man, what an experience.
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We did that a number of years and all of those were great, but our favorite
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event, and actually I was just talking to dad about it a couple of weeks ago.
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Was the Eastern States 200 down at Orange County Fairgrounds, Middletown, New York.
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Man, that was it.
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That was, that was big time.
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1978.
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We watched a man by the name of Lou, the monk Lazaro win that race.
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Lou Lazaro.
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While everyone is rolling in with nice trailers, with wheel racks, Lou Lazaro
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would roll into a track with a flat trailer pulled by a station wagon.
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With tires in back of the station wagon and a dog is the only person with him.
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He would roll into the racetrack and you know what would happen?
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He'd whoop everyone's butt.
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Lou the Monk Lozaro.
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I watched him win the 1978 Eastern States 200.
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Man, what a memory.
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1979.
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Oh, it was a fluke.
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No way this could have happened.
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The Eastern States 200, 1979.
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The kid got lucky.
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Oh, the kid, he was not Will Kegel.
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He was not Buzzy Rudiman.
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He was not Frankie Schneider.
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He was not Lou Lazzaro.
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Some kid by the name of Brett Hearn won.
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The Eastern States 200.
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Oh, what a fluke.
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That is never going to happen again.
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Well, it happened 10 more times.
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Brett Hearn, kid, but I watched him win his first Eastern States 200.
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Maybe my favorite, 1980.
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Oh, just the name since chills.
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Just the names.
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Kenny Brightbell.
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Huh?
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I don't know if any of you remember Kenny Brightbell.
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I'm telling you, still around, still doing stuff, raced up to a few years ago.
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And every once in a while, I think he still climbs aboard a race car.
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Kenny Brightbill, on the side of the car, on the side of the hauler.
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Brightbill Donkey Farms, we haul ass.
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Yeah, and I'm telling you what, Kenny Brightbill, and it didn't
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matter where he went, he hauled ass.
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That guy could wheel a race car.
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Later got to meet Kenny Brightbill, and the first thing I noticed about
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him was when he shucked my hand.
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He shook my forearm.
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His hand was so big he would grab you.
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His fingers were at your elbow and your hand, your palm to palm.
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Just an amazing guy.
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Kenny Bright Bill.
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I watched him win the Eastern States 200 in 1980.
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And I guess the point that I'm getting at is, is it's no mystery how I ended
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up where I ended up because I had the best childhood that any kid could
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ever have going to the racetrack.
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Watching heroes going to the pits afterwards and meeting your heroes.
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My dad was buddies with Eddie Rafferty.
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Eddie Rafferty showed up at my house one time.
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Oh my gosh.
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I mean, this was an amazing childhood that I have, and I'm
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so blessed with my mom and dad.
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They are just so amazing.
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And we did so much together.
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My mom and dad were school bus contractors in Pennsylvania.
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The bus contractor, the school districts would contract with individuals.
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It wasn't like New York state where you were, the school district
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owns all the buses and they just hire people to drive them.
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In Pennsylvania, they contracted with the people.
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So mom and dad had the same schedule we did.
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So our summer times when we weren't at the races, we were in Canada
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fishing and just a blessed childhood and amazing childhood that I had.
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And I'm just so thankful to have been raised in turn number three
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at five mile point speedway and going to all those races.
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Graduated from Blue Ridge High School in 1982.
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And I had this really weird, awkward, backward misconception
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of what a career needed to be.
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Somewhere I got twisted up that you never let your passion become your career
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because you could then learn to hate both of them and that I am telling you
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is the most faulty premise on the planet.
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Okay, I lived my life for a number of years thinking I don't want racing to be
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my career because I don't want to hate and I don't know where that came from.
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I know it didn't come from my parents.
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I'm not sure where it came from, but I had this premise,
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so I go off, I get accepted at.
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I'm at Penn State University and I am going to be an accountant.
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Yes, I'm going to be an accountant.
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And I'm going to go to the races on the side.
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So I roll through my freshman year and my sophomore year and
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I'm at Penn State Hazleton.
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And I go to my junior year at the main campus and the big accounting 401 class.
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This is the Mac daddy of all accounting classes.
19:06
This is the one man.
19:07
This is the one.
19:08
This is going to set me up for life.
19:10
And I'm sitting there at night library or in my room doing the homework.
19:14
Oh my God, I hate this stuff.
19:16
Oh my God.
19:17
Let me just get this homework done.
19:18
So I never have to see this stuff again.
19:20
Have they lost their mind?
19:21
I'm going to sit here and do this.
19:22
And all of a sudden it struck me.
19:23
It's like, wait a minute, dude.
19:24
This is your major.
19:25
This is what you proclaim that you wanted to do.
19:28
And so I was in the Smeal school of business at Penn state and had this
19:32
right hand turn and made the decision at that point to go into marketing because
19:35
marketing was more people oriented.
19:37
Accounting was more numbers oriented.
19:39
So I got out of that, but I still lived under this mindset that I
19:42
didn't want to work in racing.
19:43
I wanted to work somewhere and just have racing be this passion and be this hobby.
19:47
Along that time period, it was 1984, July 22nd, 1984, between my sophomore
19:53
and junior year, made my first trip to Pocono Raceway, the like Cola
19:57
500 for the Winston Cup series.
20:00
And you wanna talk about heroes bigger than life.
20:03
Harry Gantt beat Kale, Yarborough.
20:06
Kayle Yarbrough and Harry Gant.
20:08
I used to watch those guys in February in the Daytona 500 with
20:11
Ken Squire calling the races.
20:13
I'd run home from church and hear those guys, and here they were at Pocono
20:16
Raceway, right in front of me, racing, and watched Harry Gant win the race
20:21
down at Pocono, beating Kayle Yarbrough, Bill Elliott, I think was third in
20:25
the race, and all of these bigger than life TV guys were right here in front
20:28
of me, right here, close to home.
20:29
Rolled through the balance of my college career when I arrived at my
20:32
senior year, did all of the traditional interviews for sales jobs, all the
20:36
marketing interviews you would do, and nothing was really happening.
20:39
And I kind of poked around and said, well, maybe I'll just dabble in this
20:41
racing a little bit and reached out to Pocono Raceway, reached out to five
20:46
mile point Speedway and soon after that effect that ironically, I think the
20:50
phone call or the mail or whatever it was, we didn't have email back then.
20:53
That all came about on the same day where Bob Plebin at Pocono Raceway.
20:56
was going to allow me to volunteer to work in the press room.
21:00
Staff, man, I'm telling you what, I'm Kale Yarborough and Harry Gant, Richard Petty.
21:05
I'm going to be right there.
21:05
Well, rubbing shoulders with them.
21:07
My gosh, we're, Hey, we're going to be hanging out together.
21:09
So I got hired, hired being an interesting term when you're really
21:12
offered to volunteer at Pocono Raceway.
21:15
And then Jim Randall was the promoter at five mile point speedway at the time.
21:18
And Jim offered me to do PR.
21:21
And to find sponsorship, and I'm not sure.
21:23
I think Jim was paying me 35 a week or something like that.
21:26
I mean, it was for where I was at.
21:28
It was great.
21:28
So graduated from Penn state in 1986.
21:31
And that summer I actually worked at five mile point speedway, 35 a week.
21:36
Worked at Pocono Raceway for free.
21:38
We're sitting at five mile point speedway and in comes a pace car.
21:41
The Reverend Brother Pat Evans shows up.
21:45
Now there's a character.
21:46
Some of you know, Pat Evans, some of you have heard of Pat Evans
21:48
and Pat was a racing minister.
21:50
He showed up and he recruited me to be a columnist for Speedway Scene newspaper.
21:55
Oh my gosh.
21:56
You want to talk about having it all?
21:57
I mean, I had it all.
21:58
I was going to Pocono doing the cup stuff.
22:00
I was at five mile point doing the dirt stuff.
22:02
And now I was a columnist for Speedway Scene.
22:05
Oh my gosh.
22:07
Well, the reality set in.
22:09
And about September, the 35 a week, the five mile point was paying
22:12
was only during the race season.
22:14
And that was going to be thin along the way.
22:16
And I needed to find a job, got a job in the marketing and sales field.
22:19
Cause again, I'm still subscribing to this racing on the side.
22:22
Got to have a career.
22:22
That's not racing.
22:23
And I got a job at warehouse carpet outlets.
22:25
They're now based in Endwell.
22:27
I was actually in the Ithaca store for about three or four months.
22:30
And then in 1988, made the move down to the Endwell store.
22:34
1987 started working in Endwell with Warehouse Carpet Outlet.
22:38
1987, a couple of different things happened to me on the racing front.
22:41
Made the move from Speedway Scene to Gator Racing News as a columnist.
22:44
Just became dear friends with Norm and Donna and Joe and Susie Patrick and
22:47
just wonderful people with Gator Racing News and another one of those entities
22:50
we have that is no longer around.
22:52
But became a columnist there, just a sheer numbers thing and so much
22:54
easier to get my stuff to Syracuse than it was up to Massachusetts.
22:57
But something happened in 1987 in local racing in the southern tier in
23:02
northeastern Pennsylvania that would alter my life and alter the course of racing.
23:06
It was June 26 of 1987 and a new guy had come into Pen Can Speedway.
23:12
He was a new old guy.
23:13
As 1987 started to unfold, different people would say, did you hear
23:17
Ricey's coming back to Pen Can?
23:18
I'm like, Ricey, who's Ricey?
23:20
Who's, who's Ricey?
23:21
Seward Rice.
23:22
He was the club president for the Susquehanna County Stock
23:25
Car Club in the early 1960s.
23:28
And from all accounts, he was the man.
23:30
He was beloved.
23:31
They thought he did a great job.
23:33
The club had more money than they ever had before, and Seward
23:36
Rice was the club president.
23:37
Ricey worked at a foundry in Halstead, Pennsylvania, the Halstead Foundry.
23:41
And the Halstead Foundry shut down, and he was looking for work.
23:44
Driving up 171.
23:46
His old buddy, Pappy Bevins, owns Susquehanna at Pen Can Speedway.
23:49
Charlie Bray, the previous promoter, had shut it down the year before,
23:52
and the track was sitting vacant.
23:53
And on June 26th, Seward Rice took over and started promoting
23:57
races in 1987 at Pen Can Speedway.
23:59
And over the course of that time, I got to know Seward over the course of that
24:02
year, still working at Five Mile Point.
24:04
As we got acquainted and got into the off season, the next year,
24:06
Ricey wanted to hire me to be the assistant announcer to Cal Arthur.
24:10
Oh my gosh.
24:11
Assistant announcer to one of my heroes.
24:13
What an opportunity.
24:14
And in 1988, I went to work as an assistant announcer for CalArthur.
24:18
And I also went to work doing some PR and some sponsorship stuff for Seward Rice.
24:22
And I learned so many great lessons watching the way Seward Rice operated.
24:26
He was one of those rare promoters.
24:28
that would walk the pits after the races.
24:31
Promoters never walked the pits after the races because you don't want to hear all
24:34
the pissing and moaning and complaining.
24:35
Promoters don't walk the pits.
24:37
Seward Rice would walk the pits.
24:39
And I'll never forget one of my favorite drivers meetings in
24:42
the history of drivers meetings.
24:44
Early August.
24:46
It's hot.
24:47
We've been there every Friday night.
24:49
Everybody hates everybody.
24:51
Nobody wants to be there.
24:52
We all want to be there because we all like racing, but everyone's tired.
24:55
I'll look at you cross eyed and you'll take my hat off.
24:57
And Ricey calls the troops in and he had a big baritone voice.
25:00
And he said, Gentlemen, we're all tired.
25:03
We're all hot.
25:04
And we're all really bothered by it.
25:06
You've been racing here, and this guy's ran into you, and my flagger
25:11
did this to you, and my handicapper, Casey Cole, he puts you back here.
25:15
Casey's right there.
25:15
He puts you here, and you feel like you've been screwed, blued, and tattooed.
25:20
And Russell said, what in the world is this?
25:22
He said, your crew members, they've been working all year.
25:25
They've been sweating.
25:26
You've hollered at them.
25:27
They've hollered back at you.
25:29
The officials, they've told them to push the car here.
25:31
We're doing this.
25:32
You got screwed by this guy.
25:33
Your crew members, they feel like they've been screwed, blued, and tattooed.
25:37
And all of a sudden, this is starting to unfold.
