INDIANAPOLIS — The British poet Alfred Lord Tennyson told us that each spring “a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.”
I’m more in tune with Alfred Lord DeSarro — the late NASCAR modified champion Fred DeSarro — which means that my fancy turns not-so-lightly to thoughts of roaring engines and another racing season.
In February, this means Daytona, and that word carries a very broad definition. It covers the Daytona Int’l Speedway, sure, but also New Smyrna Speedway, Volusia Speedway Park and several bars, restaurants and all-night breakfast joints. Whether I actually go or not — this year, I’m skipping Daytona — is immaterial. In my heart, I am there.
I find it almost unbelievable that my first Speedweeks came 41 years ago, in 1979. I drove down from Connecticut with a buddy of mine, Steve Kalkowski. I was 18, three years into a stint as a trade-paper columnist.
Steve, a couple of years older, crewed for a modified owner named Bob Judkins, whose driver, Ron Bouchard, would contest New Smyrna’s nine-night World Series. It wasn’t our style to plan things too far in advance, but there was enough time for me to secure the credentials I’d need, and for us to nail down lodging at a hotel on the World’s Most Famous Beach.
Our ride was Steve’s late-’70s AMC Matador coupe, a purchase influenced by his admiration for Bobby Allison, who’d driven one on the NASCAR Cup Series circuit.
We had no itinerary, nothing telling us where to stop for food or fuel. I’d like to claim that we were as carefree as Dean Moriarty and Sal Paradise in the novel “On the Road,” but at that stage of my life Jack Ingram meant more than Jack Kerouac.
Still, we were loose, flying by the seat of our pants. We steered the Matador onto I-95 and put the pedal down.
Cities came and went: New York, Baltimore, Washington, Richmond. Then everything got rural; the Carolinas and Georgia were mostly low bridges over lazy rivers, with brief bursts of civilization: Fayetteville, Florence, Savannah.
Finally, announced by palm trees, here was Florida. Two hours later, we were in Daytona Beach.
I don’t recall looking at a map and there was no dashboard GPS squawking directions. We were young, but we weren’t dumb. We’d wanted to drive to Daytona, so we drove to Daytona.
I hope kids still do that. If they don’t, Speedweeks dies.
The weather was nothing like a Connecticut boy imagined Florida would be. On our first night at New Smyrna, the temperature was in the low 40s; I believe it dipped to 29 overnight. The next morning, I bought a thick Winston jacket at Kmart.
I picked up my Daytona credentials and we drove through the only tunnel to the infield. Once inside, I glanced up at turn four, which resembled a massive black wall. I’m not sure anything in racing has ever surprised me like the Daytona banking did.
Even after all these years, so many memories remain crisp. There was no deep chasm between the Daytona stars and the guys who raced nightly at Volusia County or New Smyrna, so a typical hotel marquee might read, “Welcome Buddy Baker, Mike Eddy and Kenny Brightbill.”
Yes, in the days before million-dollar motorcoaches, Cup Series drivers stayed in hotels, lounged by hotel pools and even drank in hotel bars.
I watched with great curiosity the progress of three Daytona 500 rookies: Geoff Bodine, whom I knew; Gary Balough, whom I’d watched; and Dale Earnhardt, whom I’d read about. And though I’d spent half of my young life gobbling up info on Jim Hurtubise, I never saw the man until February of ’79, when he was saddled with some heap that failed to qualify for the Daytona 500.
At New Smyrna, Richie Evans won seven modified features. The other two went to Merv Treichler and Kalkowski’s man, Bouchard. Mike Miller was the late model champ, and for the first time I saw Dick Trickle, Joe Shear and Junior Hanley.
We gawked at Smokey Yunick’s shop. We drank beer at Mac’s Famous Bar. We laughed a lot.
Our idea for escaping the post-500 crush was to head out with 20 or 30 laps remaining. As it happened, half the folks parked in the infield had the same thought.
We were still mired in infield traffic, staring at that tunnel, when Cale Yarborough and Donnie Allison crashed, when Cale and Bobby Allison duked it out and when Richard Petty celebrated.
For weeks afterward, friends who’d seen the race on TV — and assumed that I did, too — were asking, “Did you see the fight?”
I had the perfect non-lie: “Did I see it? Buddy, I was there.”
I still keep in touch with Steve, who eventually traded racing for civilian life. Today he’s married, has a couple of grown sons and flies around the world on behalf of a Fortune 500 insurance company. But he still chuckles like a schoolboy when conversation turns to our long-ago Florida adventure.
Somewhere, right now, a couple of young men are contemplating their first road trip to Daytona, or to the Indy 500, or maybe to the Knoxville Nationals.
My strong advice is this: Do it. Say yes to that urge. Fly by the seat of your pants. You’ll never forget it.