Never the Same IC#28 A Major Distraction

Distracting Kirk even more from his calling as a regionally renowned stock car racer, he discovered the name of that very alluring bohemian girl.

Kirk realized he was not fulfilling his childhood dream as a modern-day track warrior after just one night of stock car racing, but it didn’t mean that with some perseverance, skill, and money Kirk couldn’t become one. The summer had arrived as indicated by the arrival of stock car season. Kirk had a taste of racing with just one night of two short races, of course, he didn’t do all that well with his inherited heavy, under-powered car driven by a young timid guy, namely Kirk. He did drive the attention-grabbing clean-looking shiny silver coupe. Someone might say it was the best-looking, eye-catching car among all the classes, but, honestly, someone never said as much. 

Kirk, however, had to admit the racing the high banked track under the lights was thrilling and he just knew that if the consolation race had been a couple laps longer, he would’ve caught that second to the last car. He could, maybe, perhaps, get into the racing mindset after all. He had dreamed about racing all his formative years, but when it came right down to getting out there on the track, he experienced a bit of apprehension.

Kirk slept well on Saturday night with no nightmares of major crashes into other moving stock cars or the very solid, unmoving retaining wall. Sunday morning came to him pretty fast. After being forced to attend church as a youngster, Kirk’ father no longer had any impetus to attend church himself nor force the adult Kirk to attend. Just as well for Kirk who definitely believed in the divine but not so much in organized religion thinking that history provides plenty of examples of wars fought all in the name of religion. Enough of that!

Anyway, Kirk lingered over breakfast and then had a quick sandwich for lunch before heading over to the garage. They’d be leaving soon after noon for the afternoon races at Perry Raceway. Kirk didn’t really think of preparing his car for the Sunday races by not even charging his battery though he did wipe the oil leaks from his engine. Apparently, the Dodge engines Mike and he ran weren’t designed for the constant left turns on oval tracks. Mike’s voiced theory was that the oil sloshed in a major way to the engine’s right side during races ending up in the valve cover and then with the nearly constant centrifugal force the oil squeezes through the seals and gaskets to leak out of the engine and make a mess. Discussed concern amounted to wondering how much oil stayed up on top the engine versus in the oil pan which could lead to the engine, theoretically, running out of oil. Neither of the drivers noticed a drop in oil pressure, though Kirk wouldn’t admit to never watching the gauges during his heat race. During the race, he had his focus elsewhere, duh! 

So Sunday afternoons would be taken up by the long trip and racing at Perry Raceway. If you follow Kirk’s story you already know that Perry is a shorter track with turns not as high banked as the Holland track. It goes without saying that Perry is definitely the low-key, low-budget affair of the two tracks with obviously less spent money on facilities. Kirk also found out that the numbers of competitors and spectators was less as well. That could work in Kirk’s benefit. Maybe.

On arrival and going through the usual race preparation like the mandatory drivers meeting, Kirk was disappointed that the only car on his poor performance level was the poor handling, junky number 039 hadn’t showed. That car and the driver was the only combo that Kirk had his hopes of maybe beating. No doubt in Kirk’s mind it would be better and less embarrassing to come in second to the last, wouldn’t it?  Kirk couldn’t elevate his aspirations too high now could he while considering his current standings among the other racers which you might say was the very bottom of the roster or just plain last.

His Sunday races, a heat and the resultant consolation race went pretty much the same as Saturday and that found him coming in last during both. Kirk, however, was beginning to enjoy his time on the track while getting into the whole racing scene. Unfortunately, time on the track became more of a Sunday drive for him due to his heavy, under-powered car. After the races, most of the drivers hung out in the pits for a while. Some of the drivers who actually performed well and placed in the races waited for the pay out which wasn’t very much even if the driver won the feature race, but at least it paid gas money. Other drivers hung out in the pits for their fan clubs to come down which for the most part were friends and relative spectators. Surprising Kirk, a few people stopped by Mike and his cars just to admire the paint jobs not to mention a scoff or two at the faux vinyl tops that Mike had installed. Kirk was a bit embarrassed about the whole thing so he decided to wander around the pits.

