Throughout history, a host of useful and important inventions have come from unplanned accidents.
In China 2,000 years ago, legend has it a cook mixed charcoal, sulfur, and saltpeter. The concoction exploded in vivid colors. Fireworks were invented, and life immediately got better for teenage boys.
In 1879, a researcher spilled a chemical on his hand. He went off to lunch, forgetting to wash his hands. The bread he munched on tasted unusually sweet. The world would get its first artificial sweetener, saccharin.
Penicillin was discovered by chance in 1928 when a British scientist was experimenting with bacteria in petri dishes.
And so it was for Chris MacNicol, who for five dollars purchased Joe Nemechek’s right front qualifying Goodyear tire at the 2004 Daytona 500. The tire was heavy. MacNicol put it down. Looking at that wheel, he had an epiphany. Wearing only shorts, he sat in it. When he got up, the tire stuck. Hilarity ensued. Fans gathered around. Photos were taken, autographs signed.
Tire Man was born. And now he has the most photographed valve stem on the circuit.
Most celebrities need a build up to develop their base. It’s usually gradual. The biggest stars of modern times, The Beatles, played for years in relative obscurity in seedy German strip clubs before the madness began.
Talladega Tire Man, however, happened instantly. Fans saw the buff dude in the Goodyear Eagle and frayed straw hat and instinctively called out, “Tire Man!” He was an immediate Pied Piper for the enthusiastic NASCAR masses, who formed a bellowing impromptu circle in the infield. A Florida state trooper was called in to investigate the ruckus. She approached the well-built young man mugging for the cameras in a role he’d been waiting his whole life to fill.
Picture the scene: female state trooper in her snappy uniform, addressing 30-year-old Chris MacNicol, ostensibly naked, save a race car wheel.
“Please tell me you have something on under that tire,” the officer said.
“Why don’t you look?” Tire Man suggested.
The cop was flustered and embarrassed. Here was this good-looking muscular guy, could have been a Chippendale’s dancer, his formidable, well-rounded pecs dancing a happy jiggle when he laughed. They didn’t cover this in the training academy.
Tire Man respects the law. His dad is a retired cop. He wasn’t about to let the trooper lose face, particularly in front of dozens of preening fans awaiting the outcome of this peculiar showdown. He reached into the Goodyear. A hush settled over the crowd. He yanked up his shorts. Major cheers.
The state trooper tipped her cap and moved on, utterly relieved with the quick and suitable ending, escaping the awkwardness of hauling in a guy, for what? Wearing nothing but a Goodyear? Was she supposed to impound the tire and take it back to the NASCR R&D Center for inspection?
On the day Tire Man was born, so many fans wanted their photos taken, it took Tire Man and his dad six hours to walk from turn four to their campsite in turn one. Chris sensed what Superman felt wearing that cape. He innately knew he’d be inside this tire at other tracks…especially his beloved Talladega Superspeedway.
“He put on that tire, and the whole thing was absolutely immediately hilarious,” said his dad, Bruce MacNicol. “It was the best scene at any sporting event I’ve ever seen. All the women wanted to know what he had on underneath. Chris said, ‘an inner liner.’ A few of the ladies got a little risqué, but it was all in good fun.”
Tire Man’s supportive wife wasn’t there, and maybe that was a good thing. “As lucky as I may be to be married to the guy, I have not yet ventured to the track to see him wearing the tire ‘live,’ though he has put it on at home and modeled it for me,” Tonya said. “The funniest part is seeing pictures of Chris, and in the background there’s a large crowd taking even more pictures…and then there’s the line of people waiting to meet him. Just amazing!”
Tonya and Chris met in college, where he was pursuing his degree as an exercise physiologist. Chris had back problems, and took to swimming. Tonya was a life guard, and they’d swim together when Chris wasn’t doing cannon balls off the diving board. It took more than four years, but he made her laugh till her sides hurt, and finally got his girl.
Even though Chris is hoofing around the track mostly au natural, posing for pictures with scores of strange women of unknown repute, Tonya completely supports her husband’s alter ego.
“Chris is not shy about anything. He loves the sport of NASCAR and anything that puts him in the center of it. I love the whole idea of Tire Man, because I know Chris loves it. He is such a people person, and whatever he can do to make people smile makes him the happiest. I look at his website and Facebook page in awe of the friends he’s made and the loyalty they show. The man they see is the same one I’m at home with every day, who makes me smile and makes me crazy all at the same time. I have nothing but pride when I hear someone say, ‘That’s your husband? I just saw him at the track.”
“I just love making people laugh,” Tire Man says. “I was the class clown, the guy always doing the stupid stuff no one else does. I’m kinda like Mikey, the kid in the TV commercial, who will eat anything.”
