Rev. Erudite Redneck, B.S., B.S., M.A., M.Div.

Redneck Editor's Note: Tomorrow bein’ a NASCAR High Holy Day -- known officially at the Sharpie 500, colloquially referred to as "the Bristol night race" -- I’m dustin’ off a piece I wrote a couple of years ago that never saw the light of day. Tried twice to get it published, and failed.
One editor was a Texan who couldn’t detect "sports" in anything that didn’t involve an oblong and historically pork-rind-encased object that grown men maul each other tryin’ to get control of, or a small, hard, round, stitched orb that drug-enhanced pseudo-athletes bludgeon with a stick and send flyin’ — but he scoffed at the notion of "watchin’ cars go round and round" for a few hours. Go figure.
The other editor was just a Yankee.
Both were nonbelievers. Each deprived his readers of a little insight into the NASCAR Nation.
I wrote this in ought-2 after seein’ the Brickyard 400 in Indianapolis, then touched it up a bit in ought-3 before the race that spring at Texas Motor Speedway. I ain’t touchin’ it up no more. The references are dated. The facts are accurate. The truth is in here.

By The Erudite Redneck

My first-ever sports story:

Gauge the relative redneckery at Texas Motor Speedway, compared to the Brickyard 400 at Spam-shaped Indianapolis Motor Speedway and races at Kansas Motor Speedway.

It’s a task for which I am, as a proud native of cockfighting eastern Oklahoma — spittin’ distance from Little Dixie — fairly qualified, so to speak.

I am a NASCAR-American.

See here and take that, Leona, wherever you are. You see, it’s not just geography that prepares me for trackside sociology. It’s personal ’sperience, as ol’ D.W., Darrell Waltrip, likes to say.

Leona, whose hand I won the old-fashioned way, by getting up the courage to seek it from her old-fashioned father back in ’83, chose weekends at Tri-State Speedway, the high-banked, 3/8-mile clay oval at Pocola, Okla., over my affections.

Her uncle’s car. She helped in the pits.

Nineteen and full of big plans — a trailer house in the woods, babies, some cows and a job at Whirlpool over in Fort Smith, Ark. — I was ready for matrimony. She was ready to race, every stinkin’ weekend. The tension culminated with ring-throwin’ fits and a dang-near cop-callin’ showdown.

If you’ve ever had wedding plans dashed and hopes and dreams lost in the smoke and noise of a racetrack, you might be ... well, you know. My white collar can’t cover up my red neck. I just scrub up good.

"Redneck," like "good ol’ boy" and certain other socio-cultural monikers, is a slur only if it’s meant to be. To me, it’s a term of endearment.

Texas Motor Speedway, no surprise here, flat out pegged the Redneck Readout Meter, like Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s tach as he screamed to a win at the 2001 Pepsi 400 at Daytona, which pulled our heartstrings just as taut because of what happened to his daddy there a few months before.

Rebel flags and attitudes abounded in Texas on April 7, 2002, the day of the beer-drenched, rained-out and mud-encrusted Samsung-RadioShack 500, and the next day when a couple hundred thousand people called in sick to work to stay for the race.

My redheaded erudite redneck wife and redneck redheaded stepchild saw redneck free speech at work over the weekend. Hand-scrawled signs posted at a few campsites offered "free beer" in return for the display of certain female body parts — redneck boys pursuing a mating ritual gone from much of the reconstructed South, but allowed to be expressed at trackside.

What do you expect? They even let you smoke.

During the downpour Sunday, she saw an example of the common shameless free-range bare-groined redneck.

We were huddled in the truck, waitin’ for a dry spell, when a guy across the way jumped out and rather ceremoniously answered nature’s call. Through my dozing, the wail seemed distant at first, then reached teenage freak-out decibels: omigod, Omigod, OMIGOD, OMIGOD, EWWWWW!

That’s racin’ darlin’.

See, the race itself is just a small part of a race weekend. Racin’ is a way of life. The congregation of the faithful, among many other things, is a collective "Y’all can all just kiss our grits" to nonbelievers.

Like the smart-mouthed radio jock in Indianapolis the Friday before the Brickyard 400 last Aug. 4. Those of us along Turn 4 fryin’ on the aluminum bleachers of Stand J like so many Jimmy Dean sausages were offended that he’d made a remark about the "White Trash Expo" bein’ in town. He said it to hurt.

Bring it on, smart britches.

That’s why the NASCAR circle will forever be unbroken — Okies like me and mine, who have to travel out of state for a Winston Cup race, regulars like the lady retiree from New England who went on about the drivahs and their cahs, and pure-strain varieties of redneck like the bare-chested boys in the beat-up old car, wavin’ a banner that had the late Dale Earnhardt’s No. 3 poking through the heart of the Rebel battle flag, which has to be some sort of advance in redneck theology.

We pretty much look out for one another. Get this:

The daughter went and left her purse, with $4, a cell phone, driver’s license, social security card and some makeup, in the stands at the end of the Indy race. Didn’t notice it missing until the next morning.

We stopped by the speedway administration building on our way out of Indy and wrote down a description of it and its contents. A half-hour later, a security lady called. They’d found the purse, minus only the $4 cash inside — which just happened to be about the price of a beer, which is forgivable.

Sometimes, though, a line is crossed. Some idiot walking beside heavy traffic, spying the Dale Earnhardt T-shirt on the stepchild, actually said to her, to her face, "He’s dead. Get over it." She wanted to open up a can on him. We could have called for backup — heck, there was vigilante traffic directing in the thick of the traffic around the urban Brickyard.

The Brickyard race, in a nutshell: Sensible Midwesterners predominated. I think all the locals brought food from home — ’sperienced race fans from decades of open-wheel racin’ at the Brickyard. Moderate Midwestern redneckery was exhibited, tolerant of more flamboyant, Southern brands.

Kansas? Fine race in summer 2001 when we were there. One or two battle flags. Only slight redneckery, although it stood out from the largely in-’sperienced observers in the stands: "My gosh, how fast those cars go," they seemed to say amid polite applause.

Kansans will get it eventually. Hey y’all, it’s pronounced YEE-HAW! ¶

END