Kirk examined some of the cars with awe. A couple cars in his class had really nice paint jobs like one with a royal blue metallic paint job with gold trim. Apparently, Kirk thought, the driver didn’t expect to be touched by another car during a race because the nerf bars were lightweight and tucked in close to the body. He thought they might change their minds after a season of intense wheel to wheel racing. Many of the cars in his class ran the wide, low-profile racing tires versus the tall, narrower recap tires Kirk ran. In fact NO ONE else ran recapped tires like Kirk. Would racing tires help his performance on the track? Kirk didn’t think so because his car didn’t go fast enough to benefit from better handling that the expensive tires would provide. He didn’t have much extra money that he’d be willing to put into the stock car when he had other projects in the works absorbing his already scarce funds. Going around the pits, there were some cars with super clean laid out cockpit with more gauges than necessary with perfect paint and decals just to show off. He wondered if the drivers could even look at the gauges during a race. He thought their focus should be on the track not the dashboard, but that was Kirk. Some of the go-fast cars had those high-tech, lightweight, high-dollar components that Kirk knew had prices would make your eyes water. He guessed that if you had that kind of money to put into the car�"why not?

There were also innovative homemade ideas galore like free-breathing air filtration systems. Different complicated suspensions that may or may not work better than the simple systems he and Mike used. He looked closer. Oddly, it appeared to him that some of the suspensions were not adjustable. How could they adjust weighting, staggering, and wedging for the car to handle correctly? Wedging is an old racing term that is still used in modern race cars. It refers to forcing the weight of the car front to back and side to side. Way back when they used leaf springs they used metal wedges to accomplish the weight transfer, but now, like Kirk’s car they use big screws that load or force suspension springs to assert more pressure or relieve it. The absence of this adjustment ability baffled his logical knowledge of stock car handling and set up. Maybe these fancy expensive suspensions could be factory/garage pre-set somehow and never touched after that on the track. Nah, not possible, but it still baffled him.

On the other end of the spectrum a couple rather rough looking cars still had wire screens for windshields instead of Plexiglas like he and most other cars had installed. Wire screens were always used in cars on dirt tracks and some of those cars looked like they had endured from those days. The cockpits looked muddy and dusty and the engines looked worse with a little oil thrown in the yukky mix. A couple cars had humorous words and phrases on them like one car said it was “radio dispatched” a throw back to repair trucks that claimed they were “radio dispatched” to emergency appointments. One car had “No Passing” on its rear truck lid with arrows pointing both to the right and left. Kirk liked that and thought about borrowing the idea.    

One thing Kirk had set out to check was engines being run. Both he and Mike ran Dodge engines. Even though Mike had put some performance parts into his engine, Kirk could tell it wasn’t all that fast. Of course, we know about Kirk’s pokey car. Kirk taking stock found out most engines were Chevrolet with a smattering of Fords. There were no other Dodges to be seen. Apparently, everyone else knew better, but he and Mike had pesky Chuck’s sponsorship which meant Dodge engines were a mandatory requirement. 

It didn’t really occur to him that with perseverance such as trying hard and getting the car to go faster, skills such as watching how other drivers handle their cars and studying racing techniques, and money such as sinking all his extra money into the car by purchasing go fast parts and actual racing tire slicks would improve his results on the track. No, Kirk would rather spend his time and money working on his van and once in a while going out to drink at nightclubs. Not that he was getting rich working at the dealership. Yeah, he had perseverance all right with his job and all those previous hours of school sport involvement with no meaningful returns in self-esteem or success, but perseverance wouldn’t help him in his budding racing career, not that he had any kind of emerging career in racing to speak of.  And so, his summer of racing began in earnest, but was Kirk committed to the challenge leading to success?