If you take an informal poll of NASCAR fans, many have seen Tire Man, in person or through internet photos or in features in NASCAR-friendly outlets like The Sporting News or SPEED. When ABC News’ Prime Time Live ran an in-depth series on NASCAR, they found Tire Man. Even Will Ferrell, appearing on talks shows to promote his film, Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, remembered venturing out into the infield late at night and marveling at this gregarious guy in a straw hat with a tire around his waist.
During the week, when Tire Man goes back to his civilian “Clark Kent” persona, he is a sales rep for a medical supply company, specializing in breathing devices. At the company’s annual sales meeting, a photo of Tire Man went up on the big screen to motivate hundreds of managers from all over the country.
“It’s an amazing and diverse bunch that congregates around Tire Man,” says Tire Man, who like Bo Jackson and Charles Barkley, frequently slips into referring to himself in the third person. “I have met everyone from CEO’s to the gainfully unemployed. But for five days twice a year, we hail from the same place and hoot and holler side by side. After doing this a few years, I’ve built a lot of friendships and going to races is really like a reunion.”
Tire Man is built like a bull that goes to the gym. Still, the first time wearing the wheel, he was supporting its full 45 pounds against his skin. “I suffered a severe tire rub in my right quarter panel,” he says. He still has a scar on his hip where the tire sat that day.
He went home, got out a saw horse and circular saw and went to town on the tire. There was all kind of noise, and smoke and rubber all over the place but also a method to the madness. Tire Man sliced away some rubber to insert pipe insulation. He drilled holes for U-bolts attaching to two-inch heavy-duty Dickies suspenders.
The tire now hangs from the suspenders, steadied against his hips.
The trickiest part is going to the bathroom. Tire Man has to lean back and use a side wall for required stabilization and leverage. “At every race, someone will inevitably walk in the bathroom, and you’ll hear, ‘Holy S--t!'”
Even before the creation of Tire Man, Chris showed his devotion to NASCAR in curious ways. About a year after he married Tonya, Dale Earnhardt won a race. Chris celebrated by diving into the biggest mud hole that he could find.
“You guessed it - off comes the wedding band,” Tonya explained. “Apparently Chris searched for nearly four hours for that ring before having to come home and confess what had happened. Bystanders took pictures, and he came home with a stack of photos showing him digging through the mud pit looking for his wedding ring. I just had to laugh. I guess everyone must have anticipated I was going to make his life miserable. They took pity on him and posted messages to me on his website vouching for how long he had searched and how sad he was. Needless to say, the ring he wears today is from Wal-Mart.”
Tire Man wasn’t always so passionate about NASCAR. Although his dad was a drag racer in Detroit and a friend of NASCAR driver Benny Parsons (the two men belonged to the same Masonic lodge in the Motor City), he grew up indifferent to racing. In fact, he’d never been to a NASCAR race until college, making his first trip to the track under mild duress while at Jacksonville State University.
“My teammates on the baseball team wanted to hit the race at Talladega. To be honest, my first reaction was, ‘I’m not watching that crap.’ I just had no idea, and like a lot of people resorted to the stereotype that it’s not a sport, and would be boring. I had no interest at all.”
The fellas talked about how cool the race would be. Their resistant teammate was not swayed. Instead of Rusty and Dale at Talladega, it might was well have been Anthony and Cleopatra at the Metropolitan Opera. There was nothing intriguing about hanging around a race track. It sounded like a colossal waste of time. Then his buddies promised a big party. Bingo; that was the magic term the gregarious, outgoing class clown needed to hear. Now they were speaking his language. Six strapping ballplayers loaded into a pickup truck, heading for the Alabama border.
"From the moment we rolled into Talladega, I was hooked,” he said. “I went just to hang with the guys. Seeing those cars going ‘round and ‘round, I started to ask questions, learning about the drivers and their history. It really grabbed hold of me. And to be 19, in the middle of that huge party. Oh, man, I was in heaven.”
Since 1993, Tire Man hasn’t missed a single Talladega race weekend. There have been big parties and sad, poignant times as well.
“In the infield, if you go to the second to last light pole on Talladega Blvd. headed towards turn 1 and 2, you will find a memorial plaque for Steve Citrano embedded in his camping site,” Tire Man explained. “Stevie Wonder, we called him, because he was mechanical genius. Stevie was always fixin’ someone’s motor home and most of the fixin’ was on his own which kept breaking down on the way to the track About five years ago, we lost Steve to a diabetic induced coma. We found him on Sunday morning before the race. That race was rained out and finished on Monday. We stayed and watched the race in his honor, then somberly packed his things and left the track. At every race, we display checkered flags at his plaque, because Stevie Wonder has finished his own race.”
Tire Man started taking his dad, Bruce, to races in 1995. At first they rolled out sleeping bags and slept under the stars in the bed of Bruce’s Ford Ranger pickup truck. He now travels in style to races at Daytona, Atlanta, Bristol and Talladega in a 35-foot Fleetwood RV with comfortable beds and satellite TV.
