Nineteen years ago, I attended my first Media Tour, then as now hosted by Charlotte Motor Speedway, though the speedway was Lowe’s for part of the time between. That makes this one, which starts tomorrow, my 20th. Fifteen years ago, I attended my first as the motorsports writer of the Gazette.
Much has changed. Much hasn’t. In 1993, I was trying to make a name for myself as a journalist. Now that name, however modest, is established. At the time, the only book I had written was about high school football. Now I’ve written five books about NASCAR, edited and contributed to another, and contributed to two more. I haven’t written a NASCAR book in six years and have no plans for another. I wrote a book about music (True to the Roots: Americana Music Revealed) and a novel (The Audacity of Dope). The second novel is well under way and should be out in about a year.
In 1993, I played golf. Now I play guitar. I’m not nearly as bad a guitarist as I was a golfer. I guess that’s progress in a way.
The first and second years I covered NASCAR full-time, the champion was Dale Earnhardt. The current champion, Tony Stewart, was a name I’d heard. In 1993, Jeff Gordon was a rookie. Bill Clinton was in his rookie year as president. I, too, was a rookie. The Media Tour was something new and exciting. Since I was a rookie, I had to wear to wear a badge that identified me as one. I didn’t have a bumper so there was no strip of yellow tape.
In a way, the Media Tour has remained constant while everything else has changed. Dale Earnhardt, Benny Parsons, Hal Hamrick, H. Clay Earles, T. Wayne Robertson, T. Taylor Warren, Conner Gilbert, Joe Coleman and Jim Hunter were alive. So was David Poole, even though I’d never met him and didn’t yet know who he was. Then I was relatively young and unknown. Now I’ve probably outlived most of my usefulness. Even in 1993, I was probably considered more important than I am now. No writers are as important now as we all were then. I wrote my stories on a Radio Shack TRS-80, which was known informally as a “Trash-80.” Compared to the laptop sitting in front of me now, it was.
In 1993, hardly anyone in NASCAR knew what I was writing. A year later, I wrote for the racing weekly FasTrack. People in NASCAR found out what I was writing a week later when copies of FasTrack circulated in the garage area and media center. When I joined the Gazette, I started writing all the copy for “NASCAR This Week,” our nationally syndicated page. NASCAR public relations representatives knew all about “NTW” because, when I wrote a profile of their drivers, they received copies of it by the hundreds through clippings services. Now no one subscribes to clippings services. Now people find out what I’m writing instantaneously. Unfortunately, less of them care.
The Media Tour was less respectable and more fun. The days began just as early and ended later. We rode more buses, played more poker, drank more beer and it was more of a miracle that we didn’t get in trouble. Almost everyone in NASCAR took himself and us a lot less seriously. The role model then was Hunter S. Thompson. Now it’s Brian Williams. We couldn’t rival Thompson then, and we can’t rival Williams now. Thank goodness we didn’t try harder.
Believe it or not, my body was larger then than it is now, but it functioned better. When I awakened then, the pain was a result of a hangover. Now it’s because, to quote the late Shel Silverstein, “I’ve got arthritic elbows and dislocated knees, from picking fights with thunderstorms and crashing into trees.” Sometimes I wonder how much better I’d feel now if I’d never played football and never jogged. My jogging days were already long over by the time I started writing about NASCAR. Now I don’t even walk with much grace and authority.
On the other hand, even as age robbed me of physical vitality, I don’t think it cost me of my sense of adventure. When my career as a journalistic gypsy began, I’d never even picked up a guitar. But a life of writing about people who are relatively young has had the effect of keeping my mind and attitudes young. In my case, journalism has never been a maturity aid. This is demonstrated by the fact that I have little regard for maturity, which can be read between many of my lines.
Nowadays, it seems as if most of the people younger than me are … older than me.
That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.