Apparently not. Upon the start of a new week after a full weekend of racing Kirk was back at work performing his unrewarding manual labor at the dealership. Well, you might say that Kirk had no reason to think bad about working at the dealership. He had trained his entire young life to be a mechanic and here he was as an apprentice mechanic as such. Truthfully, he was not enamored with the work especially the mundane warranty repairs he was often assigned. He had difficulty imagining going forward from that point on most days. It was, at least, a steady job with a regular, though meager paycheck.

Well, some of that paycheck rolled directly into Kirk’s van. He had high hopes for his panel van. So far he replaced the driver door and repaired the crunch on that left hand corner. He sanded the hell out of that upper panel where the heating and air conditioning repair sign was and had permanently imprinted itself into the sheet metal. Something to worry about later, Kirk thought. He found that his van, even though it was a short wheelbase had a whole lot of surface area to sand. And it all required sanding. Every evening he would be covered in old paint dust. Who needed respirators back then? He thought that sanding and repair would be a job that would take him all summer.

  Kirk found as the week waned, he had to take a break and decided to give an old drinking buddy a call. They’d meet up at the nightclub “Uncle Sam’s.” Not really a Disco per se, but they had a bright flashing dance floor. You wouldn’t go there if you were susceptible to epileptic fits from bright flashing lights.

Kirk wasn’t a big drinker because if he went beyond “just feeling it” he’d start getting sick with splitting headaches. Probably it was a good thing considering his emotional/ depression problems, you know? Anyway, they met up to listen to current top 40 classic rock music with a twist. Kirk remained a wannabe drummer from back in his high school marching band days but never cultivated any real drumming expertise. Though what Kirk really liked listening to was that the club had two drummers playing along with the recorded music. Loud? Oh, yeah! Anyway, these outings to the nightclub remained a hit or miss occasion when Kirk was depressed or just plain tired of working at his job and/or the van. These outings were only slight distractions, but Kirk would soon have one major, nearly full-time distraction!

On one of these occasions, his pal Waylon had a problem with his car project a ‘Vette that didn’t quite run right. Because Waylon knew Kirk was sort of a mechanic, he invited Kirk to take a look. Pulling into Waylon’s yard, Waylon excused himself and Kirk waited there in the yard. Then, he spied her! The little hippie, bohemian Lolita chick coming from the barn out back. She strolled right over to Kirk.

“Hey you!” Kirk said.

“Hey yourself, Kirk.”

You know my name, eh?” Kirk said. “And ah, so what’s your name.” Kirk felt self-conscious to ask so rudely.

“Sarah Elizabeth, that’s me and I’ve known who you were for a while now.”

Kirk thumbed toward the ranch house. “And your brother never mentioned that fact to you or me?

“He didn’t know nothing. And I didn’t see you around,” Sarah shrugged. “Just hanging out, biding my time, waiting. I’m patient.”

“Not me. I wanted to know who you were since that party.” She looked blankly. “You were with that guy�"in that big barge car. I was there in a group of friends.”

“Oh, yeah. That a*****e. I tried to forget.”

By then Waylon came strolling back. “Oh, my little sister, Sarah. Bothering you?”

“No, no bother. Why didn’t you tell me your sister was Sarah Elizabeth.”

“Huh, I dunno,” he shrugged, “never had a reason to ay. You didn’t ask.”

“Horses, eh?” Kirk asked her.

“Horse and a pony.”
            “That’s nice.”

Kirk got tight-lipped unsure what else to say so pointed to Waylon’s car. He opened the hood, but Kirk sure wasn’t in the mood to piddle with engines while keeping an eye on little compact and sensual Sarah E. She had waist-length blonde hair, the cutest overbite and charmingly pudgy cheeks. She wore hip-hugging button-fly bell bottoms that were wet and muddy along the bottom fringed edges. On top, Sarah wore a flannel shirt without a bra�"obviously. And a well-worn cap.  Kirk just thought all of her, how she looked and acted made her sexy as hell. He was really charmed now that he talked to her, knew her name.

Suddenly, Sarah had become his number one major distraction. It clicked with Kirk that sexy Sarah clearly meant jail bait for him. Definitely.

And Kirk would Never be the Same. Definitely.