Now it's getting personal. The latest news out of Darlington has pushed me even closer to the unthinkable edge of giving up on stock car racing.
Word is that track officials will tear down the old press box in what is now Turn 3 and build a new one overlooking the start/finish line.
Whatever happened to accountability?
I've seen races at just about all the tracks-and many that are no longer here-and to some I hate to admit it, but I wish I had that time back. The pilgrims who drove the cars, and the pioneers who owned them, brought thunder to Darlington and produced some of the most incredible races ever seen.
In the heat of late summer at Darlington, gnats buzzed your head like you were part of a cattle drive. The sand flies stung and mosquitoes bit. The sand stuck to your sweaty body and made your skin itch. The rough lumber that provided grandstand seats in those early days left splinters in your rear. Back then you could find the three or four restrooms by the repulsive smell and long lines of people waiting their turn.
Meanwhile, just over the first turn guardrail, encircling the famed and fickle old track, stood its first press box, located closer to the pavement than the one today. The press box, appropriately called the chicken coop, was a piece of work. Raceway officials built it out of rough lumber and put a tin roof on top. There were three rows of wooden seats, and chicken-coop wire across the front. You climbed up a steep flight of wooden steps to reach this media paradise.
Rookie writers were quick to notice that you could see the white of the drivers' eyes as they passed in review on the first parade lap. Drivers would glance up and laugh at you, as though they knew something you didn't. On the final parade lap, as they came into the first turn, picking up speed and getting into position for the start, they would pull their goggles down and flip their final cigarette at you.
By this time, several rookie writers would already be down the steps and gone.
What they missed is truly the most spectacular and breath-taking scene in all sports. No place you've ever been to or anything you've ever seen pumps adrenaline faster than 43 race cars whipping off the fourth turn to take the green flag at Darlington. Like a huge metal snake, they come wiggling down the frontstretch straight at you, each jockeying for position to make it into the first turn. That first turn is 15 feet from where you are sitting.
By the third lap, the field begins to spread out, and you can feel your heart slowing down a bit.
But after one race, those who would stay and write from the old press box overhyped the event beyond all reason. Old Darlington Raceway vaccinated them.
The old press box came down after the 1966 Southern 500. It nearly came down on the 189th lap of the race. Earl Balmer was running Seventh, four laps down, and leading an onrushing Richard Petty into the first turn. Petty tapped the rear of Balmer's car and sent him into the guardrail. The car climbed the guardrail, teetered on the sliver of steel, and spewed debris and gasoline into the open scaffold press box. His car missed the press box by mere feet. Balmer's left-front wheel caught the tip of the guard- rail, and it tossed the car back onto the track. This was before the days of concrete walls, and Balmer's car splintered eight fence posts.
Press members abandoned the facility and issued a written ultimatum to the raceway president, Bob Colvin, that they would not return unless a new and better press box replaced the chicken coop.
Colvin was no fool. He constructed a new and better box, higher and a greater distance from the track. He kept it pretty much in the same location, however, so media people could see the cars coming straight at them on that first lap.
He knew-and later said-that the old chicken coop probably molded more press members into motorsports writers than any one thing. "It put you guys as close as you will ever come to being race drivers," Colvin said. "You got a thrill from it, and you came back and kept coming back."
"I would never trade my seat in a race car for a seat up there," Richard Petty often said. "I'm safe, but you guys are not. You guys are crazy."