25:40
He said, my employees.
25:41
They're sick of arguing with you.
25:43
They're sick of working in the kitchen up there, flipping
25:45
burgers in 90 degree weather.
25:46
They're sick of parking cars, and they're sick of dealing with security, and
25:49
everyone's hot, and everyone's miserable.
25:50
My employees, they feel screwed, blued, and tattooed.
25:53
And I'll be honest with you, I'm about done with all of it as well.
25:58
And I'm feeling screwed, blued, and tattooed.
26:01
And we're all sitting there, it's the only time drivers have
26:03
ever listened in a pit meeting.
26:04
I'll guarantee you, it's the only time they've ever listened.
26:06
And everyone's standing there, he says, Gentlemen, let's make a deal.
26:09
We've only got three more weeks of racing.
26:11
Let's all just get through it together and get away from each other.
26:14
And we'll all come back next year.
26:16
And I never saw a transition more amongst a field of drivers, employees,
26:20
everyone, everyone walked away and we had three peaceful, wonderful weeks of
26:24
racing ended with a pen can spectacular.
26:26
And it was just amazing.
26:27
Ricey.
26:28
I'm telling you, the guy had a real knack for communicating and his very first
26:31
thing was the spectator comes first.
26:33
I'll never forget the first night back in 87.
26:34
He took over the track and he called the driver's meeting.
26:36
And he said, look, he said, we're in Susquehanna, Pennsylvania.
26:38
There's a few people around here.
26:39
There's a lot more people 30 minutes away at a whole lot more people in
26:43
Scranton, which is 40 minutes away.
26:44
We need to roll early.
26:46
We need to be done.
26:46
We're starting at seven 30.
26:48
We need to be done by 10, 15, 10 30.
26:49
We need to be out of here so everyone can go do what they wanted to do.
26:53
Along the way, I became the lead announcer at pen can, and I knew
26:57
the starting time was seven 30.
26:59
We had a gentleman by the name of Millard Hall, who sang the National Anthem.
27:02
Quite generally, at 7.
27:03
28, Millard Hall was singing the National Anthem, and we were good.
27:05
But we had one night, I think Mike Colston flipped on the front stretch, I
27:09
think we had some kind of bounty to issue to Billy Trigo or something, I don't
27:12
know, something, there was all kinds of stuff going on, and we were late.
27:15
And I looked at my clock, I looked at my watch, and it was 7.
27:18
34, when I introduced the singing voice of Pen Can Speedway, Millard Hall.
27:22
Well, Seward Rice, white, head to toe, handlebar mustache, he's over
27:26
in turn number two, he just walked out of the pits and I saw him.
27:28
I saw him.
27:29
Puts the arm down, like, oh boy, here we go.
27:32
I'm in trouble here because I'm four minutes late.
27:34
First heat race runs, he's down in the infield, he comes across
27:37
it, and you're sitting duck.
27:38
He's headed my way, he's taking his time, and he's meeting people and
27:41
kissing babies and talking to tow truck drivers and everything, but He's
27:44
not veering in any other direction.
27:46
And it took him about three heat races to get there.
27:48
And he walks up in the tower and I was announced from outside there and
27:51
he walks up and he just kind of taps me on the shoulder and he said, uh,
27:53
let's get on the office and talk.
27:55
I don't remember.
27:55
I don't know if Liam was my gal, other announcer or someone, someone else
27:58
took over the microphone and we went down in the office and he said to me,
28:01
Steve, what time do we start here?
28:02
And I said, we started at seven 30.
28:04
He said, what time did we start today?
28:05
And I said, well, Millard was singing at seven 34.
28:07
He said, All right.
28:08
He said, So that's four minutes.
28:09
I said, Yeah, he flips me a sheet of paper and he says,
28:12
Count the names on that paper.
28:14
And as I'm counting, I realized this is the employee list
28:16
and everyone's name is there.
28:17
Probably Grant Buck's name was there and Casey Cole and everyone's name was there.
28:20
He says, How many years on that list?
28:22
And it was 50.
28:23
50 people.
28:23
He said, hold on one second.
28:25
And he radios down to Sandy, his daughter who ran the ticket
28:27
office at Sandy ballpark.
28:28
How many people we have here?
28:29
She's way about 1500 people here.
28:31
And he said, okay, he flips me a calculator.
28:33
He says, now take your four minutes.
28:35
He says, and multiply it by 50 people.
28:37
Now multiply it by 1500 people.
28:40
He said, if every one of my employees cost me four minutes, we're out of business.
28:46
We're done.
28:47
I don't know how, I don't know what the number was, but
28:48
it was thousands of minutes.
28:49
We're done.
28:50
He said, so my question is the same question I had at the
28:52
beginning of this conversation.
28:53
What time do we start?
28:55
Said we start at 7 30 and it didn't matter.
28:57
We could have pestilence.
28:59
We could have tornadoes.
29:01
We could have cars on.
29:02
Fire the length of the front straight away.
29:04
We could have 10, 000 people in the stands or two in the stands.
29:08
It didn't matter.
29:09
It's seven 28.
29:10
Millard hall was singing that national anthem.
29:12
It was just going to happen, but those lessons learned about fans
29:15
first and his passion for it.
29:16
And all the lessons learned.
29:17
What a great, great era.
29:19
What a great time in the late eighties also did some work.
29:22
Then I got into the radio business overnights at WHWK, the country
29:25
station down in Binghamton and did that along the way as well.
29:28
And then came 1990, had an opportunity to pick up a second
29:33
track, Makatek Speedway in Lakeville, Pennsylvania, the Thrill Track.
29:39
And Thrill Track had something to do with what happened on the racetrack
29:42
and had everything to do with what did not happen on the racetrack.
29:44
I kind of went down for an audition.
29:46
I'm down here, I'm announcing and Makatek, you announced at a
29:48
porch off from the side of it.
29:50
I love announcing outside.
29:51
I'm not one of these guys likes to be behind glass.
29:52
I like being outside where I can hear things.
29:54
So I'm on this porch and I'm reading lucky numbers.
29:56
For a hat, lucky number 765 321.
29:59
And I hear some people cheer and I say, someone won something.
30:02
For a t shirt, 761.
30:03
The next thing I know, I hear people cheering and screaming and hollering.
30:05
I get to like the third number and the place is just losing its mind.
30:08
I look up and at the start finish line.
30:11
Making his way from turn number one to turn number three is a man buck naked.
30:16
We had a streaker at mock attack on my first night announcing
30:22
their crowd is going wild.
30:23
I said, well, there's no sense of doing lucky numbers.
30:25
They don't care about lucky numbers.
30:26
Now place is going wild.
30:28
Everyone's losing their minds.
30:30
So streaker on my first night at mock attack.
30:33
And as it got done, I said, you know, I think I'm going to like this place.
30:36
This is entertaining.
30:37
This is really entertaining.
30:39
I introduced music to the shows, and I would play some songs along the way.
30:42
One of the songs that I liked to play was David Rose's The Stripper.
30:46
Da da da, da da, da da, da da.
30:49
You know, and we all know that's an old song from the early 60s.
30:52
And so, and I would go, like, we'd go to intermission.
30:54
I'm like, oh, ladies and gentlemen, we're gonna take a little break here.
30:56
And hey, if you feel so inclined, here's a little music.
30:58
You know, so boom, and I'd hit it.
31:00
And you know, some fat guy'd get up and dance, and I
31:01
wouldn't, you know, it'd be fun.
31:02
So I'm sitting there one night.
31:04
And I hear this ruckus as the stripper is going on, and I look down at the start
31:08
finish line, and here is this middle aged woman who is starting to do the dance.
31:13
And I'm sitting here going, oh, this is fun, yeah, we're gonna
31:15
have fun with this, you know?
31:16
Any of you, when you were first driving, ever play chicken in the car?
31:19
You know, any of you ever play chicken?
31:20
It soon became obvious that she was ready for a game of chicken, and I wasn't sure.
31:24
All of a sudden, articles of clothing started to come off, and
31:27
I'm like, oh boy, we're entering territory here that I'm not sure we
31:30
should enter, but I'm game, I'm in.
31:32
And it became obvious to me, she was a little bit more in than I was.
31:35
So I hit the pause button on the stripper song.
31:39
She stops.
31:40
The crowd loses their minds.
31:41
Beer cans are flying at the tower.
31:44
And all hell is breaking loose at Mocatech Speedway because I ruined what was a
31:49
perfectly good Strip tease going to happen at the thrill track at Makatek Speedway.
31:53
Makatek Speedway the other thing, and they explained this to me right off
31:56
the bat, you are a two sport announcer.
31:57
When you announced that Makatek, you were a race announcer and a
32:00
fight announcer because they love to fight at Makatek Speedway.
32:05
The flagger was a guy named Ed Ziga.
32:07
And to my understanding, Ed Ziga, like three things, flagging
32:11
races, drinking beer and fighting.
32:14
And I'm not sure what the order was, but I do know what the rules were.
32:17
When a fight would break out on the grandstand, it didn't matter
32:20
where we were at in the race, the caution would come out.
32:22
Because it was time for the announcer to start calling the fight.
32:24
And you start calling the fight.
32:26
Now, if Ziggy knew the people involved in the fight, the red flag would come out.
32:30
He'd come down off from the flag stand and join the fight.
32:34
He loved to fight.
32:35
And I called many a fight.
32:36
fight at Makatek Speedway.
32:38
So much fun.
32:39
So we were going to clean the place up.
32:40
We get this security guard, guy by the name of Clarence.
32:43
Clarence was very round, big one way as he was the other.
32:46
He was about five by five.
32:47
And I think the reason he got the security is he had the shirt, he had
32:50
a fake badge and he had some handcuffs and he worked for free, probably
32:53
for food in the concession stand.
32:54
So Clarence is there one night and Makatek was built on a side hill.
32:57
And so you stood along in the dirt on the back.
32:59
So Clarence is standing there watching the races unfold and this scrawny
33:02
little guy bounces off from him.
33:04
Clarence is like, okay, you know, no big deal.
33:06
This scrawny little guy bounces off again and Clarence says, I'm gonna have
33:08
to ask you to stop bouncing off from me.
33:10
About the third time the guy bounces off from Clarence, it's game on.
33:13
Now Any other place on the planet, when you have a fat security guy
33:18
chasing a skinny guy, the first place the skinny guy goes is to the exit.
33:21
Not mock attack.
33:23
No, the skinny guy goes right down through the grandstands
33:25
with clearance in hot pursuit.
33:27
Of course, we're there, we're during intermission or something, so I'm
33:30
all of a sudden going down the front stretch, up through the grandstands,
33:32
with clearance, in hot pursuit, back down through the grandstands, back up.
33:36
The pits were behind the grandstands.
33:39
So the guy jumps the fence into the pit area.
33:41
The whole crowd runs back to the watch and watches and up through the pit area.
33:44
And the crew guys are all working on the car.
33:45
So what the hell's going on?
33:46
And there goes this guy.
33:47
And finally he wants to the pits and out the exit.
33:49
They go with Clarence and hot pursuit.
33:52
All right, ladies and gentlemen, now that intermission is over,
33:54
we need to get back to racing.
33:56
I'm sitting there.
33:56
Announcing a race and 10 minutes later or so, Clarence walks up into the
34:00
tower, just huffing and puffing like you wouldn't believe he says to me,
34:03
I caught that guy and I said, really?
34:05
I said, man, he put you through the paces.
34:07
He said, yeah, I never ran like that in my life.
34:09
He said, I caught the guy.
34:10
He says, you ain't gonna believe it.
34:12
I said, I found drugs on him.
34:13
Whoa.
34:14
I said, man, that's really, really good.
34:15
You found, so he found drugs on the guy.
34:17
He says, yeah, and I'm sitting there and I'm announcing or doing
34:20
something and I'm like, well, what are you going to do about it?
34:22
Then he said, well, I'm going to call the state police.
34:24
I'm like, oh, okay, that's fine.
34:26
I said, wait a minute, where's he at?
34:28
What's going on?
34:28
And he says he's handcuffed to a tree, Steve.
34:30
The modified feature is next and I'm not going to miss the modified feature.
34:34
So he's handcuffed to a tree up in the woods.
34:36
This poor guy goes to the races, has a little weed on
34:39
him, gets into it with a rotund.
34:40
He gets caught by the fat security guard and finds himself handcuffed to the tree.
