Ghosts of the Coke Zero 400 – Act III

Richard Petty (shown here after his ‘73 win in the Daytona 500, one of 7 wins at that race) is the undisputed King of Daytona International Speedway; but Dale Earnhardt Sr. may be it’s spiritual father. And Tim Richmond, its errant son ….

Time moves fast in the glass these days. Sonoma was two races ago already. The Monster Mile at Loudon was colossal dud, another rained-out race with a lucky dog of a tortoise winning the race. Here in Florida the rain cover lingers without much precipitation—a dewy, drippy sort of hiatus from the usual shrieking brilliance. Hopefully the pall will be dispensed by tomorrow when practice begins for the 400 at Daytona.

This weekend’s 400, as you’ve probably heard, is the 25th anniversary of Richard Petty’s 200th’ and final win of his NASCAR career. Adding to the auspiciousness of that event was the presence of President Ronald Reagan, who took up an anonymous suite to watch the race. The entire grandstand was draped in black so no one could tell which suite he went into, and security measures rivaled post-9/11, with all traffic blocked in front of the speedway and everyone having to go through a metal detector.  Reagan actually gave the command to start the race from Air Force One.

President and King, 1984.

Big time stuff: NASCAR was arriving at something as of that race—a sort of legitimacy which deserved so high an official recognition.  It could be said that as of the 1984 Firecracker 400, NASCAR entered the American mainstream.

Air Force One lands with Ronald Reagan aboard as Richard Petty drives the No. 43 down the superstretch at the ‘84 Firecracker 400.

For better or worse. For this weekend’s race, Richard Petty will pace the field in a replica of the car he drove to win the 400 twenty-five years ago. Presidents come and go, but the Petty dynasty never dies here at Daytona. Lee Petty won the first Daytona 500, back in 1959; son Richard took over the wheel when after Lee suffered a career-ending injury in a crash while qualifying for the 1961 500. Richard won his first Daytona 500 in 1964 and won it an additional six times—the record. (David Pearson holds the record for the most wins at the 400 with five.)

NASCAR tidied up as it joined the mainstream, exercising ever-greater control over its drivers. Long gone were the days of Coo Coo Marlin, Elmo Langley and Dub Simpson, who got into a brawl in a Daytona nightspot on the eve of  the ’72 Firecracker 400, getting bailed out of jail just before the race.

Gone are the likes of Tim Richmond, a hell-bent driver who rose and fell so fast the fantail of his career is like a trailing shower of sparks from a July 4 fireworks display. And the No. 25 team has never lived up to the expectations of its first gloried driver. Richmond won more races in the #25 in two years than by all of the drivers who have raced on the No. 25 team  in the two decades that followed.

Gone are NASCAR’s backwoods roots. No more more  Junior Johnson, Joe Weatherley or Fireball Roberts. No more racin’ at Daytona without restrictor plates. No more tolerance for party lifestyles and their possible afteraffects on the track. No more sold-out speedways.

Maybe soon no more manufacturers.

Maybe soon no more NASCAR.

But for now, for this July 4, fireworks will rage again over Daytona Superspeedway, perhaps contending with heat-lightning still arcing  through the bellies of distant thunderclouds, and the cars will start with a collective fusillade of engines at full roar, searing the night with racin’s own kind of heat, straight from the smokin’ libido of Florida in the swamp-deep of its summer.

Cooler this 5 a.m.—when it stays cloudy,  the state becomes a more reasonable place, at least on the skin. It’s still Florida, with its daily tides of looniness and woe. Fecal sludge from Orlando is drifting south through its wetlands into the Everglades. In Lauderdale-by-the-Sea, nearly 100 Loggerhead sea turtles became disoriented by lights and wandered along the beach after they hatched instead of heading into the ocean, About seven of the amphibians had to be rescued from a 15-foot storm drain. A man wanted by the Florida Highway Patrol for a string of hit-and-run accidents in a span of several minutes — one of which caused an FHP trooper to crash into a family of four — committed suicide in front of a friend on Tuesday night. Thieves walked into the Hilton Garden Inn and helped themselves to the ATM — the whole machine. A man in Orlando has been arrested battery, robbery and false imprisonment in connection with an attack on a woman in Seminole County; he was also the last person to see Tracy Ocasio alive last week before she disappeared–at a location close to where 26-year-old Jennifer Kesse disappeared in January 2006. A Tarpon Springs police officer who says he encountered a barrage of racial slurs when he drove a homeless man to the Pinellas County Jail later retaliated by slashing the tires of the man’s bicycle. A 23-year old man was arrested for touching three girls (aged 12-14) inappropriately in three separate incidents one day at the Aquatica water park. An escaped pet python measuring more than 8 feet long broke out of a terrarium and strangled a 2-year-old girl in her bedroom Wednesday in a rural home in Sumpter County. In Orlando, a man rented a gun at a local shooting range and then shot himself in the head, the fourth incident of its kind this year.

