Page 5 of Trading Paint

By competing in a number of Western District Qualifiers, I was able to attend the Quarter Midget Nationals: The Battle at the Brickyard.

We went and my first time there, we won.

Right then, standing there being awarded the trophy, I realized this dream might be reality some day and became my only focus.

The deal with my dad worked well until being a teenager became a factor. I found myself partaking in the occasional act of mischief at school and around town but racing was always number one to me.

As twelve turned to thirteen and thirteen turned to fourteen my life became complicated and suddenly I had other interests knocking at the door.

Hormones were a factor but the drive to become a professional racer was still present and ruled over everything. I wanted more than anything to race and nothing else mattered. Not school, not friends, nothing. I wasn’t living the normal childhood that’s for sure.

While Spencer and Emma did, I didn’t and had no desire to. I raced whenever possible. If I wasn’t racing, I was learning everything I could from my dad and working on his cars in the shop. At times, I guess I wanted to have a normal childhood life but I also knew this dream of mine wasn’t something I could put aside. If I wanted to be the best, it would take dedication and hard work.

I remember when reality hit and dad forced me to decide, or at least he made the decision for me when he threatened to sell my car.

Sometime around fourteen, he left for Grand Rapids, Michigan one Tuesday evening. My only chores were taking out the garbage and mowing the lawn. The rest of the time I was allowed to race on the track and do whatever I wanted.

Naturally, I didn’t mow the lawn and the garbage made it to right outside the door.

I spent every night racing out there from dawn to dust. The only reason I stopped was from the lack of light. Don’t get me wrong, I tried to convince my dad to install lights but he knew that would only result in me never leaving the track.

When the flashlights that Sway and I taped to the wings of my sprint car fell off, we called it a night and watched movies.

My parents returned Sunday afternoon to find me lying in bed eating Captain Crunch with a pile of garbage outside the door and a field of grass.

Let’s just say my dad turned our house into something similar to what you’d see in the Civil War after he threatened to sell my car. I was not okay with that. I had a hard time drawing the line between racing and working. I knew I had to work around the shop but it was difficult to get out of the car and having unlimited access like I did, made it tough.

After a while, I understood that in order to race, I needed to show my dad I was responsible enough to handle a demanding schedule and put everything I had into it. What I wanted didn’t come easy. To be the best you had to battle the best and to battle the best, you had to work for it.

I couldn’t show up and race expecting to win. To win these races everything had to line up, track conditions, set-ups, positions, and then the wheelman needed to be on his game. That’s where my roughshod attitude to be the best came into play.

Eventually everything else began to slip away—the only things that mattered was working at the shop and racing on Saturday nights. I lost friends, gained some and then lost them once they saw I never made time for anything but racing.

One friend remained the same though; Sway. She was always there and if I decided to go racing instead of to the movies, she was there. If I decided to change my shocks out on Friday night instead of partying with the rest of our classmates, she was there handing me tools.

I never understood why she did it, but I was thankful she did. Every time I thought about giving up and living the normal teenage life, she was there to remind me why I was doing this in the first place. I began to realize that what I was lacking that she had—Sway believed in me. I wouldn’t say that I didn’t believe in myself because I did, but for the first time other than my parents, someone else believed I could do it and that was the push I needed.

She saw the potential and never let me forget it. She was my rock. She was dependable, supportive, not judgmental, and everything I wasn’t for her.

I tried to be but there was also that line again. I had a hard time drawing a line between racing and everything else.

The older I got, the harder it got.

2.Riding a wheel – Jameson

Riding a wheel – This refers to wheel-to-wheel action in sprint car racing, usually disastrous when contact is made with another car.

Even though I was a racer and on the track, I garnered respect from the other drivers. Off the track, I was a normal teenager who, for the most part, thought of ways to get into trouble, hated getting up early and of course, was infatuated with girls.

Being fourteen, I was hormone challenged as I called it. I had wants and as a teenager; those wants were hormone driven. Being someone who needed to be in control, I was not in control of my hormones so as you can expect, I did not deal with that as well as I’d hoped for.

Most of the time I was able to push the thoughts aside and focus on the bigger picture, racing. It didn’t stop the occasional fantasy of my best friend and me.

All that aside, I had a mission. I was determined to be the best racer I could be and was putting everything I had into accomplishing that.

The USAC Midget series opened in March of ‘95 in Chico, California. Racing was in full swing come April while I ran two USAC races a month and the weekly midget and sprint races at Elma. I had to be sixteen to compete in the USAC Silver Crown and sprint divisions so this left me racing only at Elma in a winged 360-sprint car.

I ended up catching a few outlaw late model races here and there when a car was available but I mainly stayed in the open wheeled cars.

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