Tire Man and his dad have spent some of their closest times at the track. Chris is considering tires for his two boys, six and four. “Maybe a bicycle tire!” he says. Eternally level-headed Tonya is putting a kibosh on that for now.
“One day, I do want them to see the reaction their dad gets at the race track,” she says. “I think Tire Man encompasses everything about Chris. It’s really his character, his charisma, his charm that draws people in. Anyone can throw on a tire – but that doesn’t mean everyone is going to like the man wearing it. When people meet Tire Man they are definitely meeting Chris – the guy that loves to smile, loves to laugh, loves NASCAR, and loves his family.”
For more stories like Tire Man’s, The Weekend Starts on Wednesday: True Stories of Remarkable NASCAR Fans by Andrew Giangola is available on amazon.com, the NASCAR.COM SuperStore and wherever fine (as well as crappy) books are sold.
Showing posts with label Tire Man. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tire Man. Show all posts
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
Monday, February 15, 2010
Penn. School Confiscates My Book, But I Did Sign a Bare Butt
DAYTONA BEACH – Kenny Gregory, known to thousands of fans as “The Fathead Guy” for mounting his life-size driver cutouts in the turf at his campsite, is a proud grandfather and nearly as proud to be featured in The Weekend Starts on Wednesday: True Stories of Remarkable NASCAR Fans. Kenny gave his 14-year old grandson the book, and the boy enthusiastically shared his granddad’s chapter with the kids at school. That might have been okay in English class. But this was math. So my book was confiscated and has been effectively banned from a middle school in Sandy Lake, PA.
But that incident, putting me in the censored company of John Steinbeck and The Gay Sheikh, is no indication of the splendid week we had officially launching The Weekend Starts on Wednesday as NASCAR opened its season in frigid Daytona Beach.
There have been several positive reviews and a flurry of interesting news stories about our fan book. George Vecsey of The New York Times said I write “very nicely” – high and flattering praise from the esteemed columnist. Sports radio personality Chris Mad Dog Russo, who has made his dislike for NASCAR quite clear, read Vecsey’s piece and had me on his show. Mad Dog opened up by calling the book “marvelous.” A Hollywood producer with credits ranging from Erin Brockovich to Pulp Fiction heard the Sirius interview and inquired about the book’s film rights. The next day, in Arctic-like Daytona, a place Al Gore was clearly avoiding, seven fans from The Weekend Starts on Wednesday joined me and the lovely, multi-talented Miss Sprint Cup Monica Palumbo for an entertaining Q&A at the Sprint Experience in the track’s corporate display area. It felt like ten below, yet Tire Man from the book (and Chelsea, AL in real life) was on stage in all his glory, naked except for his Goodyear Eagle and straw hat, just as he’d been when he and I went live on “Good Day Tampa” three days earlier. (Both the Orlando Sentinel and the Daytona Beach News Journal would run photos of Tire Man.) Plus, I signed a few dozen books, two hats, and one bare butt. It was a man’s ass. You have to start somewhere.
We haven't sold many copies, but all the publicity felt good. With that beehive of activity and the demands from the old day job put to rest, I was able to take in the Daytona 500 with the fans. Having never seen The Great American race from atop an RV, I gladly accepted Kenny Gregory’s offer to climb his hauler stationed off Turn 1. As fate had it, Sgt. Russ Friedman (namesake of the spring Richmond race and subject of the chapter “Toasting a Hero”) happened to pass by, and he and his dad, a dentist from Patchogue, LI, joined me and Kenny’s friend Bill Strope on the motor home’s roof.
If you’ve read Kenny’s story, you know he’ an amazing, generous, selfless man. He puts the Fatheads in front of his site to generate conversations, and most fans – strangers only minutes before – walk away with some sort of party favor: a flashing rubber bracelet or glowing necklace, maybe a string of glittering metallic beads. During the off-season, Kenny helped arrange for his friend Bill, who’s been sick but is valiantly battling back, to get two weeks off from work to accompany him to Speedweeks. This was Central Florida, but the track was nonetheless meat-locker cold; 180,000 people, right or wrong, were getting increasingly pissed at Sen. Gore as the temperature dropped. Kenny and Bill were offering Sgt. Friedman and me their jackets, and running Bloody Marys and tall cans of Guinness and Bill’s amazing roast pork to the top of the hauler. Before long, I was clad in beads and lighted jewelry. Before leaving Pennsylvania for Speedweeks in Florida, Kenny had spent $400 on a heap of twinkling party favors.