34:44
While Clarence watches the modified feature, then he calls the state police.
34:49
Mockitech Speedway, the one and only.
34:51
I could not do the post race parties at Mockitech Speedway were unreal.
34:55
I could not do one half of one night at Mockitech Speedway now,
34:59
and we would party until sunrise.
35:01
We would bother.
35:02
One time at Mockitech Speedway, I was in charge of turning the lights off.
35:05
Well, I'm telling you at 10 o'clock in the morning, you
35:06
don't realize the lights are on.
35:09
And the client that ran the track went over there Wednesday
35:11
night to start grading the track.
35:12
And the place is lit up all week long because I forgot
35:14
because we left at daytime.
35:15
Mockitech Speedway, just some great, great memories.
35:17
Some great Williams times along the way.
35:19
Career, I'm still selling floor covering.
35:21
I'd moved to a distributorship and I moved down to Clark Summit, Pennsylvania.
35:24
And in Clarksville, Pennsylvania, I hung at a place called The
35:25
Only Place, and there I made some really, really good friends.
35:28
Reed Miller and Dick and Phyllis Longstreet.
35:31
Just dear friends to this day.
35:32
Unfortunately, we've lost Dick in the last year and a half.
35:34
Just really, really sweet people, and we formed a car show called Speed
35:38
Sports Showcase down in Scranton.
35:39
I know many of you that had gone to the car show, and we did that.
35:42
So we had the car show going on, and I'm really thrilled, by the way.
35:45
I'm stepping forward to hear Tony Frable and a group are going to put
35:47
together Speed Sports Showcase again.
35:49
So the car show returns to Scranton, and I am just so happy for them.
35:52
And I do like it.
35:53
They didn't know this.
35:53
to me, but they actually reached out to fill us into myself.
35:56
And I believe to read and ask for our permission to go do it again.
35:59
And I just like that respect that they showed.
36:00
They didn't have to do it, but I love the fact that there's a car show.
36:03
So as I'm looking at life here in the early nineties, speed sports
36:06
showcase, I have a program book that I do with all the racetrack or the
36:09
two racetracks I'm at I'm announcing.
36:11
I've got all this stuff.
36:12
I'm writing a column for Gator racing news.
36:14
Another group that I was very involved with is we go racing fan club.
36:16
I talked about that a little bit when we're talking about Kip.
36:18
I was president of the Wigo racing fan club, and we just
36:20
had so many great memories.
36:22
Life was just rolling along.
36:23
with Selen Carpeting and the party and the racing and everything else.
36:27
It was really, really good.
36:28
Well, at a WeGo Racing fan club event at Shangri La down
36:31
in Owego, I met a young lady.
36:33
And that young lady would ultimately become my ex wife.
36:36
But of course, there was a few steps in between there, along the way.
36:39
And this whole philosophy of You don't let your passion become your
36:43
work was really starting to fail on me because I was spending more time
36:47
and races and events and social events and we go fan club and speed sports
36:51
showcase than I was selling carpeting and the people that I worked for was a
36:55
distributorship out of York, Pennsylvania.
36:56
They came and they said, look, we're not telling you to leave, but we're
36:59
ultimately going to tell you to leave.
37:00
You need to follow this racing thing, dude, you're spending more time on
37:03
racing than you're working for us.
37:04
And we really suggest you do it.
37:06
Had a lot of things going on and.
37:08
I had this young lady that I was falling in love with.
37:11
And so it was like, we better start to think about this.
37:13
In 1994, started interviewing for some jobs in the NASCAR business.
37:17
Landed in 1984, I was hired by a company called McLean Marketing.
37:21
I was going to be the PR rep for Factory Stores of America with Butch
37:25
Mock Motorsports and Todd Bodine.
37:27
Well, what do we do?
37:27
How do we do this transition?
37:29
So we hurried up February 4th, 1995.
37:33
We decided to get married.
37:34
We're going to throw together a wedding.
37:36
And some of you were there as well as 26 inches of snow on wedding day.
37:41
This was fraught with a challenge as well, because we were doing all
37:44
of our friends a favor by saying, we're just going to do a money tree.
37:48
We want to make it easy for you.
37:50
We just want to do a money tree.
37:52
Truth of the matter is, is we needed the money tree to pay for the wedding and
37:55
to pay for the trip to North Carolina.
37:56
We have 26 inches of snow, we go through the ceremony, and we're getting
38:01
word that this one's not coming, and that one's not coming, and this
38:04
one's not coming, and it's like, oh my gosh, what are we gonna do?
38:07
Beyond all of the feelings we're having of the day is, the
38:10
money tree is going to be dry.
38:12
We're going to be at the VFW in Halsted, Pennsylvania and not
38:14
even be able to pay for the keg of beer that we spent the money on.
38:17
But the good news is, is the money tree was good, was
38:19
enough money to pay for that.
38:21
We went and we did a family reception at the VFW in Halsted.
38:24
Then we went and we did a racing family reception at Tego's Tavern in Conklin.
38:29
Another great place, by the way.
38:31
And then we were staying at the Quality Inn.
38:33
And of course, there's 26 inches of snow.
38:35
The Quality Inn was right next to a place named Country Bob's.
38:38
So the third reception was at Country Bob's, and Country Bob's was a place
38:42
not for the faint of heart, not a whole lot of proud moments happened
38:45
at Country Bob's, by the way.
38:46
But yes, we were there, and my bride at the time actually rode the mechanical
38:50
bull in her wedding dress on that night in our third reception, yeah.
38:54
Casey and Clara, they're, they're remembering that.
38:56
They're remembering that.
38:56
Well, just an amazing, amazing time.
38:58
Tego's Tavern.
38:59
I got it.
38:59
I got to get off script here a little bit to do a Tego's Tavern story.
39:02
Great little bar in Conklin, Tim and Polly Bunsik.
39:04
They ran it.
39:04
How ate up we were with racing.
39:06
Okay.
39:06
The old phrase, you're not drinking a beer unless you have dirt in your beer.
39:09
We get to the off season and we know we're facing a long, cold off
39:12
season with no dirt in our beer.
39:13
Polly Bunsik goes over to five mile point and she gets a shovel full or
39:17
pale full, five gallon pale, five mile point and clay, I don't know
39:20
that they've ever seen each other, but whatever the dirt was, and I love.
39:24
Five Mile Point Speedway, but I'm telling you what, the clay
39:26
content of Five Mile Point Speedway has never been all that much.
39:29
She went over and she got a five gallon pail of Five Mile Point dirt.
39:32
And she brings it over, and she puts it in little baggies.
39:35
And she takes and she puts a pinhole in the little baggies and tacks
39:38
one up above every seat at the bar.
39:40
You'd walk in, you'd get your draft beer, you'd tap the baggie, and a little
39:43
Five Mile Point dirt would fall down.
39:45
We had dirt in our beer the entire off season.
39:47
Now, of course, strangers that would walk in off the street
39:50
What are these people doing?
39:51
Putting dirt in their beer, lost their minds.
39:53
But that's just part of life that we had around at that time, and
39:56
just an amazing, amazing adventure.
39:58
So fast forward, we'll get back to the wedding now.
40:00
I got married on Saturday, February 4th.
40:02
We made our way to North Carolina.
40:03
We're getting ready to go to Daytona.
40:04
I'm gonna be Todd Bodine's PR guy.
40:06
Tuesday morning, arrive back in the office, get a call to
40:08
go and meet with the boss.
40:10
I could tell by the look on his face, this was not necessarily one of those real
40:12
happy meetings that we were gonna have.
40:14
Steve says, I think I jumped the gun on hiring you.
40:17
We no longer have the Factory Stores of America account.
40:20
What I need you to do is take the press kits that you developed,
40:23
take your business card out of the front of them, box them up, drive
40:27
up to Charlotte Motor Speedway, and deliver them to another agency.
40:30
Because we're so late in the game, they're going to take your
40:33
press kits and go to Daytona.
40:34
What does this mean for me?
40:35
What does this mean for, we just got married.
40:37
We got no money.
40:38
We got nothing.
40:38
Ed McClain, the guy that owned the agency, he was able to take us to Daytona.
40:41
We did hospitality for CITCO, for Speed Weeks, so we went down to
40:44
Daytona for Speed Weeks, but it wasn't soon after that, that we end
40:47
up broke in Matthews, North Carolina, which is just outside of Charlotte.
40:50
Ultimately, to be ex wife and I, we handled things usually by going to
40:54
a bar room somewhere along the way.
40:55
That was generally our way of handling crisis situations.
40:57
And it was a Tuesday night, and we had a whopping total of 26 to our name.
41:03
We didn't have enough money to move back home.
41:05
And I was pretty much committed, I'm gonna do this racing thing.
41:08
Even though right now it's looking really bleak.
41:09
Unemployed, strange city, all of our friends are up in the Binghamton area.
41:13
We're sitting here in Charlotte, North Carolina, and we got 26 to our name.
41:17
And she's like, what are we going to do?
41:18
We're crying.
41:18
We're all upset.
41:19
We're all everything like that.
41:20
And I said, well, there's a bar out across the parking lot.
41:23
They have dollar draft night tonight.
41:25
We're going to go drink.
41:26
Like we own the place.
41:28
We're going to get up tomorrow morning.
41:29
We're going to build resumes and we're going to do like everyone else in America
41:32
does and find jobs and that we did.
41:34
We drank like we own the place staggered back across the parking lot, got up
41:38
the next day and created resumes.
41:39
Fortunately, she was a travel agent and at the time we had travel agents.
41:43
It's an old career.
41:44
That's no longer on Skip can attest to very few travel agents around, but
41:47
at the time it was a great career.
41:48
And the good news is, is she landed really, really quickly.
41:50
I think that was Wednesday morning and she interviewed with a guy that
41:54
Friday morning, and not only did he hire her to start Monday, but
41:57
he paid her a little bit in advance because she explained the situation.
41:59
So we bailed ourselves out of that.
42:01
I'm left with the dilemma.
42:02
Do I go back into the floor covering business in North Carolina, knowing that
42:06
I'm lying to whoever I'm interviewing with, because if I tell them I'm going
42:10
to be your best salesman in the world and someone in NASCAR comes, I'm going.
42:12
And so I made up my mind I was going to work for temporary labor
42:15
agencies and that's what I did.
42:16
And I'm not mechanically inclined at all.
42:18
It's really bad for a guy that works around racing.
42:20
I mean, I can barely find the dipstick.
42:21
I mean the key in the side of the engine.
42:23
I'm good at that.
42:24
That's about it.
42:24
So I get a job with a temporary agency installing heating
42:27
and air conditioning units.
42:29
And I often think about it when I drive by those complexes when it's 100 degrees
42:33
in August or when it's 20 degrees in July, those poor, poor people, because
42:38
there ain't no way in the world when I installed those air conditioning units are
42:41
those things working properly, and there has got to be the worst air conditioning
42:45
installation job in the world.
42:46
So we rolled through 1995 with me doing that.
42:50
Julie, being a travel agency, the fall of that year, I was able to get
42:53
a volunteer job at Charlotte Motor Speedway working in the press room
42:56
and through that was meeting a lot of people and that really worked out well.
42:59
And the good news is I came out of that with an interview and in 1996 was hired
43:04
by Cotter Communications Square D Company.
43:06
Film are racing with driver Kenny Wallace.
43:10
Yes, indeed.
43:10
Well, Kenny Wallace, the Kenny Wallace you see on TV, the Kenny Wallace you
43:15
see on social media, the Kenny Wallace that you hear laughing in real life
43:19
is the same Kenny Wallace that I have.
43:21
Wide assed open.
43:23
Kenny Wallace.
43:24
That's who he is.
43:25
Al Robinson, of course, we all know, a lot of us know and love Al Robinson.
43:28
Al was doing PR at Dover, and Al asked if Kenny and I could fly into Baltimore
43:32
on a Thursday, do a media tour, and then drive up around and go to Dover.
43:35
So we do that.
43:36
And we go to all the TV stations and met with a reporter and did all of that.
43:39
And when you traveled with Kenny Wallace, you were a fast food person.
43:43
We didn't eat all that well with Kenny Wallace.
43:44
We were fast food.
43:45
Well, this day, we were feeling really, really good.
43:48
We felt like, man, we did a great media event.
43:51
Everyone's going to be happy.
43:52
So we stepped up our game.
43:53
We went to Subway.
