Sometimes it amazes me how early kids start racing. Some in go-karts are 5 years old or less, but that is OK.
I guess it's just that I never thought about driving a race car until I was about 18. When I was a kid, I never gave much thought to what I was going to do when I became an adult. Then, when I got old enough to work, I began working on race cars. I didn't look far enough ahead to say I might want to drive one of those things someday.
Daddy was winning races and championships, and I just wanted to help him. I wanted to work on the cars, make them as good as we could, and let Daddy win the races.
When I got out of high school that was still the deal. I went to business college to learn how to run the business part of racing.
Then one day I decided I might want to drive a race car, but it was not a burning ambition. I'd heard that Buddy Baker might get to drive one of Buck's (Baker) cars; so I figured, if he was going to, then why couldn't I?
I think it was just an off-the-wall remark when I asked Daddy about driving a race car. I know I was 18 at the time. He told me to come back when I was 21.
At that time there were no 18- or 20-year-old guys driving. All the drivers had come up through the Modified ranks, and by the time they got to the top division they were 25 years old or older.
After Daddy told me to wait until I was 21, I never said another word to him about driving. I waited those three years. So one day, right about the time of my birthday, I was in the shop working on his race cars and I looked up at him doing something. I said, "I think I want to drive a race car." I'd already looked at the schedule and at the cars we had in the shop.
Daddy looked at me and turned a little sideways and said, "OK, well, over there sits a car. You and Dale (Inman) get it ready and go to Columbia, South Carolina, to that convertible race."
So that is what we did. That same Thursday night, Daddy and my brother Maurice went off to Asheville to race his car on a track built around a ball field. Me and Dale and one other guy pulled our race car behind a pickup truck and drove to Columbia.
Later that season, Daddy and I ran eight to 10 races together. I was running the convertible cars and he was running hardtops, but in several events NASCAR ran the two divisions together at the same time.
And, yeah, Daddy usually had some comment about my driving. I didn't run in the right place very often, from his standpoint.
We'd run heat races and Daddy would watch me and beat on Dale's shoulder. "Why don't he get down lower on the track? He can't pass on the outside." He never gave me a lot of advice about how to drive, but he would tell me a lot of times that I wasn't doing it right.
Now with Kyle it was a whole different matter. When he was 18 he decided he wanted to drive a race car, but his approach was different. He went around in the shop and picked out three or four key people and convinced them he could race. He had them convinced before he ever came to me.
When he came to me, his approach was, "I have already talked to Dale and some of the guys, and they say they will help me."
Kyle was a pretty good football player in high school and at one time was thinking about college ball. Then he hurt his knee and he sort of got off the football kick. He decided he wanted to drive.
I told him I wanted him to go to college. He said he would, but when he got out of college he wanted to come right back home and race. So, he said, "Why don't I just spend the next four years learning how to drive a race car and that will be my college."
He's a heck of a salesman, and I finally gave in to his plan.
Also, I knew that if I didn't take him, someone else would. And I felt more comfortable with him driving our equipment.