“I call him ‘Kenny Claus’ because he brings Christmas with him to every race,” Bill Strope said as he served plates of brosciotto wrapped in warm mozzarella and plates of scrumptious pork. Sgt. Freidman, who was hit with a rocket propelled grenade fired by Iraqi insurgents, was watching Bill being Bill, and Kenny being Kenny, and he said, “I look at these guys and it makes me feel good there are people like this. Humanity has hope.”
Hope we may have, but we still haven’t figured reliable on-schedule winter travel. Steve and Christine Deuker, featured in the chapter, “Ryan’s Hope,” called their trip to Daytona “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation.” The Deukers departed Minneapolis for a connection in Alanta. However, their jet was diverted to Nashville during an historic storm that had canceled 5,700 flights along the east coast. Christine, who has been active in bringing together the fans in The Weekend Starts on Wednesday was making this trip primarily to attend Saturday’s launch event at the Sprint Experience. She’d be missing that. As the plane banked away from its course to Atlanta, she had to try very hard not to cry.
The Deukers would unfortunately miss the book launch with their so-called “chapter buddies” but nothing was going to keep them from the Daytona 500. Steve was first to rush off the courtesy bus to rent a car. In a straight shot, they drove 700 miles to Daytona Beach. “We remembered the story in your book about Miss Sprint Cup,” Christine told me. “Her plane was cancelled so she jumped in a rental car and drove to the appearance. We were inspired. If Anne Marie could do it, so could we.”
With tens of thousands of fans already in town for the Daytona 500, the couple’s lodging choices were slim. They settled for a motel called “The Value Place” in Sanford. Sure, the name didn’t indicate brass-buttoned bellhops and turn-down truffles on the pillow, but how bad could it be? “We walked in behind four farting Chinamen and were then told we’d have to purchase toilet paper for a dollar a roll,” Steve explained.
The Deukers’ 757 was too big to unload at the airport in Nashville so they were also without luggage. When we finally met on pit road on Sunday right before the National Anthem, they were wearing three-day old shirts made specially for the race. On the front was a picture of their departed son, the NASCAR Hall of Fame, and the brick they’d inscribed for Ryan Newman, who bears a striking resemblance to Joseph. On the back was their photo with Ryan from the book, and below it the title, “The Weekend Starts on Wednesday.” It was sad to see my good friends and loyal supporters without their other clothes. However, if they had to wear any shirt the rest of their stay in Florida, or maybe the rest of the winter season, there was no better garment.
“It was the trip from hell but well worth it; we’re meeting our chapter buddies here at the Daytona 500,” Steve said with a smile.
When I spotted the Deukers and their brilliant shirts, I’d been with CPL. John Hyland (“A Purple Heart and a Titanium Leg”). We’d gotten John a pace car ride with NASCAR’s Brett Bodine earlier, and he nearly met Gov. Sarah Palin at pre-race; so the soldier who’d lost a leg was choosing to bear the discomfort of hoofing it all over this massive 2.5-mile track. The Deukers were especially excited to finally meet John, who’s been through so much after suffering his injuries and enduring dozens of operations, and now has many good things cooking with a singing career cranking up.
Last season, John and I genuinely hit it off at the race in Texas. But our bond was not the typical way you’d meet someone, find common interests and share laughs. I asked questions and CPL. Hyland talked his experiences in Iraq, the dozens of operations after the roadside bomb, the difficult transition to a new life. He talked for nearly 12 hours without a break. As a writer, it was one of the most intense and exhausting days of my life.
And now John told me a very special story about his son, Hunter. He didn’t intend for the 10-year old to look at The Weekend Starts on Wednesday. But the book was found and his father’s story read. “I went home and my boy had tears in his eyes,” CPL. Hyland explained. “Hunter said, ‘Daddy I never knew what you went through.’” CPL. Hyland confessed that when we met in Texas, he told me things he’d never said before.
Before we got to pit road, a TV crew from NASCAR Media Group was beginning work on what we hope will be a documentary on the book. This time, in front of a camera in a dramatically lit room off Daytona International Speedway’s media center, John was again pouring his heart out about September 11 (the date he was blown up), God, country and sacrifice. While this was happening, Tire Man was taking pictures with delighted ladies and laughing guys in the infield. As I ran from CPL. Hyland’s intense soul-baring interview to Tire Man’s hooting jaunt through the infield – in itself an exercise in examining the modern day female libido, social mores, and sexual puns – the juxtaposition of the serious and absurd was confusing. And then I realized this may be the best, most distinctive thing about our fan book. It uncovers all sides of the NASCAR experience.
“The tire is the boundary,” Tire Man told me. “There have been times when a cold hand comes up the rear quarter panel, and I wonder if I should take these gloves off to show my wedding band.”