43:55
Wow.
43:56
Subway restaurant somewhere up around the Chesapeake Bay.
43:59
We stopped at a subway.
44:00
We walk in places full of people.
44:02
There is a large African American woman is the sandwich artist that we have.
44:06
And we're going down through and we're getting our sandwich.
44:08
And she says, do you want oil and vinegar on your sandwich and Kenny said, why would
44:14
I want oil and vinegar on my sandwich?
44:17
And she says, that's what Aretha Franklin's doing.
44:20
And she's losing all that weight.
44:21
Kenny being Kenny right in the middle of the subway, puts his hands down and
44:25
he says to this large rotund African American woman, you like Aretha Franklin.
44:31
And she says, Honey, I love Aretha Franklin.
44:34
15, 20 people in the restaurant, 4 or 5 people in the line, Kenny Wallace, R E
44:38
S P E C T, find out what it means to me.
44:41
He breaks into a chorus of respect right there.
44:44
I don't know whether I'm dying of horrified.
44:46
I'm standing there going this is, I'm his PR guy.
44:48
I'm supposed to be preventing incidents like this.
44:51
She drops her fixings and she's dancing, he's singing.
44:54
The whole place is wondering what the hell is going on, and we're standing here in
44:57
a subway, singing Aretha Franklin songs.
45:00
Something I never saw and didn't really plan in the whole PR training.
45:02
There's not a manual on Aretha Franklin songs in a subway.
45:05
So Kenny gets done singing the song, and she says, So now, the question
45:08
is, do you want oil and vinegar?
45:10
And he says, I want double oil and vinegar on mine and put it on his too.
45:13
If it's good enough for Aretha Franklin, it's good enough for us.
45:16
And out the door we go.
45:17
Kenny Wallace, what a guy, what an adventure.
45:19
Your first PR gig.
45:20
If I would advise anybody on first PR gigs, I would say, get a guy like
45:23
Kenny Wallace, because you know, you're never going to have a dull moment and
45:26
never going to have a dull moment.
45:27
As far as that goes, I learned a very valuable lesson during that time period
45:31
because while Kenny Wallace was a lot of fun and we had a lot of fun doing
45:34
media and media and everyone loved him.
45:36
We average about 22nd place finishes.
45:38
And so when you're running in that position, you don't
45:40
get a lot of TV coverage.
45:42
Square D was like, we need to get more coverage.
45:43
We need to get more coverage.
45:44
We need more coverage.
45:45
And I said, I'm trying.
45:46
I'm talking to the TV people.
45:47
And I met Benny Parsons.
45:49
Benny was always around the Concord area.
45:51
We'd always see him when we're out to eat and out to dinner.
45:53
And I met Benny and I said, Benny, man, I'm getting clubbed by my folks here.
45:56
He said, Steve, we're not going to talk about a guy running in the mid pack.
45:59
He said, we're going to talk about the guys up front.
46:00
He said, I'll do what I can.
46:01
He said, we're not going to talk about it.
46:02
It was April of 1997.
46:04
Second year was Square D Martinsville Speedway.
46:07
Kenny Wallace goes up and puts the Square D Ford on the pole position.
46:10
Like, oh boy, here we go.
46:12
Game on.
46:12
We're able to lure ourselves into an in car camera and that race for
46:15
500 laps at Martinsville, Kenny and Rusty went toe to toe for the win.
46:18
We ended up not winning the race, but we ended up on TV all day long.
46:22
Every reporter wanted to talk to us afterward.
46:24
We're standing there.
46:25
We're an hour after the race and there's people still wanting to
46:27
talk and everything like that.
46:29
I go out to dinner, but get back home Monday.
46:31
There's people calling radio interviews.
46:32
Everyone wants to talk to Kenny.
46:34
Everyone wants to talk to Kenny.
46:35
Happy to go out to dinner that Monday night, ran into Benny Parsons.
46:37
And Benny said, let me guess PR man of the year after yesterday.
46:40
Aren't you damn right about that, Benny.
46:43
There's a whole big different world.
46:44
He says, that'd be happy with your PR efforts.
46:46
Now I said, yeah, you know, I'm a really good PR guy today.
46:49
And five days ago, I was a useless PR guy.
46:51
We learned the value of performance and learn those lessons.
46:53
doing stuff with Kenny Wallace.
46:55
So I worked on that program for two years with Square D company needed to change.
46:58
The agency business was changing and was just in a spot where it was time
47:01
to move on, which is customary in it and did an interview and got a job
47:05
doing PR for the IWX motor freight team, which was a truck series team.
47:08
Randy Tolsma was the driver of that truck.
47:10
And we just had an absolute ball did team PR for them also in 1998.
47:15
I was able to return to my racing roots a little bit.
47:18
My announcing routes, I got hired to sit in and start announcing
47:21
the summer shootout at Charlotte motor speedway on Tuesday nights.
47:23
That's the legends and bandolero racing that they have at Charlotte.
47:26
So 1998, I'm doing team PR for IWX on the road, traveling with the team, having
47:31
fun, really having a great group of guys.
47:32
We're all hanging out, having fun Tuesday nights during the summer for 10
47:35
weeks, able to do the summer shootout.
47:37
Roll through that a year and a half, I get to August of 1999, Steve Coulter,
47:41
a man that I have so much respect for, he was the owner of IWX Motor Freight.
47:45
We get to August, we're in Indianapolis, and it was nothing for Steve to say,
47:48
let's go have a beer at the bar.
47:49
And we sat down, we had a beer at the bar, and Steve said, I'm a trucking
47:53
company, and a trucking company really doesn't need a good PR man.
47:57
Here we go.
47:58
I know where this conversation is going.
48:00
Conversation had a little bit of a twist to it though.
48:02
Steve said, here's the deal.
48:04
He said, you're part of the team, you're part of the family here.
48:06
I want to keep you on board, I'll keep you to the end of the year.
48:08
So, I'm a guy that got a five month window.
48:12
to get a job.
48:13
Why have so much respect for Steve Coulter?
48:14
He said, what I want you to do.
48:15
He said, I want you to find the right job.
48:18
He said, don't take the first job.
48:20
He said, if we get to the end of the year and you don't have
48:21
anything, we'll talk about next year.
48:22
We'll figure it out, but find the right job.
48:25
He says, and I'm with you.
48:26
He says, use the fax machine, use the printer.
48:28
You need time off to go interview whatever you need to do.
48:30
He said, you're part of the family.
48:32
You're a great PR guy.
48:33
I need you with someone who needs a great PR guy, not a trucking company.
48:37
Then that's what I want for you.
48:38
Roll along.
48:39
We get into October, November, and I catch when the Texaco Haviland is going
48:43
to have a driver change, Ricky Rudd is going to drive for Robert Yates.
48:46
Knew the people at the agency performance PR plus woman by
48:48
the name of Kimberly Brannigan.
48:49
Kimberly is the daughter of Dick and Linda O'Brien, formerly with Oswego Speedway.
48:54
Day before Thanksgiving of 1999.
48:57
meet with her and it became just a formality.
48:59
She says, I need to run this past the owner of the agency.
49:01
She said, but I'm going to recommend we hire you.
49:03
She said, where are you going?
49:04
I said, I'm going back to IWX for the team.
49:05
She said, I'll call you by the end of the day.
49:06
I get done, go up to the race shop.
49:08
Sure enough, an hour or two later, get the call.
49:09
And I've been hired by them.
49:10
She said, here's the problem.
49:11
This is brand new with Ricky Rudd.
49:13
We're late.
49:13
We're behind.
49:14
We don't have a photo shoot.
49:15
We don't have this.
49:15
We don't have that.
49:16
We need to start ASAP.
49:17
Called up Steve Colter.
49:18
And I said, look, I got a gig, Texaco Haviland.
49:20
It's exactly what you said I needed to do.
49:21
It's what I need to do.
49:22
It's what I need to go from there.
49:23
I said, where do we go?
49:24
And he says, what do you have to do there?
49:26
And I said, I got to do this.
49:27
I got to do that.
49:27
And he says, you start Monday down there.
49:28
He said, as long as you get done, which you're supposed to get done for me over
49:31
the month of December to get everything buttoned up, we're good to go that month
49:34
of December, double money, double income because Steve Colter, the man of his word,
49:38
kept me through that year and that month.
49:39
December 1999 with IWX, we had a bonus program and the bonus program was a
49:44
percentage of winnings and had this conversation with my wife and I said, you
49:48
know, I can't ask for the bonus check, but you know, I guess technically because I
49:52
was with the team all year, I earned it.
49:53
I had that month of December of 1999 was getting paid by IWX by the Texaco
49:57
have on folks performance PR plus.
49:58
And the day after Christmas got a check for 2, 600.
50:02
My bonus money for Steve Coulter just could not believe that someone could,
50:05
it's fair and it's right, but in our business that doesn't happen all the time.
50:09
And what an amazing, and it turns out Steve ends up being part of my
50:12
story as we go further down the road.
50:13
2000 ends up donning Ricky Rudd.
50:15
I'm going to be Ricky Rudd's PR guy.
50:17
Ricky Rudd, classiest guy that I've ever worked for in my life.
50:19
Straight up shooter.
50:20
We sat down and met the first time and he said, what are you responsible for?
50:23
I said, I'm responsible for media.
50:25
He says, when media around you be there, he says, you're not my hat.
50:27
carrier.
50:28
You're not my helmet carrier.
50:29
You're not in charge of my suit.
50:30
You're not in charge of anything else.
50:31
You're hired to do PR with media.
50:32
You do media and we got along really, really well.
50:36
Ricky Rudd, just an absolute pro to deal with some amazing PR stuff.
50:40
We pulled a lot of really good stuff.
50:41
Ricky cherished the media relationship.
50:44
He used it to his advantage a lot.
50:46
He would go do media tours.
50:47
He was very savvy on it.
50:48
He had previously owned his own team with the tide sponsorship, so he certainly
50:51
knew the value of it and had a great, great run with Ricky Rudd through
50:54
the year 2000 came close to winning.
50:56
And in 2001, what was it?
50:58
June 17th.
50:59
We roll into Pocono Raceway where I'd got my first gig, first volunteer job.
51:04
We roll into Pocono, Friday afternoon, when the pole position and I'll be darned
51:08
if Ricky Rudd doesn't go out and win the first race with the Texaco Haviland team.
51:12
My first race as a PR guy at Pocono Raceway of all places.
51:15
When you're the PR guy, when you're going to win a race, especially when
51:18
you've been snake bit like we had, we had a lot of things go wrong.
51:20
You have in the truck, you have a hat bag.
51:22
And that is your victory lane hat bag.
51:23
But of course, you don't want to be the guy with five laps to go to get the hat
51:26
bag, because then you jinxed everything.
51:28
But of course, Pocono Raceway, to get from one point to the other is about 18 miles.
51:32
There's nothing close at Pocono.
51:33
So I'm sitting there with five laps to go.
51:35
It's like, we're going to win this race and I got to go all the way back to
51:38
that truck and then all the way back out to victory lane with that hat bag.
51:41
So I said, well, okay, I'm not going to get the hat bag.
51:44
I'm just going to walk back here.
51:45
So then when Ricky brings the car in, so I walked and walked, I didn't
51:48
want to jinx anything four laps ago, three laps ago, two laps ago,
51:51
I'm just about to the truck as the car's coming off from the third turn.
51:53
Pocono and the radio just erupts.
51:55
We did it, we did it, you know, and I did that and a run into the truck and Kelly
52:00
was our truck driver and Kelly literally throws me the hat bag and I said, dude,
52:03
he said, I didn't want to touch it.
52:05
I didn't want to be the one to jinx this.
52:07
I said, I didn't want to walk back here.
52:08
I didn't want to be the one to jinx it.
52:09
He says, let's go.
52:10
And away we went with a hat bag out to victory lane, had an amazing celebration,
52:13
amazing first win for Ricky with Robert Yates and fat back McSwain.
52:17
And that whole crew did all of the post race stuff, did
52:20
all of that needed to be done.
52:22
And I'm sitting there and I got.
52:24
Don and it was quiet and most of the media had left.
52:26
It was dark.
52:27
It was late at night.
52:28
And I said, you know what?
52:29
I'm just going to take a walk out to victory lane.
52:30
Just to kind of take this all in to kind of savor it.
52:33
I walked out into victory lane, victory lane at Pocono
52:35
still the same victory lane.
