Page 1 of Trading Paint
1.Bear Grease – Jameson
Bear Grease – Slang term used to describe any patching material used to fill cracks and holes or smooth bumps on a track’s surface. Bear grease can also be used as a sealer on the track.
“Can I please race? I mean, dad...I’ve been racing quarter midgets for years and now midgets. I’ve already raced in about a hundred USAC races.” I whined. “I just—I think I’m ready.”
I didn’t just think I was ready, I knew I was ready.
I’d been racing midgets in the USAC (United States Auto Club), a sanctioning body for midgets, sprint cars, and silver crown cars; for far too long and I couldn’t wait to race full sized sprint cars.
From the time I was little, they were the cars that caught my attention. They were loud and the fastest cars on dirt with their high power to weight ratio.
The sound produced by twenty sprint cars lined up on a track, revving their engines is definitely something you will never forget, especially when you’re a kid. The sound shook the ground and the air filled with the sweet aroma of methanol. Sprint cars broad sliding their way around dirt tracks was enough to catch the eye of any kid but when you see one doing wheel stands inches away from concrete walls.
Briefly, his eyes focused on me.
“You’re not ready,” my dad said and walked into the race shop that housed his sprint cars.
I smiled following closely stepping over the tires and tools scattered around the concrete floor.
“Are you scared I’ll smoke you?”
His head whipped around, his blue eyes narrowed. “You’re an arrogant little shit. But no, I’m afraid of your mother.”
“I can handle that.” I told him confidently heading for the house. My mom was a push over for me and I knew it, as did she.
You hear people talk about when their career started for them or when they saw their first race but I honestly can’t remember when that was. Racing has always been there, ingrained into my life in every way. My dad was racing before I was born so it’s all I’d ever known. I’d been playing in the dirt of the pits since before I could walk.
I do remember when I got my first set of wheels.
I believe I was three, or just turned four. Sure, I had a badass big wheel that I’d perfected slide jobs on but I remember my first beast with an engine.
For my birthday that year, my parents gave me a cherry red 150cc Honda go-kart. That, combined with the perfect paved circle driveway, made my four-year old world. My only rule for riding it was stay on the pavement.
Growing up with a dad who raced on dirt and that being all you had been subjected towastall orders for a four-year old wanting to be just like his dad.
I had the quickest route around the circle panned out within the first day I got it and soon began broad sliding through the corners when I pitched it hard enough.
That red beast became my prize possession and if you didn’t hear the humming from the engine, you knew something was up. Soon after they bought mine, my older brother Spencer got one and before long, we were holding races in our driveway and tearing up my mom’s flowers while our little sister Emma acted as the flagger. We must have torn up every plant, every tree and every blade of grass in that yard before the summer was out.
The following year, once the weather had turned warm enough, we were back to doing the same thing.
That’s when I decided some adjustments needed to be made to the kart.
Like adjusting the rev limiter to enable it to exceed its standard speed that clearly wasn’t fast enough and ending up cutting the break line instead. Yeah, at four I thought I was some kind of mechanic. It was evident by the gaping hole in the side of our house where my kart flew threw it that I was no mechanic.
After a while, the “Keep in on the Pavement” rule was out the window and I pretty much raced on any surface.
The following spring, just before I turned five, my dad took me with him to his race in Knoxville, Ohio where he was racing on the World of Outlaw Tour; the premier division for winged sprint car racing.
That same weekend, Bucky Miers, my dad’s long-time friend, let me tear it up in his son’s quarter midget.
Two weeks later, we had one sitting in our driveway when we returned. Before long we outgrown the driveway and my mom had no landscaping left so dad hauled in a few truckloads of clay and made a quarter mile dirt track in our backyard.
Naturally, I never got out of the car or off the track. Some nights I even fell asleep out there.
Originally, I was supposed to share the car with Spencer but once Spencer found girls and football he didn’t care about racing like I did.
You could say my career started right there in my back yard in that quarter midget.
