By David Rogers. BLOWING ROCK, N.C. — Ignorance is bliss… Well, at least we should be able to laugh at ourselves.
Growing up in the foothills north of Oildale, Calif., my family literally lived in the oilfields about 10 miles out of town. About a half-mile from my high school was Bakersfield Speedway. It was a dirt track and clouds of dust would pour into the lighted skies above it just about every weekend.
As a snotty-nosed, ragtag kid from the oilfields but with a yearning ambition for something more than my upbringing offered, I never went to a race at the track but I got close enough to know I didn’t want any part of it. With cigarettes dangling out of their mouths, the beer-guzzlin’, cussin’ and swearin’ rednecks wearing “wife beater” T-shirts were not the crowd I wanted to be a part of. I expect there were a lot of nice folks, looking back, but my impressions of that stock car racing crowd… well, it wasn’t something I wanted to be a part of.
And I carried that bias all the way through college and into young adulthood. When Bakersfield’s Rick Mears was winning the Indianapolis 500, I became a fan of open-wheel, Indy Car-type racing. It seemed somewhat more refined than the guys from 1960s NASCAR and stock car racing that you saw on television and the local dirt track. I got little thrill from “tradin’ paint.”
He explained the sport had changed a lot over the years.
In June of 1997, I was living and working in Newport Beach, Calif., doing stock market research. I focused on small and micro cap companies, usually with little in the way of institutional ownership but with an emerging story that might soon catch the attention of the big money managers. One of the companies I was looking at was a small outfit called Kaiser Ventures, which had been created to redevelop the land east of Los Angeles where Kaiser Steel Mills operated, previously. Kaiser Steel had gone bankrupt and Kaiser Ventures was charged with reclaiming and redeveloping the property, ridding it of any environmental concerns and hazardous wastes while repurposing it for profitable enterprises.
Included in the redevelopment was the sale of a little more than 500 acres to Penske Motorsports for the development and construction of the California Speedway. When the transaction was completed, Kaiser Ventures owned an equity stake in Penske and Penske owned stock in Kaiser Ventures.
Curious as to how the whole site (roughly 1,800 acres) was being redeveloped, including the California Speedway for about a third of it, I decided to attend Kaiser Venture’s annual shareholder meeting on Friday, June 22, 1997.
I won’t bore you with all the business-related gobbledy-gook, but during breakfast at the early morning meeting in Fontana, Calif., I met Greg Penske, the president of Penske Motorsports and the son of Roger Penske. I shared with Greg both my attraction to open wheel racing and the connection to Rick Mears, as well as my skepticism of any virtues in stock car racing.
Now and then, you just have to be willing to laugh at yourself.
He understood my early impressions of stock car racing but added the sport had changed a lot over the years. In fact, he said, the inaugural California 500 was being held that weekend and later that same morning was pole qualifying for the Cup Series race — and invited me to be his guest at the track for the qualifying session. He threw out a few names, like Jeff Gordon, who would be making qualifying runs, as if I knew who those people were.
Initially, I declined, saying I had too much work to do back in Newport Beach, but he was persuasive and soon we jumped on a shuttle to the track.
Now you have to remember that I was pretty naive about stock car racing at the time. I knew nothing about the sport and its players. I knew even less about its popularity. In fact, up to that point I could care less.
As we rode along, approaching the track, I wondered aloud if there was an RV manufacturing plant close by because there were these huge lots where RVs were parked, shoulder to shoulder. “No,” I was told, “those are all here for the races this weekend.”
A little further, I saw parking lots full of cars. Being not too slow on the upbeat I said, “And next you are going to tell me that all of those cars are people going to the race, too.”
“Yes,” came the reply.
About that time we drove under the outside perimeter of the Speedway and under the track, emerging at the west end of the garage area. Looking up to the main grandstands on our right, I saw a packed crowd numbering over 100,000 — and this was on a Friday morning for pole qualifying in Southern California! This wasn’t Charlotte, Daytona or Bristol. It was a suburb 50 miles west of Los Angeles!
As we rumbled along, I looked to my left and saw big trucks (haulers for the cars and teams), all shiny and wrapped to display all of the major brands of sponsors, including Budweiser, Dupont, Texaco, Coors, John Deere… more than 40 of them, all lined up. And there wasn’t a cigarette-chompin’, beer-guzzlin’ fella to be found! Obviously, there was serious money invested in this sport and the proverbial light bulbs were starting to get turned on in my head.
Exiting the shuttle and entering the garage, Greg and I started walking down a long corridor between the various car stalls. They seemed mostly empty, but we walked directly to the center of the facility. There, we walked up to where a group of four guys in overalls (mechanic suits, I guessed) stood in conversation.
As we approached, Greg greeted the fellows enthusiastically, and introduced me. “This is my new friend, David,” he said to the guys, one by one introducing them as Roger, Dale, Dale and Rusty. I extended my hand to each one and then asked, “Which cars are you guys mechanics for?”
Remember what I said about ignorance? I guess the same could be said about innocence, too, like, “… from the mouth of babes,” as the saying goes.
With the muffled roar of stock car engines just outside the building, I didn’t understand why these five guys’ laughter echoed so loudly off the inside walls of the building.
At least not until I learned the identities of the men in mechanic suits: Roger Penske, Dale Earnhardt, Dale Jarrett and Rusty Wallace, and their respective roles in the history of the sport.
Now and then, I still have a good laugh at myself.
OTHER ‘MY LIFE’ REFLECTIONS:
