I guess that's probably just part of getting old and being detached from the weekly goings on at the track and over thinking the possibilities. I don't know why but I had a bad feeling going into all this racing on the big half miles the next week or so. I always traveled alone and worked out of my van with the camera gear so if I were to go to spectate I wouldn't even have anyone to sit with. Like so many others who have been involved with things like writing and photography I don't find the thought of sitting in the stands appealing. I'm still following it online on these boards, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube but the bottom dropped out and I have been shooting street rods and rat rods instead of race cars just for something to take car photos of. I shot my one and only race this season on May 7th, screwed up my back when I bent over to pickup a lens cap, and haven't been back out since that night. It's a young man's sport and I was dealing with the added fear of getting too old to side step spinning cars. I'm a couple months shy of 65 and have felt more that way myself the past couple of years. But long story short, I do understand where you are coming from there. I just didn't even want to go to the track that day, but we pulled together and did. The closest I came was the morning on the Chili Bowl when we woke up find out that Donnie Ray Crawford had been murdered. But there have been other times when I've wanted to quit my interest in the sport. The worst that I can recall was probably at Knoxville in 08-09 somewhere in there when Jeff Shepard has his bad one.
Fortunately, out of all the races I've been too (and raced myself for a few years), I have never personally witnessed a fatal or extremely serious accident. I too pray for Brian's recovery (as I do for Kevin Swindell's since last year at the Nationals). Kara Hendrick at El Cajon in 1991. Page Jones at Eldora in 1994. And the list goes on and on. And so I bid farewell to racing. Seeing Rich Vogler leave this world in 1990 at Salem was gut wretching. Watching "Hirk" get burned at Milwaukee when he climbed over Roger Ward's RR at Milwaukee in '64 was bad.
The many lives have been lost/maimed over that 50+ years is grevious. It still greives me to think about the loss of Kevin Golbrecht in '99. That's exactly what I am going to do: forget racing. After watching dirt track racing for 50 plus years, and last night hearing about Brian Clausen's crash and subsequent injuries, I just cannot bear to see another racer die or be seriously injured. ".forget racing." as someone posted about praying for Brian Clausen's injuries suffered last night at Bellville.
Topic: Forget Racing: enough of the tragedies Web Enter your search terms Submit search form
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