This was my seventh Daytona 500. I’d seen amazing finishes, triumphs of popular drivers like Jeff Gordon and Dale Earnhardt Jr., and the historic 50th running of the Great American Race. But this edition, sharing it with the fans in my book, seeing their joyous faces when close to the racecars and drivers, was shaping up to be the best one by far. I ran over to check on Mike Wright, who’s been to more than 250 races and has met Richard Petty nearly 200 times.
Mike was standing about as close as you can get to a racecar without touching it. The car was revving its engine to test their spark plugs. You feel that in your intestines. When the revving stopped, the six foot four truck driver from Virginia looked at me and deadpanned, “I’m like a pig in shit.”
Before this weekend, our fourth together at a race, Mike would call me “Lucky Dog,” since my job takes me to the races. Now he’s started calling me, “Crack Dealer.” I ran back to tend to CPL. Hyland’s interview, and over the course of the next few hours, Mike would text me a half dozen times. Just two words: “Crack Dealer.” I could picture him out there next to the pit boxes, in the garages, near the flag stand, dragging his good-sport wife Karen all over the track. Yeah, Mike even met up with the King.
It turned out to be one of the longest Daytona 500 races in history. Due to global cooling, at least this month, the track developed a deep pot hole on the turn not too far from Kenny Gregory’s trailer (and where fans have wheelbarrow races at night.) The delay in fixing the asphalt in the unseasonable conditions was a bummer for the TV audience, but near the Fatheads, with Bill Strope mixing up gallons of tangy Bloody Marys, no one at Kenny’s place was heard complaining. Seeing on his rooftop TV the close-up shots of the hole in the asphalt, I was wondering if most New Yorkers might finally “get” NASCAR.
When the action resumed, Jamie McMurray won a thriller featuring 21 different leaders. Crowd favorite Dale Earnhardt Jr. charged through the field in the final laps, but McMurray, with only three previous victories in his seven year NASCAR Sprint Cup Series career and now driving for a brand new team, held on to become the ninth Daytona 500 winner in the past nine years.
Before leaving the track, I stopped by Club 3, a fun bar several fans construct each year amid the RVs and converted school buses. Club 3 has its own logo, ample supplies of Alabama slammers, serious wattage in its sound system, and a gravel-voice DJ who wears a thick bushy black wig and a prosthetic bare buttocks sticking from his pants. The country and rock and roll music is played so loud, I can never find a way to ask about the point of the costume. Last year at Club 3, I’d met “The Imitator,” a Dale Earnhardt lookalike, and wanted to see if he’d be there again.
I walk into the club, and who do I encounter but none other than Tire Man, posing for pictures with Dale. It must have been 40 degrees outside, and Chris was holding his ubiquitous Coors Light, wearing nothing but Joe Nemechek’s right front qualifying tire, his red gloves, and that straw hat. I sensed it was going to be an interesting night.
But that incident, putting me in the censored company of John Steinbeck and The Gay Sheikh, is no indication of the splendid week we had officially launching The Weekend Starts on Wednesday as NASCAR opened its season in frigid Daytona Beach.
There have been several positive reviews and a flurry of interesting news stories about our fan book. George Vecsey of The New York Times said I write “very nicely” – high and flattering praise from the esteemed columnist. Sports radio personality Chris Mad Dog Russo, who has made his dislike for NASCAR quite clear, read Vecsey’s piece and had me on his show. Mad Dog opened up by calling the book “marvelous.” A Hollywood producer with credits ranging from Erin Brockovich to Pulp Fiction heard the Sirius interview and inquired about the book’s film rights. The next day, in Arctic-like Daytona, a place Al Gore was clearly avoiding, seven fans from The Weekend Starts on Wednesday joined me and the lovely, multi-talented Miss Sprint Cup Monica Palumbo for an entertaining Q&A at the Sprint Experience in the track’s corporate display area. It felt like ten below, yet Tire Man from the book (and Chelsea, AL in real life) was on stage in all his glory, naked except for his Goodyear Eagle and straw hat, just as he’d been when he and I went live on “Good Day Tampa” three days earlier. (Both the Orlando Sentinel and the Daytona Beach News Journal would run photos of Tire Man.) Plus, I signed a few dozen books, two hats, and one bare butt. It was a man’s ass. You have to start somewhere.
We haven't sold many copies, but all the publicity felt good. With that beehive of activity and the demands from the old day job put to rest, I was able to take in the Daytona 500 with the fans. Having never seen The Great American race from atop an RV, I gladly accepted Kenny Gregory’s offer to climb his hauler stationed off Turn 1. As fate had it, Sgt. Russ Friedman (namesake of the spring Richmond race and subject of the chapter “Toasting a Hero”) happened to pass by, and he and his dad, a dentist from Patchogue, LI, joined me and Kenny’s friend Bill Strope on the motor home’s roof.