Crazy from the heat, insane in the rain: both are specie of Florida’s summer excess. Earlier this summer a sludgy front dumped 22 inches on our garden in about 10 days. I had to tarp our garage because the roof was leaking so bad.  Tampa got 4 inches of rain yesterday, this time due to a shifting of the Bermuda High further south, which brings moisture-laden air into the West Coast of Florida every morning and the rains begins for the entire state. Well, the forecast has things clearing up by Saturday, but forecasters in Florida are worth about as much as its legistlators, who  are worth as much as a Loggerhead sea turtle hatchling headed the wrong way across the beach.

In Florida, we have a fool for a king—not the governor, I mean, but the sun. It beats down, it addles, it stirs up tropic foment, it ramps up desire and then dumps it all on our heads. Florida is the Lightning Capital of the World; on average, 10 Floridians are killed by lightning every year and another 1,200 are injured.  Lightning can strike 10 miles away from the center of a thunderstorm; a “Positive Giant” is a strike that hits the ground from 20 miles away. Most strikes average 2 to 3 miles long and carry a current of 100 million volts.

I’ll be up in DePalma Tower on Saturday,  high enough to watch the full circuit of the race. Close enough to touch the sky. Between God and His mercies and avenging angels.  With Dale Earnhardt and Tim Richmond racing their ghost cars round the track, shadowing King Petty in the pace car. With that voice of thunder strolling over, asking, who’s yer daddy?

Lightning arcs over the Nextel scoring tower at the Daytona International Speedway during a storm on July 6, 2007.

* * *

Who’s yer daddy? How do the veins of dynasty run, for better and ill? The year of 1986 is one of mine. I was 29 years old and standing on a bridge I knew I must cross over, else I die, yet I loved to wildly my nights of fading thunder, usually between rock ‘n’ roll bands I played with over the years (never well enough to quit my day job), getting drunk and hooking up, as they say now, with the latest exempla of Mrs. Wrong O Do Me Right.

1986 is both the most troubled and fitting ghost in my garden this morning, a draft of self which had to be shelved, re-refitted and re-titled for my age, no longer coming-of-age, an eventual adult who’d overstayed the adolescence our culture gives fools the privilege of extending for an entire life. How much I wanted the big time, big time; how much I needed to let it go.

Tim Richmond was having his best year in 1986, but in it were cast the seeds of his worst. It was my best year, too, in the worst sort of way; and because of that it may done the best work for my future.  But I may be wrong. Discernment of spirits is a Christian  gift, and Hamlet’s Ghost is a pagan entity, his message coming more in the manner of the Witches of Macbeth, arriving on day both foul and fair. (Well, Tim Richmond counts as a pagan, he was from Ohio fer Chrissakes.) Religion’s apparatus  can’t  go far enough. Neither can literature’s, after Shakespeare, though we try …

But let’s look in the rough glass anyway. Compared to today, life was better and worse. The inflation rate was under two percent and unemployment  was running at 7.2 percent—better than our day, but not by much. The Dow Jones closed the year at 1895. (If things get a hell of a lot worse in the economy, we may end up in that direction.). A new house cost an average $89, 430 dollars, a new car $9,255. (Foreclosed houses which began over $300,000 are now going for that rate, and you can always buy a new, low-end car for about that much.) A Tandy 600 portable computer cost $1,599, about the cost of a  Mac Book today—gazillions more computing for about the same cost.

Hot on the radio: Power Station and INXS, Genesis, The Bangles, Bruce Springsteen and the Pet Shop Boys. Hot on TV: “Magnum: P.I.”, “Hill Street Blues,” “Dynasty,” “Cheers,” “Remington Steele” and “The Cosby Show.” Hot on my mind: booze and pussy, or rather, a potion for perfect love.

Robert Palmer was “Addicted to Love” in 1986.
Those fatales are not his Power Station, but they’re in his jones.