52:36
It's kind of an oval shaped area over in the corner.
52:39
Someone had left a cooler, one of those little igloo coolers.
52:42
And I'm like, Oh, open that cooler.
52:43
And there was one can of yingling beer.
52:46
in that cooler.
52:47
There's no one around.
52:48
I'm like, I'm technically stealing this beer, but I'm assuming somebody left it.
52:52
And I sat on the steps and just thought about life, thought about starting
52:55
at Pocono and standing there in victory lane that day with the first
52:59
win with an ice cold, yingling beer.
53:02
Man, I'm telling you what, life didn't get much better than that.
53:05
Get in the car, go back to the hotel, back to the airport,
53:07
and we're just rolling along.
53:08
The PR gig with Ricky Rudd, with Texaco Have One, was an amazing time.
53:12
I learned a lot of the lessons with Kenny Wallace about being in the front
53:15
of the field and being in the mid pack and where you're at in the pecking order.
53:17
With Ricky Rudd, we were challenging for championships, winning races,
53:20
and you just became a really, really busy PR guy, and what an amazing,
53:24
amazing time it was in life.
53:25
As we rolled along, that was 2001.
53:27
We got our first win.
53:28
We want it Richmond later that year.
53:29
We want it Sonoma the next year, but Ricky and Roberts were, they were
53:33
getting ready to have a divorce.
53:35
Texaco.
53:35
Have one was going to go to chip Canassie racing with Jamie McMurray.
53:39
And you know, I started to look at the lineups here and I said, wait a minute.
53:42
Ricky's going to the wood brothers and they already have a PR person.
53:45
Texaco.
53:45
Have one is going here and they already have a PR person.
53:48
Robert Yates is going to have one car with Dale Jarrett, UPS or Ford,
53:52
whatever it was, might've been UPS.
53:53
They already have a PR person.
53:54
And I'm like, huh.
53:55
I don't know, this is not working out and I was working well ahead of
53:57
the curve and got a chance to talk with David Hyatt, who was then the
54:00
president of Motor Racing Network.
54:02
And we had talked before and we'd talked about me doing an audition and
54:05
he grabbed me at Pocono, the July race.
54:06
We'd won the June race.
54:07
He grabbed me in the July race at Pocono.
54:08
He says, you still interested in doing an audition for us?
54:10
I said, yeah, as a matter of fact, I may be a little bit more interested
54:13
now than I was before because, and I shared with him, I said, look, my
54:15
deal's coming to an end and I don't know what it's going to look like.
54:17
I feel like I'm going to be all right, but I don't know what it looks like.
54:20
September 13th, 2002.
54:22
New Hampshire Motor Speedway, hanging off a billboard in turn number three
54:27
for a modified race, I did my audition.
54:30
It was an interesting cast of people in that audition, now that I look back at it.
54:33
We had Joe and Barney Hall in the booth, which they always did the auditions.
54:36
Down in turn one and two, Kyle Rickey.
54:38
In the pits, Ryan Horn, Gary Danko, and I was in turn number three.
54:42
Probably turned out to be the biggest audition that MRN ever had, because
54:46
I actually work for Ryan Horn now.
54:47
He is our production department manager.
54:49
He oversees the department.
54:50
Kyle Rickey still works with the network.
54:52
I still work with the network.
54:53
Gary Danko had a few races.
54:54
So we literally on that audition went four for four and everybody
54:57
got a gig with MRN along the way.
54:59
The modified race was kind of funny.
55:00
A little bit of a side note on the modified race.
55:02
It was one of those races, I don't know if it rained or was wet or damp or something.
55:07
Ryan Horn was our pit road guy doing the audition and we were
55:11
just mocking the broadcast.
55:12
This was going to nowhere other than just our little private channel there.
55:15
This is going to nowhere.
55:15
Carl Pasterak is one of the modified racers and Carl wrecked or something broke
55:20
and he was really hacked off at NASCAR.
55:22
So Ryan being a good little MRN audition pit reporter
55:25
runs down, Carl what happened?
55:26
Well the goddamn NASCAR did this and damn the NASCAR didn't do
55:29
this and they didn't do that.
55:30
NASCAR officials heard it.
55:32
And NASCAR officials fined Carl Pasteryak 500 for something he said on an MRN
55:38
audition because they thought it was an MRN broadcast and he actually got fined
55:41
later on they amended that because he got into it with an official they amended
55:44
it so that he was altercation with an official but actually it was the MRN
55:47
audition were the only audition in the history of MRN that resulted in someone
55:51
getting fined just a crazy great memories along the way so we roll into 2003 I'm
55:56
going to get this career of a lifetime motor racing network here I come I get
56:02
my contract, I rifle it open, and the number on the bottom of it is 12, 000.
56:09
Let's see, wife, two kids, 12, 000.
56:13
That's not gonna pay the rent, let alone anything else.
56:16
But it's the dream job.
56:17
But it's 12, 000.
56:19
How does this work?
56:20
How does this work?
56:21
And I had one of those moments where I reached out to all the
56:24
relationships I had in the past.
56:25
I reached out to performance PR plus the agency and they hired me to do
56:29
hospitality for DuPont that year.
56:30
So I ended up doing Jeff Gordon hospitality for 10 or 12 or 15 races.
56:34
Went back to Steve Coulter with IWX and I said, look, here's my deal.
56:37
You know, this is my dream job.
56:38
If I could write a trucking newsletter for you, if I can do whatever it is.
56:41
He said, well, we still have the team.
56:42
I don't need full time PR.
56:44
He put me on a retainer, did that, knew the folks at Concord
56:46
Speedway hired to do that.
56:47
Another one that, and we was chatting earlier, LW Miller, Wayne Miller from
56:51
down in Dew Shore, LW was racing in the modifieds down there, and I had done some
56:55
work up here with LW and I reached out and I said, guys, I just need a favor.
56:59
I've got a dream job here with MRN.
57:01
but it only pays 12, 000.
57:04
I need some help to get to the next level.
57:06
And everybody that I had formerly worked for contributed something that year.
57:12
And it was an amazing year.
57:13
Next thing I know, I'm juggling projects and I'm flying here and
57:16
I'm doing this and I'm doing that and trying to invoice people and
57:18
trying to remember, did I do this?
57:19
And did I do that along the way?
57:21
Also the summer shootout gig at Charlotte motor Speedway
57:23
had moved into the big track.
57:24
So I was the voice of Charlotte motor Speedway for a few years.
57:27
And for the years, 2003 and 2004, it was very, very part.
57:31
time the MRN stuff was 16 races.
57:33
I think it was in 2003 and I'll never forget that first race.
57:37
It was March 14th of 2003.
57:40
The craftsman 200 NASCAR craftsman truck series at Darlington raceway.
57:44
My first race at that was at Darlington.
57:47
That's pretty stinking cool.
57:48
I don't care who you are.
57:48
That was pretty cool.
57:49
So we're there and I'm gung ho.
57:51
I've done research on.
57:53
Every guy that has ever ran in the truck series.
57:56
I know more than anybody ever needed to know about the truck series.
58:00
I am so gung ho and so ready to go.
58:02
And there was a young kid from Missouri by the name of Carl Edwards in that race.
58:05
And Carl was his ninth truck series start and he was driving for Jack Roush.
58:09
It was his first year of his big opportunity.
58:11
We're running in March.
58:12
So it was early season might've been the second or third race.
58:14
What we had is Carl's truck was overheating midway through the race.
58:17
And the signal with MRN is we would just point, we would see the
58:20
driver, get the driver's attention as he's sitting in the truck.
58:22
He would motion you in or tell you no, and that's fair, and that's
58:25
the kind of the signal we have.
58:26
They push the truck off from Pitt Road on the front stretch.
58:28
What we had was an announcer that was really, really
58:31
anxious to get that interview.
58:32
I was gonna get Carl Edwards.
58:34
Well, what we had was Carl Edwards who was like, I'm gonna
58:36
get the chance to talk on MRN.
58:38
This is great.
58:39
Point of the mic flag, Carl calls me in.
58:41
In hindsight, looking at it, it was pretty stupid because the crew
58:43
was still working on the truck.
58:45
I go in.
58:45
Carl, what happened?
58:46
What put you out?
58:47
Put the microphone into Carl.
58:48
The next thing I know, I'm picked up by a crew member, told to
58:51
get the hell out of the way.
58:52
They pick me up, and they're pushing the truck back to the garage
58:55
area, and I did my first in race interview with MRN, being carried
58:58
by a crew member through the garage.
59:00
Well, Carl's getting his first MRN interview, so he ain't letting up.
59:03
He's thanking his dad, his mom, his Meemaw, his papa, he's thanking everybody.
59:08
And we're rolling across the interview and there's crew guys and I'm hanging
59:11
out of the roll cage and I'm getting carried and my feet are dangling and I got
59:15
the microphone in there and I'm getting this story and everything and I drop.
59:18
And when I go off the air, the crew chief cussed me out from head to toe.
59:22
And I said, but Carl, it doesn't matter.
59:25
It was just, it was my first race.
59:26
And Carl Edwards and I, our first meeting along the way, and it was
59:30
just really, really cool to have that.
59:32
The irony of the world, you know, talk about the interesting
59:34
irony, talking about Ricky Rudd to win that first race at Pocono.
59:37
Bobby Hamilton won that truck race, Square D Company was his
59:39
sponsor, which was part of my past.
59:42
And, I don't know, I just love the irony like that.
59:44
And then we rolled along, 2004 sedan, and I got a 33 percent pay raise, baby.
59:49
I'm up to 16, 000 man again, went and begged, borrowed and steal from everybody.
59:56
But as things would happen with MRN, there was a couple of things going
59:59
on that really worked in my favor.
1:00:00
One of my dear friends got my name of Winston Kelly.
1:00:03
Winston is the executive director of the NASCAR hall of fame.
1:00:06
And Winston is still with the network.
1:00:07
But at the time he was with Duke power and we had a.
1:00:10
Period of time there in 2003, 2004, where we had a lot of
1:00:13
hurricanes in the Southeast.
1:00:15
And when there was a hurricane, Winston had to stay back in Charlotte and man,
1:00:18
the headquarters, if you will, for Duke Power, because I was in Charlotte,
1:00:21
which was a hub city for US Airways.
1:00:23
I was a very convenient guy to fill in.
1:00:26
So I'd be sitting there on a Thursday morning and someone from MRR recall
1:00:29
and say, Hey, Winston's, gotta stay.
1:00:30
Can you fly to Dover?
1:00:31
Yeah.
1:00:31
Says there's a plane ticket waiting for you at the airport.
1:00:33
Up to Philly.
1:00:34
Would go to Dover.
1:00:35
And I think in the course of those two years, 2003 and 2004,
1:00:38
I picked up six race weekends.
1:00:40
because I was in Charlotte because I was convenient because I was
1:00:42
ready to go because I had all of this part time work and I was very
1:00:45
flexible and was able to do it.
1:00:46
We also had in that time, our veteran reporter, Jim Phillips,
1:00:50
he retired at that time.
1:00:52
Adam Alexander was another one of our reporters.
1:00:54
He made the move to TV, although I worked a few years with Adam Daniel
1:00:58
Humphrey at the time or Daniel Fry.
1:00:59
She also moved on.
1:01:01
And so there was a lot of turnover and Adam and Danielle were having.
1:01:04
babies and kids.
1:01:05
So I was called every time that someone was having a baby.
1:01:07
Someone had a doctor's appointment.
1:01:08
I was called to fill in and I was very, very fortunate in 2003 and 2004
1:01:12
that I picked up a lot of extra work with motor racing network and really
1:01:16
was able to kind of carve out a little bit niche somewhere around the way.
1:01:18
2005 things really started to pick up.
1:01:21
I did an audition with NASCAR performance at the time.
1:01:23
NASCAR had an automotive line.
1:01:25
They wanted to do a NASCAR performance doors, brand moved
1:01:28
chassis parts or clevite bearings or whatever it was, you know?
1:01:32
And so they want to do a crew chief show.
1:01:33
Larry McReynolds was going to be the co host of it.
1:01:35
It was just determined who was going to be his co host of it.
1:01:38
And I'd have gotten along really well with Larry.
1:01:40
His son Brandon had ran the summer shootout.
1:01:42
Larry and I knew each other fairly well from the garage area and everything.