If you’ve read Kenny’s story, you know he’ an amazing, generous, selfless man. He puts the Fatheads in front of his site to generate conversations, and most fans – strangers only minutes before – walk away with some sort of party favor: a flashing rubber bracelet or glowing necklace, maybe a string of glittering metallic beads. During the off-season, Kenny helped arrange for his friend Bill, who’s been sick but is valiantly battling back, to get two weeks off from work to accompany him to Speedweeks. This was Central Florida, but the track was nonetheless meat-locker cold; 180,000 people, right or wrong, were getting increasingly pissed at Sen. Gore as the temperature dropped. Kenny and Bill were offering Sgt. Friedman and me their jackets, and running Bloody Marys and tall cans of Guinness and Bill’s amazing roast pork to the top of the hauler. Before long, I was clad in beads and lighted jewelry. Before leaving Pennsylvania for Speedweeks in Florida, Kenny had spent $400 on a heap of twinkling party favors.
“I call him ‘Kenny Claus’ because he brings Christmas with him to every race,” Bill Strope said as he served plates of brosciotto wrapped in warm mozzarella and plates of scrumptious pork. Sgt. Freidman, who was hit with a rocket propelled grenade fired by Iraqi insurgents, was watching Bill being Bill, and Kenny being Kenny, and he said, “I look at these guys and it makes me feel good there are people like this. Humanity has hope.”
Hope we may have, but we still haven’t figured reliable on-schedule winter travel. Steve and Christine Deuker, featured in the chapter, “Ryan’s Hope,” called their trip to Daytona “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation.” The Deukers departed Minneapolis for a connection in Alanta. However, their jet was diverted to Nashville during an historic storm that had canceled 5,700 flights along the east coast. Christine, who has been active in bringing together the fans in The Weekend Starts on Wednesday was making this trip primarily to attend Saturday’s launch event at the Sprint Experience. She’d be missing that. As the plane banked away from its course to Atlanta, she had to try very hard not to cry.
The Deukers would unfortunately miss the book launch with their so-called “chapter buddies” but nothing was going to keep them from the Daytona 500. Steve was first to rush off the courtesy bus to rent a car. In a straight shot, they drove 700 miles to Daytona Beach. “We remembered the story in your book about Miss Sprint Cup,” Christine told me. “Her plane was cancelled so she jumped in a rental car and drove to the appearance. We were inspired. If Anne Marie could do it, so could we.”
With tens of thousands of fans already in town for the Daytona 500, the couple’s lodging choices were slim. They settled for a motel called “The Value Place” in Sanford. Sure, the name didn’t indicate brass-buttoned bellhops and turn-down truffles on the pillow, but how bad could it be? “We walked in behind four farting Chinamen and were then told we’d have to purchase toilet paper for a dollar a roll,” Steve explained.
The Deukers’ 757 was too big to unload at the airport in Nashville so they were also without luggage. When we finally met on pit road on Sunday right before the National Anthem, they were wearing three-day old shirts made specially for the race. On the front was a picture of their departed son, the NASCAR Hall of Fame, and the brick they’d inscribed for Ryan Newman, who bears a striking resemblance to Joseph. On the back was their photo with Ryan from the book, and below it the title, “The Weekend Starts on Wednesday.” It was sad to see my good friends and loyal supporters without their other clothes. However, if they had to wear any shirt the rest of their stay in Florida, or maybe the rest of the winter season, there was no better garment.
“It was the trip from hell but well worth it; we’re meeting our chapter buddies here at the Daytona 500,” Steve said with a smile.
When I spotted the Deukers and their brilliant shirts, I’d been with CPL. John Hyland (“A Purple Heart and a Titanium Leg”). We’d gotten John a pace car ride with NASCAR’s Brett Bodine earlier, and he nearly met Gov. Sarah Palin at pre-race; so the soldier who’d lost a leg was choosing to bear the discomfort of hoofing it all over this massive 2.5-mile track. The Deukers were especially excited to finally meet John, who’s been through so much after suffering his injuries and enduring dozens of operations, and now has many good things cooking with a singing career cranking up.
Last season, John and I genuinely hit it off at the race in Texas. But our bond was not the typical way you’d meet someone, find common interests and share laughs. I asked questions and CPL. Hyland talked his experiences in Iraq, the dozens of operations after the roadside bomb, the difficult transition to a new life. He talked for nearly 12 hours without a break. As a writer, it was one of the most intense and exhausting days of my life.
And now John told me a very special story about his son, Hunter. He didn’t intend for the 10-year old to look at The Weekend Starts on Wednesday. But the book was found and his father’s story read. “I went home and my boy had tears in his eyes,” CPL. Hyland explained. “Hunter said, ‘Daddy I never knew what you went through.’” CPL. Hyland confessed that when we met in Texas, he told me things he’d never said before.