Here’s how the season went in the parallel universe Tim Richmond  and I shared in 1986:

On January 26, The Chicago Bears defeated the New England Patriots 46-10 in Super Bowl XX.. I grew up in Chicago with the Cubs, the baseball franchise on the north side of town, and was not accustomed to watching any Chicago team win. So for a Chicago team to become champion, that was a form of affirmation I took so personally. I got real drunk at a party hosted by friend; by halftime, when it was obvious that the Bears were headed for a rout, I was already blotto. I left before the start of the second half and drove up to my favorite rock n roll club. I was in a blackout when the bar closed, packed two girls and some bum into my car and drove them back to my tiny garage apartment. I took the thin one with the big hooters into my bed (actually just a mattress on the floor) and left the fat one and the bum to party on the floor of my cold kitchen.

Two days later I was at work in the office supply stockroom at The Orlando Sentinel and headed up on the roof of the production center to watch the launch of the Space Shuttle Challenger. It was a cold, clear day and I had a terrible hangover; the light was almost shattering. Pressmen and packagers, secretaries and reporters all watched the launch – that bright, bright candle at the bottom of the rocket some 50 miles away in Titusville, the rising arc of smoke from liftoff. But then suddenly it got all confused, the fantails lacing up into some odd sort of bow that stopped in mid-air. Reporters beat it back to the newsroom where three televisions were relaying live footage of the Challenger’s explosion and disintegration 73 seconds after launch.

A few weeks later, Tim Richmond finished 20th in the Daytona 500.  His teammate at Hendrick Motorsports, Geoff Bodine, took the victory.

I slept with some 30 women the first three months of 1986, drinking almost seven nights a week. I’d work, go to the gym, come home and cook a steak and steam up some broccoli, drink three Budweisers, shower, put on my going-threadbare rock n roll threads, pull one of the $20’s meant for rent from my dresser drawer, drive up into Winter Park, make the round of a few bars, come back and grab another $20 from my dresser and head back out, usually to my rock n roll club but other times to another watering hole in Orlando’s vast supply (more numerous than its numerous lakes, and twice as deep), and drink into the shallows of unconciousness where most of ready girls were in reach. Who knows where they came from, why they ended up with me (I liked to think I had Rod Stewartean looks, but I was too tall and gangly and could never quite rooster my hair as well as he), why they let me follow them home, why they gave themselves up to me, what we actually did (usually I was in a blackout), how I managed to slip out on a zip-up and a fleeing promise, why I left them behind, why I never found anyone I could stay with, what was wrong with my thirst for sex, why I was so afraid of the deep end of that pool, where the true intimacy and love was.

In March, Out of Africa won the Oscar for Best Picture, but I remember these films from 1986 –Aliens, Blue Velvet, 9-1/2 Weeks, To Live and Die in LA.

One night I dreamed that my father is a vampire in an ancient house that was heated way too much against the bitter winter cold outside. He’s civil and urbane and endlessly deadly and he’s chosen me to prey upon. Sitting by the fire with him (our faces glowing in that light, even more so for the eternal darkness just behind us) he tell me he’d prefer to dine on animals but something propels him on. He cuts my neck and eyes the blood running from the wound with something like delight or famished hunger. I take a knife and slash and slash and slash at him He goes away but lives, reappearing all wounded and thrice vicious. I pierce his heart this time and he goes away forever.

In April, United States Navy divers found the largely intact but heavily-damaged crew compartment of the Space Shuttle Challenger, with the bodies of all 7 astronauts are still inside. For years afterward, chunks of fuselade would wash ashore at Playalinda Beach next to the Kennedy Space center, sad bits of wreckage that had been drifting offshore with the flotsom that shattered space flight.  I was haunted by those finds, dreaming of watching a booster surface in the glittery surf of first love, a phallic gift from Poseidon, laden with all of my failures to rocket my way to love.

Richmond continued racing with mediocre results for the early part of the season, managing a top-5 finish only at Darlington. He was new with Hendrick Motorsports and working it out with his crew chief Harry Hyde. The two men couldn’t be more different from each other, but both sensed the other had what they were looking for and they kept working at it.

In that season I wake with a woman a waitress at one of my bars, who whispers into my ear, thinking I’m still asleep,  “I don’t even like you . You’re just a good fuck.”

Tim Richmond was the same age as me in 1986—29 years old. He was way up there from me, accomplished, racing the big time, living the big night music I eked out on ovals too plebian and ordinary for anyone but me to take notice of.  Still, 1986 was warming slowly for Richmond. Folks were questioning both the decision by Hendrick Motorsports to add a second team and especially the selection of Tim Richmond to drive the No. 25 car.