1:01:45
And just loved Larry and I thought we could work together well.
1:01:47
But their vision of the show was, let's have a bunch of crew chiefs
1:01:50
sitting around and talk tech.
1:01:51
And we're gonna do this on radio.
1:01:52
And I thought, okay.
1:01:53
And I was able to weasel my way into an audition.
1:01:56
I have no technical knowledge at all, no skills at all.
1:02:00
And I'm sitting there and there's this crew chief turned broadcaster auditioning
1:02:03
with Larry and another crew chief turned broadcaster auditioning with Larry
1:02:06
and another MRN guy that worked on his own car, shade tree mechanic guy.
1:02:10
And me, I wouldn't know a Phillips head screwdriver from a socket wrench, okay?
1:02:14
I'm just, that's just, just how I am.
1:02:15
And so I did the audition and the on air audition went well.
1:02:18
Larry and I worked well together.
1:02:19
We mock interviewed somebody or did something.
1:02:20
And I sat in the meeting afterward, the interview portion of it.
1:02:23
And there's old cartoons, and I don't know if you've seen it where
1:02:27
the light bulb goes on on the head in the caption of the cartoon.
1:02:31
And I don't know where this came from.
1:02:32
This is just divine, whatever, whatever it is.
1:02:34
I'm sitting there in the meeting.
1:02:36
And I said, what you guys envision is crew chief sitting around talking.
1:02:38
They said, yes, that's what we want.
1:02:40
And that's really what we're concerned about.
1:02:41
Steve, you've admitted you don't have much knowledge of
1:02:43
the technical end of the sport.
1:02:45
And I said, Are people going to listen to that?
1:02:48
I said, Because what happens when those two crew chiefs get
1:02:50
talking over everyone's head?
1:02:52
And I sat in that room and I swear to God, I'm watching light bulbs
1:02:56
on top of people's heads going off.
1:02:58
I'm like, You need an idiot.
1:03:00
You need a dummy.
1:03:01
You need someone.
1:03:03
That can get these guys to translate it to English so that people will
1:03:07
listen and not drive themselves into bridge abutments trying to figure
1:03:10
out what Larry Mack and Chad Knauss are talking about, for God's sake.
1:03:13
And I sat there in the room and I thanked them for their time and I
1:03:16
walked out and I'm like, son of a gun, I don't know where that came from,
1:03:19
but I think that was pretty good.
1:03:20
I got back to the hotel and David Hyatt, the president at the time
1:03:23
of MRN, he calls me at the hotel.
1:03:24
He says, dude, I don't know where that came from.
1:03:26
I think you got the gig.
1:03:27
He said, and you were the low man on the totem pole when we went into this thing.
1:03:31
He said, you were the one who just slid in there because we liked you.
1:03:34
And sure enough, I got that gig NASCAR performance live.
1:03:37
And we had a 10 year run, which is in radio.
1:03:38
A 10 year run is a lifetime.
1:03:40
And we had a wonderful experience where Larry, another crew chief and
1:03:44
I would co host a radio show and getting to know those crew chiefs and
1:03:47
getting to work alongside of them.
1:03:48
And they.
1:03:49
owned it.
1:03:49
Guys like Jimmy Elledge and Chad canals and those crew chiefs loved
1:03:54
coming in and doing NASCAR performance live because it was their show.
1:03:57
It was a crew chief show.
1:03:58
And yeah, there were times I had to slow them down.
1:04:00
There were times I have to say, okay, speak English guys.
1:04:02
There were times I had to do it and we really had a great run and that really
1:04:06
emboldened me in the garage area.
1:04:07
I was so fortunate to have that show.
1:04:09
And to this day I have crew chiefs come up, man, we got
1:04:11
to get that show going again.
1:04:12
We got to get that crew chief show going again.
1:04:14
And that relationship with the crew chiefs talking about.
1:04:17
That relationship.
1:04:18
So that when I walk in that garage on Friday morning, I know those guys that
1:04:21
is gold for what I do with MRN and that radio show may be one of the best
1:04:26
breaks that I ever had in my life in the opportunity to do that show and to sit
1:04:30
in the studio for an hour with a crew chief and pick his brain and talk about
1:04:33
things and talk about the way things go.
1:04:34
As we rolled along programming on Sirius XM NASCAR radio kind of came
1:04:38
into play as well and I was able to weasel my way into the midday show
1:04:41
co hosting with Chocolate Meyers.
1:04:43
And I don't remember, I tried to find the year of this, but there
1:04:46
was one year where I was on the air virtually seven days a week.
1:04:49
I know I had one year, the month of May and the month of September, I was
1:04:53
on the air every day doing something.
1:04:55
And you get to the stage where you're just running yourselves in circles.
1:04:57
And you continue on, and I had all of these things happening,
1:05:01
and this career is just growing.
1:05:02
And along the way, I mean, you're interviewing, you're in Sirius, you're at
1:05:05
the SEMA show in Vegas doing Sirius shows, where you have Carol Shelby and Guy Fieri.
1:05:10
Sitting there across from me, the diners, drive ins, and dives guy, and they're
1:05:13
both car guys, and they're talking about it, and Chocolate Myers, and you know,
1:05:16
Charlie Daniels swings by and hangs out with us, or James Taylor's doing a new
1:05:20
concert tour, and we have a, I'll never forget, we're in Daytona, we're down
1:05:24
there for one of the anniversaries of the Daytona 500, and up comes AJ Foyt.
1:05:28
And sits down at our table and chocolate Meyers, A.
1:05:31
J.
1:05:32
Foyt and Steve Post.
1:05:33
Talk about who doesn't belong and why.
1:05:34
Okay, we're sitting there talking, hanging out, talking, racing,
1:05:38
just absolutely amazing what was going on and what was happening.
1:05:43
When I look at Interviewing different drivers.
1:05:45
The question always comes up, who are some of your favorites to interview?
1:05:48
I'll tell you the one that's always the adventure to interview is Tony Stewart.
1:05:50
Tony Stewart.
1:05:51
I am telling you, he will mess with you every time.
1:05:54
His standard go to is while you're talking, you've got the microphone,
1:05:57
he's tapping the microphone and you're talking and it's bouncing off your lip.
1:06:00
It's bouncing off your chin.
1:06:01
And he does that.
1:06:02
But Tony has this trick, uh, I'll try to describe this in
1:06:05
a family friendly manner here.
1:06:07
Tony is part of the Coca Cola race or was when he was driving part of the
1:06:10
Coca Cola racing family of drivers.
1:06:13
And that meant during driver intros, he'd always walk
1:06:15
around with a Coca Cola bottle.
1:06:16
Well, he would carry this Coca Cola bottle at about belt
1:06:19
height, walk up alongside of you.
1:06:21
And one little flip of that Coca Cola bottle at belt height, he
1:06:26
could take your breath away.
1:06:27
If you know what I mean.
1:06:28
So you'd be standing there interviewing somebody and the next thing you
1:06:32
know, boom, you'd get hit by Tony Stewart and your breath was gone.
1:06:37
Poor Clint Boyer and I are talking to each other.
1:06:39
We're standing face to face pre race.
1:06:42
Neither one of us saw it coming.
1:06:43
The good news for me is the microphone was over to Boyer.
1:06:46
At this point, Tony puts the bottle and did a double flip.
1:06:52
And he got Both of us, at the same time.
1:06:56
Boyer is there, and I'm not pulling this microphone back.
1:06:59
Cause I'm in as bad a shape as you are.
1:07:01
And Boyer's like, Oh!
1:07:01
Oh!
1:07:04
Tony Stewart's down here with his normal greeting!
1:07:07
And I'm like, Oh my God!
1:07:09
So the Tony Stewart, he was just that character.
1:07:12
And so, uh, Boyer got through that interview.
1:07:14
I just threw it back to the booth, cause I couldn't talk.
1:07:16
I was breathless, and we rolled along.
1:07:18
And I would dare say though, The characters in NASCAR, one of my all
1:07:21
time favorites, Was Ward Burton.
1:07:24
Ward Burton, South Boston, Virginia.
1:07:27
Oh, Ward Burton with the South Virginia draw.
1:07:32
Ward had ran for Larry McClure for years and that deal had went away.
1:07:35
And then two or three years or one year or something later, they had kind of
1:07:38
revived the deal and they show up at Pocono with a car and Ward is ready to go.
1:07:42
He's their driver.
1:07:42
He's their guy.
1:07:43
We're out on pit road for qualifying.
1:07:45
And I said, Hey, I'm the two way channel or whatever it is.
1:07:47
Let's talk to Ward Burton.
1:07:48
We haven't talked to him in a while and you know, he's always good to talk to and
1:07:50
everyone loves Ward Burton and everything.
1:07:52
Hi, Ward.
1:07:53
Welcome back to racing.
1:07:54
Welcome back.
1:07:54
Uh, good to see you.
1:07:55
How did this deal all come together?
1:07:56
And hold the microphone over.
1:07:58
And Ward starts to talk and a bee starts flying around his mouth.
1:08:02
Well, I want to thank Larry McClure for putting this deal together.
1:08:07
And he's blowing at the bee cause the bee is landing.
1:08:10
And we got Ron Pittman running the engine.
1:08:14
Runt Pitman building the engines and we got Joe's text sponsoring.
1:08:19
I'm losing my mind.
1:08:21
My producers on the radio, what is going on?
1:08:25
I can't answer.
1:08:26
I'm just holding the microphone.
1:08:27
We do also, MRN does the sprint vision, the vision screens.
1:08:30
And later on they told me the vision people, all you could see
1:08:32
was the MRN microphone just doing this because I'm losing my mind.
1:08:35
You talk about church laughs.
1:08:37
This interview never.
1:08:39
Ended.
1:08:39
I am telling you, Ward and this bee had the most persistence I've
1:08:44
ever seen in my life because Ward wanted to thank everybody from the
1:08:47
guy that cleaned the shop floor.
1:08:49
And this bee was not leaving him alone.
1:08:51
And he did a he had to do that 20 times during the interview.
1:08:54
I'm losing my mind.
1:08:55
I can't even stand myself right now.
1:08:57
And literally when the interview was done, we use that while that's word
1:09:00
bird, I just turned the mic off.
1:09:01
Cause I couldn't have talked if my life depended on it.
1:09:03
And it was an amazing, amazing run.
1:09:05
And an amazing time in my life doing all of the serious stuff and doing
1:09:09
the stuff for Motor Racing Network.
1:09:10
And again, the years all kind of run together.
1:09:12
Got called into an office, got called into a meeting, and it
1:09:15
was with the serious folks.
1:09:17
And, uh, they had decided that they were going to go in a different
1:09:19
direction with the Midday Show.
1:09:21
Face it, nobody likes to hear this and I didn't want to hear it.
1:09:23
I didn't like to hear it.
1:09:24
Although I will say this, doing seven days a week and doing everything.
1:09:27
I knew that that probably wasn't really good either.
1:09:29
And so I was still going to work on serious on the weekends, but I was no
1:09:32
longer going to do the midday show.
1:09:33
And I kind of disagreed with that.
1:09:34
I'm not one of those people that really, uh, you know, I told
1:09:37
him, okay, when's my last day?
1:09:38
I'm not going to be a jackass at the end of it.
1:09:39
I'm going to thank everyone for their time and say, Rick.
1:09:41
Benjamin will join you next week and we'll continue right on.
1:09:44
And then they were cool.
1:09:44
We were all good with it.
1:09:45
We all handled it well.
1:09:46
And so you're doing it.
1:09:47
And the NASCAR thing is kind of rolling along.
1:09:49
And I love what I do for motor racing network.
1:09:51
And it's like, okay, all of a sudden I have this big block of
1:09:54
time during the middle of the week.
1:09:56
And so I started working on some projects beyond NASCAR.
1:09:58
And at the time, and it would have been a 2010 MRN bought
1:10:02
a website called racing one.
1:10:04
com and racing one.
1:10:05
com had chat rooms and fan forums.
1:10:07
Back in the day when that was a big time.
1:10:09
So they had the fan forums and we're at a meeting and they said the
1:10:11
number one fan forum on racing one.
1:10:13
com is cup series.
1:10:15
Next tell cup sprint cup.
1:10:16
It wasn't Winston cup then, but probably next tell copper sprint cup series racing.
1:10:19
The number two fan forum is the world of outlaw sprint cars.
1:10:23
Does anyone here know anything about the world of outlaws?