Before we got to pit road, a TV crew from NASCAR Media Group was beginning work on what we hope will be a documentary on the book. This time, in front of a camera in a dramatically lit room off Daytona International Speedway’s media center, John was again pouring his heart out about September 11 (the date he was blown up), God, country and sacrifice. While this was happening, Tire Man was taking pictures with delighted ladies and laughing guys in the infield. As I ran from CPL. Hyland’s intense soul-baring interview to Tire Man’s hooting jaunt through the infield – in itself an exercise in examining the modern day female libido, social mores, and sexual puns – the juxtaposition of the serious and absurd was confusing. And then I realized this may be the best, most distinctive thing about our fan book. It uncovers all sides of the NASCAR experience.
“The tire is the boundary,” Tire Man told me. “There have been times when a cold hand comes up the rear quarter panel, and I wonder if I should take these gloves off to show my wedding band.”
This was my seventh Daytona 500. I’d seen amazing finishes, triumphs of popular drivers like Jeff Gordon and Dale Earnhardt Jr., and the historic 50th running of the Great American Race. But this edition, sharing it with the fans in my book, seeing their joyous faces when close to the racecars and drivers, was shaping up to be the best one by far. I ran over to check on Mike Wright, who’s been to more than 250 races and has met Richard Petty nearly 200 times.
Mike was standing about as close as you can get to a racecar without touching it. The car was revving its engine to test their spark plugs. You feel that in your intestines. When the revving stopped, the six foot four truck driver from Virginia looked at me and deadpanned, “I’m like a pig in shit.”
Before this weekend, our fourth together at a race, Mike would call me “Lucky Dog,” since my job takes me to the races. Now he’s started calling me, “Crack Dealer.” I ran back to tend to CPL. Hyland’s interview, and over the course of the next few hours, Mike would text me a half dozen times. Just two words: “Crack Dealer.” I could picture him out there next to the pit boxes, in the garages, near the flag stand, dragging his good-sport wife Karen all over the track. Yeah, Mike even met up with the King.
It turned out to be one of the longest Daytona 500 races in history. Due to global cooling, at least this month, the track developed a deep pot hole on the turn not too far from Kenny Gregory’s trailer (and where fans have wheelbarrow races at night.) The delay in fixing the asphalt in the unseasonable conditions was a bummer for the TV audience, but near the Fatheads, with Bill Strope mixing up gallons of tangy Bloody Marys, no one at Kenny’s place was heard complaining. Seeing on his rooftop TV the close-up shots of the hole in the asphalt, I was wondering if most New Yorkers might finally “get” NASCAR.
When the action resumed, Jamie McMurray won a thriller featuring 21 different leaders. Crowd favorite Dale Earnhardt Jr. charged through the field in the final laps, but McMurray, with only three previous victories in his seven year NASCAR Sprint Cup Series career and now driving for a brand new team, held on to become the ninth Daytona 500 winner in the past nine years.
Before leaving the track, I stopped by Club 3, a fun bar several fans construct each year amid the RVs and converted school buses. Club 3 has its own logo, ample supplies of Alabama slammers, serious wattage in its sound system, and a gravel-voice DJ who wears a thick bushy black wig and a prosthetic bare buttocks sticking from his pants. The country and rock and roll music is played so loud, I can never find a way to ask about the point of the costume. Last year at Club 3, I’d met “The Imitator,” a Dale Earnhardt lookalike, and wanted to see if he’d be there again.
I walk into the club, and who do I encounter but none other than Tire Man, posing for pictures with Dale. It must have been 40 degrees outside, and Chris was holding his ubiquitous Coors Light, wearing nothing but Joe Nemechek’s right front qualifying tire, his red gloves, and that straw hat. I sensed it was going to be an interesting night.
Monday, February 8, 2010
Chapter Buddies in the News
I know, this is late notice. I could have been a heckuva lot smarter, but no one's accusing me these days of being particularly intelligent. I should have let you know last week, not now, that Chris MacNicol (a.k.a., Tire Man) and CPL. John Hyland ("A Purple Heart and a Titanium Leg") were to be on Sirius NASCAR Radio last Friday night discussing their stories.
There was no time to get out a note. With NASCAR about to launch the season, I'm busier than Michael Jackson locked in a secure underground pre-school after a neutron bomb has wiped out all adults above. Yeah, I'm more slammed than Lindsay Lohan at an open bar the night before she goes away to prison for DUI. I'm more tied up than Madonna after visiting a hardware store for rope on a kinky Friday night. I've got more on my plate than Kirstie Alley. Too busy to write this blog, but here I am, coffee from the corner cart guy drizzling onto the keyboard, apologizing for not giving sufficient advance word that two of our Chapter Buddies made a stunning debut on "Dialed in with Claire B. Lange" on Sirius Satellite Radio.