One night I’m so drunk at a bar where a band I know an really respect I can hardly stand up, dropping my drink. The next time I’m there to watch them the bass player won’t even look at me. A few weeks later he quit the band and returned to Illinois, sick of road life, of bars, of seeing jerks like me. The band invited me to try out on bass but I missed my audition, drinking in bed with the girl who lived in the apartment next door. She liked me too much and I quickly dumped her. The next week I had blackout drunks four nights in a row, waking at noon one Saturday to remember I was supposed to have picked up my sister at 8 to drive over to Vero Beach and visit my dad, who was staying with friends. We got there mid-afternoon, and my dad and I walked the beach on a turgid, grey day. He said to me, it’s over, kid, give up on these idiot adolescent pursuits and get started with a life. I nod, looking out on the grey sea, and agree. Back in town I swear off booze for about a week, work out hard every day, practice the old songs with my Hamer Phantom and old tube Gretsch amp, feeling that old feral edge return. Excited, I head out drinking, closing down my rock n roll club and following a heavy-breasted blonde back to her trailer in Gotha. Stripping her naked, the last thing to come off is a scarf she wears around her neck, revealing an angry, 8-inch scar. Seems a boyfriend she had dumped had smashed his way through the window of ther living room and tried to slit her throat with a Bowie knife. She had died twice on operating table, lost almost 8 pints of blood. She survived, to live on dancing in topless clubs and getting picked up by rock n roll boys like me. I call in sick that day, fuck her a bunch more time and then drive back to my apartment in the warming sun of Florida, drinking beer and reading Anthony Burgess, feeling the tide of a sick form of grace haul me out once again.

On April 21, on live national TV, Geraldo Rivera opened Al Capone’s secret vault on The Mystery of Al Capone’s Vault, discovering only a bottle of moonshine.

In April I signed on with my last band – Innocent Thieves – comprised of guys from several B-list bands playing in the area. I was brought on for my tall rock-star looks and big-guitar sound. We rehearsed from some three months, partying after practice with more vengeance than we applied to our songs.

The world was cruel back then as it is now. Libya was the terrorist baddie back then In April, a Berlin discotheque frequented by US soldiers, was bombed, killing 3 and injuring 230. In retaliation, Operation El Dorado Canyon was launched, with US planes bombing the Libyan capital of Tripoli, killing at least 1 . Nature was cruel, too. On April 14, Hailstones weighing 2.2 lb fell on the Gopalganj district of Bangladesh, killing 92. On April 29 the Bangladeshi double decked ferry Shamia capsized in the Meghna River, southern Barisal, Bangladesh, killing at least 600.

An American F-111 flight crew en route during Operation El Dorodo Canyon.

I was cruel, too, which I believe now is gross self-centeredness. There is nothing more selfish than a drunk in his cups.  I contracted scabies from some night’s find and had sex on successive nights after with someones, the mad itch in my crotch ignored as I tried to empty the bursting freight I was dragging behind my guitar.

The world was not only cruel. On May 25 At least 5,000,000 people formed a human chain in an event called Hands Across America, reaching from New York City to Long Beach, California, to raise money to fight hunger and homelessness.

Richmond’s great run began with a second-place finish at the World 600 in Charlotte over the Memorial Day weekend. Late in the race it seemed Bill Elliott had taken control, but smart pit strategy on crew chief Harry Hyde kept Richmond out on the track when Elliott had to pit for a splash of gas. Dale Earnhardt’s crew had made a similar call and took the victory.  Richmond finished second two seconds off the pace. But he had established himself as a contender.

At the next race at Riverside, Richmond led much of that event, and was poised to take his first win when Terry Labonte crashed with two laps to go. With the race ending under caution, both Richmond and second place Darrell Waltrip knew it would be a close finish. The two put one on of the best duels to the finish in NASCAR history, running side by side and rubbing fenders all the way. Richmond got caught behind slower traffic allowing Waltrip to open an advantage, but he came charging back, finishing inches short as the yellow and white flags flew simultaneously.

Richmond and a fan.

Our band played its only gig in late June, on the bill with six punk bands in an event called Rock Against Racism. We played a terrible set, the monitors on the fritz, our singer’s guitar going horribly out of tune. Not that anyone really noticed – most of the attendees were fans of the punk bands. No mosh-pitting to the power pop-rock-confections we played. After I set I retired to the bar in back and drank. The next band was called Damage and with their first song, skinheads began bruising against each other in the pit.  It was all just their kind of fun until someone careened out of the pit into some jock’s  girlfiend who screamed. And then it was on.  A fight broke out, then another,  then the whole place was a blizzard of flying fists, chairs  and squealing girls. The cops showed up soon enough and the whole place emptied out. I snuck my guitar and amp out to my car and split, leaving the band to tear down the PA, the night sky an angry purple bruise hurling lightning in every direction.