1:10:25
And I'll be honest with you.
1:10:27
I knew.
1:10:27
A little bit about the world of outlaws.
1:10:29
My history with sprint car racing was generally not all
1:10:31
that good, quite honestly.
1:10:32
I grew up here in this area, as I've established, and I
1:10:34
would go to the races around.
1:10:35
And we had a group up here called the Empire Super Sprints.
1:10:38
And the early years of the Empire Super Sprints were not all that pretty at times.
1:10:43
The Empire Spin and Stops, I think, were some of the nicknames that they had.
1:10:46
The drivers were perfectly fine, but a track would prepare for the sprint
1:10:49
cars by bringing in one push truck.
1:10:51
And sprint car racing was not necessarily something that I really
1:10:54
enjoyed at that point in my life.
1:10:56
But I love dirt track racing and I'm like, I want to get back to
1:10:59
some dirt track racing routes.
1:11:00
So what we did that year is we formed what we call the
1:11:02
world of outlaw report in 2010.
1:11:04
We would just dial up somebody, Steve Kinzer, Sammy Swindell, Donnie shots,
1:11:08
whoever it was, Jason Myers, Jason sides, we'd call them up and interview
1:11:11
them about the race that they just had.
1:11:13
Maybe they won or an upcoming race and we put together the world of
1:11:16
outlaw report and that was 2010 and it was the year of the 50th.
1:11:19
Annual Knoxville Nationals and the numbers on the world of outlaw report to the voice
1:11:24
of NASCAR to MRN, the numbers on the world of outlaw report were surprisingly good.
1:11:29
I don't know now looking back at it, the neighbors were shocked,
1:11:31
but I think we were all kind of pleasantly surprised by it.
1:11:33
So let's do something special for the 50th anniversary of the Knoxville Nationals.
1:11:38
Let's do an MRN one hour show.
1:11:41
Highlighting the Knoxville Nationals.
1:11:42
We need to get your cohost.
1:11:43
Who are you going to have?
1:11:44
Kendra Jacobs.
1:11:45
I had worked with Kendra on the Texaco Havilland account.
1:11:47
Kenny Jacobs, a legendary sprint car driver from Ohio.
1:11:50
His daughter, Kendra, she had been working at the time for Penske Racing.
1:11:53
So she knew sprint car racing.
1:11:54
She's a former Miss Knoxville National.
1:11:55
I said, she'd be the perfect cohost for this one hour show.
1:11:58
We're just going to do one off.
1:11:59
It's going to be one off deal.
1:12:00
Kendra and I knew each other.
1:12:01
Like I said, we'd work together.
1:12:02
We were buds.
1:12:02
We were pals.
1:12:03
We'd travel around the country some.
1:12:04
So we were really, really good friends with each other.
1:12:06
Called her up.
1:12:06
She would love the idea of doing it.
1:12:07
She sat in the studio and we recorded the show.
1:12:10
We were going to just record it and then air it later on.
1:12:12
Not going to do it live.
1:12:13
So we sit down and we do the first segment of the show.
1:12:16
Five minutes, seven minutes, 10 minutes, whatever it is.
1:12:18
And this thing is just rolling.
1:12:21
We are on the same page.
1:12:23
I mean, I've done a lot of radio by this point and I'm sitting
1:12:25
there and we are clicking.
1:12:26
We get to the first break.
1:12:26
Craig Moore is our producer of the show.
1:12:28
Craig gets on the private channel.
1:12:29
Kendra, how much radio have you done?
1:12:30
She looks at her watch.
1:12:31
She's about 10 minutes.
1:12:33
He says, you're serious.
1:12:34
You've never done this before.
1:12:35
She says, no, I've never done any of this before.
1:12:36
Well, we interviewed Danny Lasoski.
1:12:38
We interviewed Brian Brown and readers, Bobby Ellen.
1:12:40
Bobby would have been the 20th anniversary of Bobby winning the nationals.
1:12:43
I think he won the 30th Knoxville national.
1:12:45
So it would have been the 20th anniversary.
1:12:46
Obviously, Danny Lasoski and Brian Brown was the young gun.
1:12:49
Danny's nephew.
1:12:49
We interviewed those three showing up and the show blew the doors off.
1:12:53
We're like, man, there's something here.
1:12:54
There is something here.
1:12:55
That was 2010.
1:12:56
We sat down during the off season.
1:12:58
We're like, you know, you have the world of outlaws, which are great,
1:13:00
but you have the Pennsylvania posse, which are not the world of outlaws.
1:13:04
Although the world of outlaws come there and you've got.
1:13:06
California and you've got Ohio and you've got Knoxville and you got Jackson.
1:13:09
You've got all of this sprint car racing.
1:13:11
So we need to be bigger than the world of outlaw report.
1:13:13
And we came up with a show by the name of winged nation and
1:13:16
wing nation was born in 2011.
1:13:19
Kendra Jacobs and I talk in sprint car racing.
1:13:21
It has been an absolutely amazing journey along the way.
1:13:25
We ended up with an invite to go out and do live shows at the Knoxville nationals.
1:13:29
Wow.
1:13:30
It's go to the Knoxville.
1:13:31
My first year I did a Knoxville nationals.
1:13:32
It was opposite of Watkins Glen.
1:13:34
for the cup series and I'd already committed that I was
1:13:36
going to be with MRN Watkins Glen.
1:13:38
So the idiot that I am said, we'll do Wednesday and Thursday shows
1:13:42
at Knoxville and then we won't do a Friday and Saturday show.
1:13:45
I'll just leave.
1:13:46
So I go out to Knoxville for my first time ever and I arrive in Mecca.
1:13:53
I arrive in heaven, dirt track heaven.
1:13:57
Tom Schmay, formerly with the Sprint Car Hall of Fame, he knows what I mean.
1:14:00
You walk into the Marion County Fairgrounds for the Knoxville
1:14:02
Nationals, and you know that's where you want to be that week in
1:14:05
August for the rest of your life.
1:14:07
I walked in, we did a live show, crowd there, everyone's screaming and
1:14:11
hollering, races go off, preliminary night one, just a great night.
1:14:14
Come in and do a show on Thursday, preliminary night number two,
1:14:17
everything is great, everything is good.
1:14:19
And Friday morning Well, everyone else is all fired up about going to Knoxville.
1:14:24
I go to the Des Moines airport to get on a plane, to fly Des Moines,
1:14:28
to Charlotte, to Philly, to Buffalo, to Erie, to wherever, to wherever,
1:14:32
to wherever, to get to Elmira.
1:14:35
I love Watkins Glen, but I have never been in a spot where that
1:14:40
was the last place on the planet.
1:14:42
I wanted to go that day.
1:14:43
I was in good company that day.
1:14:45
I don't know what exactly was going on.
1:14:47
A young lady that many of us know, Aaron Crocker, who raced sprint cars
1:14:51
and race world of all the sprint cars.
1:14:52
Erin Everett.
1:14:52
She was on the board of directors for the Hall of Fame and something in her
1:14:55
world was that she had to leave on Friday morning and her and I sat in
1:14:59
the Des Moines airport and had the biggest Pity party that two grown
1:15:02
people have ever had in our lives.
1:15:05
And we have vowed that that will never, ever happen again.
1:15:08
We roll along.
1:15:09
We started doing live shows at Knoxville in 2015.
1:15:13
He called into a real quick meeting at MRN.
1:15:16
We've got something out here.
1:15:17
Someone's fishing around here.
1:15:18
So we're going to play around with this a little bit.
1:15:19
Mav TV.
1:15:21
They want a sprint car show, radio style talk show covering sprint car racing.
1:15:25
And so we're thinking about putting cameras in the studio.
1:15:27
And would you guys be into that?
1:15:28
Well, yeah, we'll be into that.
1:15:29
Mav TV.
1:15:30
It's great taking a show to TV.
1:15:31
It's a sure enough.
1:15:32
We ended up doing a separate show for Mav TV, just the logistics of it.
1:15:35
And I just take a whole lot of pride.
1:15:37
In saying that M.
1:15:38
R.
1:15:39
N.
1:15:39
And I love the motor racing network.
1:15:41
I love our NASCAR work.
1:15:42
I love what we do.
1:15:44
M.
1:15:44
R.
1:15:44
N.
1:15:45
The voice of NASCAR.
1:15:47
Our first venture into TV was sprint cars.
1:15:51
And I just love that.
1:15:52
I just love, I love what we've created with Wing Nation.
1:15:55
And it continues on to be just this amazing show that we've built.
1:15:58
Kendra has gone on, she is now out at Knoxville doing all the
1:16:01
marketing and promotion out there.
1:16:02
Aaron Everham now, Ray Everham's wife, Aaron Crocker, she's my co host on
1:16:06
the show and I've got another co host, Ashley Strami, David Strami's wife, her
1:16:10
father was Joe Deal, raced at Port Royal.
1:16:11
So we have got this show, we do three shows a week and the numbers are unreal.
1:16:16
As a matter of fact, this year we hit a milestone, 2017 Wing
1:16:20
Nation was the first MRN digital show to clear one million unique.
1:16:26
Listeners to our show.
1:16:27
It has been unreal.
1:16:28
We're now invited to do Knoxville.
1:16:30
We did shows at the Jackson Nationals in Jackson, Minnesota.
1:16:33
We did shows at the Bob Weikert Memorial in Port Royal and this
1:16:36
wing nation stuff just is amazing.
1:16:38
And I think it's so amazing about it because when I sat down years ago
1:16:41
and had that meeting was serious.
1:16:43
And they told me they no longer wanted me during the mid days.
1:16:47
I don't know that I was heartbroke.
1:16:48
I know I was disappointed.
1:16:50
And I look at that meeting and I've talked to Daniel Norwood, the guy at
1:16:53
serious, and I thanked him because that door closing opened up this unreal world
1:16:59
of sprint car racing that we have now.
1:17:01
And it is absolutely amazing to get to do my passion of NASCAR racing, my
1:17:05
passion of sprint car racing, and be able to do it all and put it all together.
1:17:09
Along the way, I ventured into some other things.
1:17:11
I did a food blog.
1:17:12
I shared with you that when I was doing the serious stuff, I'd met Guy Fieri,
1:17:15
the diners, drive ins and dives guy.
1:17:17
And we remain in touch now and just kind of once in a while our paths across, but
1:17:20
he's just all over the place like I am.
1:17:22
But I said, what if we did a NASCAR version of diners, drive ins and dives?
1:17:25
Like, what are the good places to do in Richmond and what are the
1:17:28
good places to eat here and who are the good team cooks and you know,
1:17:31
food sponsors and everything else.
1:17:32
So for a few years, did a website called food around the track.
1:17:35
dot com, and we actually had an MRN podcast called fast food.
1:17:37
What really happened with it?
1:17:38
I was kind of at a crossroads with it.
1:17:40
And when that meeting about the math TV thing happened, I said, well, I think
1:17:43
it answered the crossroads probably need to put my focus on sprint cars.
1:17:45
And so we kind of got out of the food business along the way.
1:17:48
Last year, kind of discovered a couple other hidden passions
1:17:52
that I didn't realize were there.
1:17:53
Lenny Sammons, who does area auto racing news and does.
1:17:57
Indoor TQ racing.
1:17:58
So I had the opportunity to start announcing those.
1:18:00
I did Allentown and Atlantic city last year.
1:18:03
I was able to do Trenton and I'll do Allentown and Atlantic city,
1:18:06
not able to do the Albany race.
1:18:07
I'm sorry.
1:18:07
I'm going to miss the bus load, but we're in Daytona at that point.
1:18:09
And I just found this world of TQ and we did 600 micro racing.
1:18:14
That is just a wonderful, wonderful place of short track racers just out there
1:18:18
slugging it out and I've had so much fun.
1:18:20
Along the way last year as well, we have a modified tour, the
1:18:24
NASCAR wheel and type modified, the Southern modified racing series.
1:18:27
Of course, in the South, we have this juggernaut called Bowman gray stadium,
1:18:30
the mad house, and it is an amazing place.
1:18:33
And the mad house is a football stadium.
1:18:35
So they've got to end like in the second week of August, because a Winston Salem
1:18:38
state plays their football games there.
1:18:40
So the mad house is a very short season, very compact, very exciting.
1:18:43
It's great.
1:18:44
great racing.
