Some were surprised at how well Marlin accepted perhaps the toughest blow of his racing career. Maybe growing up on a farm helped. Farm life, like racing, tends to callous the heart as well as the hands. Crops fail. Livestock dies. Blights strike. Prices plunge. Months of toil can wither away during a drought.
"You pick up and go on,'' Sterling says. "What's the alternative, quitting? To me, that's not an alternative.''
Sterling lost his mother to cancer several years ago. Coo Coo, age 70 and slowed by a stroke, no longer puts in 18-hour days on the farm that has been in the family since the 1800s. But, he still lives in the same farmhouse and likes to "tinker around'' in the fields. Sterling built a spacious new home just down the road from his boyhood home. The location could be symbolic. You can take Sterling from the farm but not the farm from Sterling.
"I still like to work outside,'' Sterling says. "You know, it's kinda funny; when I was growing up as a kid, I couldn't wait to get away from the farm, and now that I'm older I look forward to gettin' back to it when I'm on the road. They say you don't ever really get away from your roots. I reckon that's true.''
| Roots of Racing |
| Hometowns For Top Winston Cup Drivers |
| Driver | Hometown |
| Jeff Burton | South Boston, VA |
| Kurt Busch | Las Vegas, NV |
| Dale Earnhardt Jr. | Kannapolis, NC |
| Bill Elliott | Dawsonville, GA |
| Jeff Gordon | Vallejo, CA |
| Kevin Harvick | Bakersfield, CA |
| Dale Jarrett | Hickory, NC |
| Jimmie Johnson | El Cajon, CA |
| Matt Kenseth | Cambridge, WI |
| Bobby Labonte | Corpus Christi, TX |
| Mark Martin | Batesville, AR |
| Ryan Newman | South Bend, IN |
| Ricky Rudd | Chesapeake, VA |
| Tony Stewart | Rushville, IN |
| Rusty Wallace | Fenton, MO |