It was at Pocono that Richmond began his winning streak. The day was dark and stormy and the red flag had to be thrown for a severe thunderstorm at the midpoint of the race. When the racing resumed, Richmond worked his way to the the front, roaring around the damp track.  He dueled Dale Earnhardt all the way to the finish, the two of them avoiding a heavy wreck with four laps to go. That day it was Richmond who crossed the finish line first. He was on his way.

Dale Earnhardt and Tim Richmond duel.

At the opening speech of the International Conference in Paris, held from June 23rd to 25th, Dr H Mahler, the Director of the World Health Organization, announced that as many as 10 million people worldwide could already be infected with AIDs. Back then we knew it mostly as a gay disease, and a distant one – New York and San Francisco and Miami were epicenters. Nobody I knew back then took much notice of it. It would be some years before the casual sex world I lived in became alert to the use of condoms.

My band Innocent Thieves went into the studio once to record four songs. The drummer never showed up so most of the day was spent programming a drum machine to handle his parts. I still have a tape that has the final take of one of the songs, “Lonely Town,” on it is my best guitar work, riffs and runs and fills and a solo that hit all the heartstrings.

Richmond’s next win was at the Firecracker 400 in July. He finished second at the next race, at Talladega, followed by a win at the road race course in Watkins Glen, where he was a heavy favorite. He finished second the next race at Michigan, then sixth at Bristol, then he finished second, then first at successive races at Darlington and Richmond. The heat was now on.

One night in July I was told the band was breaking up, with several of the players going to work full time for their day gig working out at Disney with a 50’s band called The Shifters. I wasn’t really heartbroken, because I knew I did my part to drink the Thieves out of existence. I saw my former bandmates only once more, at a party for a vocal coach who had once told me he couldn’t take any more of my money because there was no hope of me becoming a decent vocalist, I saw my former bandmates. We didn’t say anything, and when I left the thirst was on me. I drank toward the bottom of every bottle and babe I could never quite get enough of or find, my heart in furious disarray, my mind repeating my father’s words–it’s over, son, it’s over. Bidding my revenant life adieu.

In August—about the time of Richmond’s victory at Michigan, when it was beginning to look like he was going to beat all comers for the rest of the season—I quit drinking  for about three weeks. Put the plug in the jug and held my breath. Cleaned up my apartment, ordered my sock drawer, wrote in my journal, practiced all of my guitar licks and read at night while my body screamed for release. While the heavy summer night licked at the window, whispering my name, calling me back out for some more of that eternal badness.

In early September 1986, three weeks into my forced sobriety I can’t stand sobriety and go out for “a couple” beers with an ex-bandmate, heading up to our favorite rock n roll club. He starts buying shots of Rumplemintz to go with our tallneck Buds and the fangs of that sweet liquor sink deep into my neck and I sigh so deeply and gratefully. When I get up the next morning,  still quite drunk, I slip in the shower and  sprain my  foot. Coming home on crutches after going to the doctor, I find a tree has fallen on the roof of my garage apartment, like an enormous stone penis or turd, damaging the building beyond repair.  Voices in the tree’s sprawled boughs whispering, it’s over, pal …

In that same September, while he was racing his best season ever in NASCAR, it became clear that something was wrong with Tim Richmond. He was ill with something that hadn’t a name yet, but it was sapping his strength at an alarming rate. The fangs had set into him some time before – some nameless woman or man infected with AIDS – and back then there was little knowledge of the disease. And no hope.

Richmond’s fiancé Lagena Lookabill Green says Richmond infected her Sept. 10 of that year in a New York hotel. She believes that Richmond knew he had the virus when they made love after his marriage proposal. “`I grieved his death,” she said, “even though he knowingly planted his seed of death inside me.”

I stayed a night at a Holiday Inn and then move in with my mother, beginning a season of heavy drinking which has no hope, no string of pubic pearls enfolded in it, just night after night after night of blackout drinking, somehow finding my way home to begin the next day as the living dead. My last deep season of drinking.

Though ill, Richmond raced on, and had it not been for a series of mechanical problems he would probably have won the Winston Cup in 1986. That would go to Dale Earnhardt.

Tim Richmond and I were now on a weirdly parallel path of the spirit, winding down from a height we could never quite reach, for better and for ill.