Fordham University Writing Project For Veterans - The Stock Car Race

The Stock Car Race

Alex and I climbed into the model T Ford that he had bought and restored.  We were about to test drive his model T on a circular dirt track that he had created near the back of his parent’s forty-acre property.  Alex was calm and confident as he always was when it came to anything to do with cars.  We were both about fourteen or fifteen at the time and I didn’t know that he knew how to drive yet.  He fired up his new toy and the old car shook and rattled itself awake.  It was a black convertible with wooden spoke wheels, old worn black leather seats and a flat upright glass windshield.  As was typical for me, I worried about neither of us being old enough to drive and yet excited to be seeing this magnificent new track and the prospect of taking a ride in a cool jalopy.   Although Alex was calm and in charge, I was becoming increasingly nervous and didn’t tell him that I was having second thoughts about this ride.   Too late.  The old car roared forward, starting its journey around the track.

As often happened on a summers Saturday night when Alex and I were young children, we were taken by our uncles out for a family night to the old Mount Lawn Raceway just outside of New Castle, Indiana.  It had an egg-shaped track that was about 3/10 of a mile long where multiple car races took place on any given evening.  We always tried to get a seat on the old wooden bleachers near the top, so that we could see all the action on the track.  The old stock cars were often covered with bright paint, large numbers roughly painted on their front doors and plenty of dents from previous skirmishes.  It was very exciting to hear the engines roaring as the races began and to watch the old cars jockeying for position in the noisy twisted mass of machinery moving as a group around the track.  Wrecked, overturned cars were the order of the evening and the entertainment never wavered.  From the announcer starting the race, the large lights that lit up the track as the evening progressed, to the roar of the crowd, to the cars slamming into each other, it was all heady stuff.

As Alex and I began our trip around his new track, I started reliving some of the early feelings that I had experienced at Mount Lawn.  The model T engine roared, the wheels slipped in the dirt as Alex gassed the old car.  If I could just hold onto the seat, my anxiety would dissipate, we would be flying around the track, feeling the wind and seeing the dust billowing up behind us.  We would be laughing and whooping with excitement, going as fast as the old model T would allow and recreating the excitement we used to have at the Raceway. 

Although I was holding onto the seat, it occurred to me that maybe Alex didn’t know what he was doing. Was he too confident, too reckless, going too fast and pushing the old jalopy beyond its capabilities.  Did anyone know we were doing this?  What would I do if everything started to get out of control?  In an instant, I imaged myself having time to throw myself on the floor if we rolled over, maybe grabbing the steering wheel to keep us on the track, running for help if we crashed into a tree.  What would Uncle Harry say?  Would the model T be taken away from Alex? Would the dirt and dust on us give away our secret drive around the track?  Of course, I could just yell for him to stop and let me out.

We circled the track building up speed with each lap and I had a death grip on the seat.  The ride was bumpy and the noise from the mufflerless car was deafening.  I started to ask Alex to slow down, but he couldn’t hear me.  I began to panic as we went into a sideways slide with the dirt churning and the dust billowing up over my side of the model T.