1:18:45
Those drivers have got with the folks who are in Caraway, a private tour,
1:18:48
southern modified racing series, and they also promote the north south shootout.
1:18:51
So found myself getting involved with those folks a little bit and
1:18:54
I discovered the asphalt modified again, kind of rediscovered it.
1:18:57
And what an amazing car that is.
1:18:59
I sat at Charlotte Motor Speedway and there was a modified race.
1:19:01
Then I was on that little quarter mile track, so it's not really a great
1:19:04
track for him, but I'm watching this and I'm like, man, he's modified cars.
1:19:07
Wow, they're drastically different than the wing sprint car, but so
1:19:11
much the same wide tires engine hanging out all over the place.
1:19:15
You know, sprint car has a wing.
1:19:17
They have the wide tires and the loud pipes and the noise and started to do
1:19:21
a little work in the modified world.
1:19:22
And we've got a project coming up beginning of next year, a little bit
1:19:24
more work with a modified tour and going to start doing some of that.
1:19:26
And so as we've evolved and as NASCAR has evolved, I love doing the pit
1:19:30
road stuff, but I found passion and the other forms of racing.
1:19:33
I just had a moment this year.
1:19:35
I had a couple of moments this year, but I had one that just kind of blew me away.
1:19:38
The summer shootout.
1:19:39
I mentioned that in 1998, I was hired to do the summer shootout.
1:19:42
So I roll along and we're on a media tour.
1:19:44
And one of the executives at Charlotte motor Speedway says, how
1:19:47
long have you been doing the summer?
1:19:48
Sure.
1:19:48
I says, actually, you know what?
1:19:49
This is my 20th year of doing the summer shootout, man.
1:19:52
That's really cool.
1:19:52
We need to do something with that.
1:19:53
We need to do something with that.
1:19:54
And I'm like, oh, that's good.
1:19:55
That's great.
1:19:56
Whatever you guys want to do.
1:19:56
I'm here.
1:19:57
So we roll along through the summer shootout.
1:19:58
I never hear about it.
1:19:59
I'm not.
1:20:00
begging for it.
1:20:00
It is what it is.
1:20:01
I mean, it's a great idea, but a lot of great ideas fall by the wayside.
1:20:04
We get to week number nine, the next to last week.
1:20:06
And they said, Hey, we want to do something special next
1:20:08
week for the season finale.
1:20:09
We want you down with Lenny's the tiki is the announcer.
1:20:12
He does the track side stuff.
1:20:13
I do the play by play.
1:20:14
So we want you down to do the pre race for that.
1:20:15
I said, okay, whatever you guys need, I'll be down there, you know?
1:20:17
So I go walking down and I'm just standing there, minding my own business, talking
1:20:20
to the flag or talking to the officials.
1:20:22
And I see a young man behind the stage, a young man by the name of Thomas van
1:20:25
Wingerden, the van Wingerden family.
1:20:27
is an amazing family.
1:20:29
Tom Van Wingerden was the patriarch of that family.
1:20:31
He had a passion for racing that was just amazing.
1:20:35
It was legends racing at Charlotte.
1:20:37
It was what him and his boys did.
1:20:39
His boys went and raced on Tuesday nights at Charlotte and they were all in.
1:20:43
They were there to win races.
1:20:45
He ran a successful business in town, but they were there to compete hard and they
1:20:48
did racing for all the right reasons.
1:20:51
Tom.
1:20:51
Died probably seven or eight years ago in a four wheeler accident.
1:20:55
So sadly the family had kind of fallen by the wayside.
1:20:58
As far as racing goes, they still run the business.
1:20:59
They're still all very successful.
1:21:01
And I follow along with some of them on social media, but I saw
1:21:03
Thomas Van Wingerden backstage.
1:21:04
I said, that's weird.
1:21:05
I hadn't seen him at the track all year long.
1:21:06
There is an award that is not given out on a regular basis called the Tom Van
1:21:10
Wingerden spirit of the legend award.
1:21:12
And it is an award that is given not on the basis of what you've done.
1:21:16
It is given on the basis of how you've done things and that passion, that spirit.
1:21:21
And I'm standing there and all of a sudden it strikes me that I'm getting ready
1:21:24
to go on the stage and get the Tom Van Wingerden Spirit of the Legend Award.
1:21:28
And I am telling you, I've been blessed with so many honors in
1:21:32
this sport with so many things that have happened along the way.
1:21:35
But getting that award in August of this year for who I am, the Tom Van
1:21:39
Wingerden Spirit Award was the highlight.
1:21:41
It's the best award because it was how I present myself.
1:21:43
I love racing.
1:21:45
I don't know if I can tell.
1:21:46
I know I'm a little shy.
1:21:47
I know I'm a little reserved.
1:21:48
I know I don't really come out of my bubble.
1:21:50
But I love racing.
1:21:51
Racing legends cars on Tuesday night at the Daytona 500 and everything between.
1:21:55
I love it.
1:21:56
And to get that award was just absolutely amazing.
1:22:00
And it's just really, really touched my heart, but I up that this week,
1:22:05
I did something this week that is even in my opinion, better than that.
1:22:10
I was at Eldora Speedway doing the, uh, truck series race.
1:22:13
And I shared with you back an hour, hour and 15 minutes ago, my
1:22:17
favorite driver was Pete Cordes.
1:22:19
I've never met Pete Cordes as an adult.
1:22:22
I was a fan of his as a kid, but I'd never met Pete Cordes as an adult.
1:22:26
I met Eldora.
1:22:26
I'm doing some hospitality.
1:22:28
I'm there hanging out and some guy comes up and says, Hey, I
1:22:30
remember you from five mile point.
1:22:31
You used to watch Chuck.
1:22:32
Cool.
1:22:32
Some Carl Nagel and those guys race.
1:22:34
And I said, yeah, man, those are the days.
1:22:35
It's a man.
1:22:36
I used to live right nearby to Pete Cordes.
1:22:38
I was all my God.
1:22:38
That was my guy.
1:22:39
Pete Cordes.
1:22:40
That's my guy.
1:22:41
He's man.
1:22:41
He's doing great.
1:22:42
Doing really, really well.
1:22:43
You know, we're older race car drivers.
1:22:45
We don't know.
1:22:46
I hadn't read that Pete had passed or anything, but you just never know.
1:22:50
And I'm like, wow, that's great to hear.
1:22:51
He's doing well.
1:22:52
He's doing great.
1:22:52
I got thinking to myself, I said, how many people get to meet their heroes?
1:22:57
How many times when we're a kid, whether it's a baseball hero or
1:22:59
football hero or racing hero, do we get a chance to meet our hero?
1:23:03
And as Kip and I were putting this together, I said, you know what?
1:23:05
Why don't I come up a little bit early and why don't I go see if I can meet my hero?
1:23:09
I'm at Knoxville.
1:23:10
I'm out there getting ready for the Nationals.
1:23:12
Pete and I had started to email back and forth and started to talk a
1:23:16
little bit back and forth about it.
1:23:18
In 1975, Pete was involved in a crash at Five Mile Point Speedway.
1:23:23
And I was an 11 year old kid, a Pete Cordez fan, and he broke his back in
1:23:28
that crash at Five Mile Point Speedway.
1:23:30
Being the fan that I was, I was able to reach out and send a
1:23:34
letter to Pete and send him a note.
1:23:36
And I'm there and Knoxville Raceway.
1:23:38
We had just kind of emailed back and forth and broached that conversation about,
1:23:43
Hey, I'm coming up there in December.
1:23:44
I'd love to take you and Judy to dinner to meet you.
1:23:48
You're my childhood hero.
1:23:49
I would love to meet Pete Cordes.
1:23:51
I'm pulling into Knoxville.
1:23:53
I get an email from Pete Cordes.
1:23:55
And in that email is a picture.
1:23:57
And in that picture is this card.
1:24:00
Dear Pete, I am one of your fans.
1:24:03
And I saw you Saturday night and hope you get well.
1:24:07
I will miss the blue number 68 at Five Mile Point.
1:24:11
Your fan, Steve Post.
1:24:13
How cool is that for your hero to save it?
1:24:16
Isn't that amazing?
1:24:18
He sent me that.
1:24:20
Steve Post, RD2 Halsted.
1:24:22
Pete Cordes, modified stock car driver, Sydney, New York.
1:24:27
I found the zip code, 10 cent stamp.
1:24:30
I'm pulling into Knoxville Raceway.
1:24:33
I get an email from Pete Cordes, and I'm sitting in the passenger
1:24:37
seat, and I open this up.
1:24:39
And I started to cry.
1:24:40
My passion.
1:24:41
My hero had saved this letter from an 11 year old kid that his bigger
1:24:48
than life hero had suffered a back break at a race blown away by this.
1:24:53
I was able to reach out and to make this even better.
1:24:57
I landed in Syracuse, jumped in the rental car, made the haul over to Sydney
1:25:01
and on Thursday night at 4 I did dinner with my hero, Pete Cordes, and his wife,
1:25:08
Judy, to meet your hero, the guy that saved your letter as an 11 year old kid.
1:25:13
I'm happy to report a lot of times when you meet your heroes, they may disappoint.
1:25:16
As we live in this age of social media, we learn way more about our
1:25:20
heroes than we need to know about them.
1:25:21
We all have warts.
1:25:22
We all have bad times.
1:25:23
We all have little hiccups along the way.
1:25:25
My hero, Pete Cordes, when I was an 11 year old kid, was bigger than life.
1:25:29
My hero, Pete Cordes.
1:25:31
As a 53 year old man is bigger than life.
1:25:34
Times 10.
1:25:35
An amazing man, an amazing man.
1:25:37
This guy built his race cars from bumper to bumper, built his engines from bottom
1:25:42
to ground up, raised three kids, had a successful career at Bendix, race
1:25:48
that modified three or four nights a week, depending on what the tracks
1:25:51
were and did it all while raising that family and while doing everything.
1:25:55
Pete Cortez, 30 years ago, found out he had cancer in his arm.
1:25:58
Had some failed procedures done and has lost his right arm to cancer.
1:26:03
His wife shared with me something that just blew me away.
1:26:07
And part of the reason he lost his arm was maybe some faulty diagnosis from
1:26:10
some doctors or some faulty treatments.
1:26:12
The day after he lost his arm, he went home and he got up the next
1:26:16
morning and Judy walks out and Pete Cordes is sitting at the table
1:26:19
learning how to write left handed.
1:26:23
Unreal.
1:26:23
He still changes brakes on his own cars, says it's amazing what
1:26:26
you can do with vice grips and some leverage with only one arm.
1:26:29
And it's your weak arm.
1:26:30
He claims, and I was, he claims he's smarter because he says the
1:26:34
whole left brain, right brain thing.
1:26:36
And he was right handed.
1:26:37
So his left brain was very engaged, but now that his left hand is the primary
1:26:40
hand and he says, I have so many ideas I wish I could have done as a race car.
1:26:44
I'm like, why didn't you think of that?
1:26:45
Why didn't you think of that?
1:26:45
What I learned was that he was so smart with chassis setups and then it was bigger
1:26:50
tires on the right front, bigger tires and bars here and everything like that.
1:26:53
And on Thursday evening, I had a two and a half hour visit with my hero,
1:26:58
as I mentioned, bigger than life as a kid and bigger than a lifetime's 10.
1:27:02
I met my hero, Pete Cordez.
1:27:03
And that is just an amazing, amazing night that I will never forget.
1:27:07
And the good news is we're going to meet again.
1:27:09
Next time I'm up, he may even come to a NASCAR race along the way.
1:27:12
I just cherish that relationship.
1:27:13
So that's really my story.
1:27:16
Steve post race fan, little kid that grew up at five mile points.
1:27:19
Speedway loved racing.
1:27:20
Little kid that used to sit around a matchbox cars and mimic the announcers.
1:27:24
A single dad with two kids and just love my daughters to death.
1:27:27
Teenage girls love my desk.
1:27:28
I'm a radio broadcaster, but ultimately just a kid from Halstead, Pennsylvania
1:27:32
that decided to pursue my dream after some bumps and hurdles and misturns along
1:27:36
the way, and I got, I caught that dream and I'm really, really proud of where
1:27:40
I've been at and where I've come to.
1:27:41
And I'm just appreciate the opportunity today to share my story with you.
1:27:44
And I thank you for coming out and listening here today.
1:27:46
Appreciate it.
1:27:54
This episode is brought to you in part by the International
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