CPL. Hyland shared some very exciting news. Those who have read THE WEEKEND STARTS ON WEDNESDAY know he sang opera before managing a Hooters then joining the Army. (A real Rennaissance Man.) Well, John is now on the verge of getting a recording contract. I don't want to give him a kunahara; enough said for now. We'll share more details on this site when things are locked down.
CPL. Hyland and Tire Man are not the only chapter buddies in the news. Today, The New York Times talks to Jack Hege, our opening chapter, who has been to every single Daytona 500, and returns to Daytona Beach this week for the 52nd consecutive year.
The Minneapolis Star Tribune is set to run a story (possibly as soon as Wednesday) on Steve and Christine Deuker ("Ryan's Hope"). They'll tell their story about losing their dear son Joseph, then finding comfort in Ryan Newman, who is strikingly similar to Joe. (The Deukers have taken it upon themselves to rally the "Chapter Buddies" on a facebook page, which is very cool. I can't wait for several of the fans in the book to meet this Saturday at Daytona Int'l Speedway at the Sprint Experience -- NOON SHARP. Yeah, the Deukers will be joined by Tire Man in his Goodyear Eagle, Right Turn Ryan, The Fathead Guy Ken Gregory, Mike Wright, Sgt. Russ Friedman, CPL. Hyland, and hopefully Jack Hege and others. We'll launch The Weekend Starts on Wednesday officially to our fans, do some trivia, and give away a few copies.)
Here's the kind of people Steve and Christine are. When they heard Jack Hege (who is in his 80's and has sore knees) would be at the Daytona 500, they started to arrange for an electric wheelchair for this man they've never met. (Jack isn't sure he'll use it; to show the kind of guy he is, he doesn't want to "slow down" his friends at track.)
Finally, if you saw Saturday Night Live this weekend, S.E. Cupp ("A NASCAR Alien in NY") took a shot in a skit making fun of attractive women on consevative cable news shows. Here is S.E. reaction to the SNL Fox parody, "Attractive Blonde Lady:"
http://www.gq.com/blogs/the-q/2010/02/attractive-blonde-lady-responds-to-snl.html
There was no time to get out a note. With NASCAR about to launch the season, I'm busier than Michael Jackson locked in a secure underground pre-school after a neutron bomb has wiped out all adults above. Yeah, I'm more slammed than Lindsay Lohan at an open bar the night before she goes away to prison for DUI. I'm more tied up than Madonna after visiting a hardware store for rope on a kinky Friday night. I've got more on my plate than Kirstie Alley. Too busy to write this blog, but here I am, coffee from the corner cart guy drizzling onto the keyboard, apologizing for not giving sufficient advance word that two of our Chapter Buddies made a stunning debut on "Dialed in with Claire B. Lange" on Sirius Satellite Radio.
CPL. Hyland shared some very exciting news. Those who have read THE WEEKEND STARTS ON WEDNESDAY know he sang opera before managing a Hooters then joining the Army. (A real Rennaissance Man.) Well, John is now on the verge of getting a recording contract. I don't want to give him a kunahara; enough said for now. We'll share more details on this site when things are locked down.
CPL. Hyland and Tire Man are not the only chapter buddies in the news. Today, The New York Times talks to Jack Hege, our opening chapter, who has been to every single Daytona 500, and returns to Daytona Beach this week for the 52nd consecutive year.
The Minneapolis Star Tribune is set to run a story (possibly as soon as Wednesday) on Steve and Christine Deuker ("Ryan's Hope"). They'll tell their story about losing their dear son Joseph, then finding comfort in Ryan Newman, who is strikingly similar to Joe. (The Deukers have taken it upon themselves to rally the "Chapter Buddies" on a facebook page, which is very cool. I can't wait for several of the fans in the book to meet this Saturday at Daytona Int'l Speedway at the Sprint Experience -- NOON SHARP. Yeah, the Deukers will be joined by Tire Man in his Goodyear Eagle, Right Turn Ryan, The Fathead Guy Ken Gregory, Mike Wright, Sgt. Russ Friedman, CPL. Hyland, and hopefully Jack Hege and others. We'll launch The Weekend Starts on Wednesday officially to our fans, do some trivia, and give away a few copies.)
Here's the kind of people Steve and Christine are. When they heard Jack Hege (who is in his 80's and has sore knees) would be at the Daytona 500, they started to arrange for an electric wheelchair for this man they've never met. (Jack isn't sure he'll use it; to show the kind of guy he is, he doesn't want to "slow down" his friends at track.)
Finally, if you saw Saturday Night Live this weekend, S.E. Cupp ("A NASCAR Alien in NY") took a shot in a skit making fun of attractive women on consevative cable news shows. Here is S.E. reaction to the SNL Fox parody, "Attractive Blonde Lady:"
http://www.gq.com/blogs/the-q/2010/02/attractive-blonde-lady-responds-to-snl.html
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