Posted on 09/03/2004 5:28:14 AM PDT by aomagrat
DARLINGTON — Gates were locked with the exception of one for the tour bus barely doing enough business to pay for the gas. Officials were taking down signs that could be blown away by Hurricane Frances instead of putting up signs welcoming fans.
No merchandise haulers lined the streets. No campers fill the front and back yards of homes and businesses.
The rows of computers in the ticket office sat unmanned. And a lone person sat behind one of the nine desks where normally 20 people battle for room to work.
The phones were quiet.
The hustle and bustle associated with Darlington Raceway and this community on Labor Day weekend since NASCAR’s first superspeedway race was held here in 1950 has moved to California.
The only engine sounds reverberating through these once hallowed grounds the next couple of days will be that of the trucks and cars passing along Highway 151 just outside the grandstands behind the back straightaway.
“It’s kind of weird coming through here with no people,” said Sheri Black as she and her two daughters exited the tour bus after a ride around the 1.366-mile track.
From the age of 5 until 15, Black came to Darlington, along with her parents, every Labor Day weekend for the Southern 500. They stayed at a hotel in nearby South of the Border and drove into town two or three times for festivities.
Black tried to share that experience with her daughters, 13-year-old Christa and 11-year-old Courtney, earlier this week when she took a side trip to the track while traveling from Chesapeake, Va., to Jacksonville, Fla.
It was far from the experience she remembered.
“It’s pretty sad,” said Black, now 43.
Sad doesn’t begin to describe the feeling many in this town are experiencing. For some there is the same sense of loss one experiences after the death of a loved one.
While they are glad NASCAR will be here in November for the last running of the Southern 500 and back in May for a new date on the Saturday night before Mother’s Day, that doesn’t replace the Labor Day weekend tradition embedded in their souls.
“It was like Christmas Eve,” said Cathy Elliott, the track’s director of public relations. “Now it’s like Dec. 1 — just an ordinary day on what used to be an extraordinary time.”
The Southern 500 on Labor Day weekend was NASCAR’s oldest tradition, older than the Daytona 500 or the night races at Bristol. For 53 years, legends such as Richard Petty, Cale Yarborough and David Pearson loaded their haulers and headed to South Carolina’s Pee Dee region.
But when NASCAR announced plans for 2004 realignment, the race had been moved to the second weekend in November. It was done away with completely on the 2005 schedule that has one race date at Darlington.
There are no guarantees that race will be on the schedule in 2006.
“I don’t know where to start,” Travis Graham said as he ate a hamburger steak smothered in onions at the Speedway Grille, a stone’s throw from the track. “I don’t like what’s happening, but we don’t have any control over it.”
NASCAR’s decision to tinker with tradition was twofold. Going to California Speedway put it in a 92,000-seat facility in the country’s largest market for a prime-time race on a weekend normally dominated by football.
It also sent a message that Darlington, which didn’t have lights at the time, had better find a way to sell its 60,000 seats in a saturated market or suffer the same fate as North Wilkesboro and Rockingham, which have been taken off the schedule.
“I personally don’t think there’ll be another race here after Mother’s Day,” Graham said. “I personally think it’s too late.”
Track vice president Mack Josey, who grew up in Darlington, isn’t quite so pessimistic. While he feels the sense of loss on Labor Day weekend, he’s excited about the November race that will be the next-to-last event in the first-ever “Chase for the Championship.”
He’s even more excited about going under the lights next year.
“The community feels a sense of loss,” Josey said. “But we’re going to translate that loss into November this year and start a new tradition in May of 2005.
“Yes, it’s a little different now, a lot quieter. But tradition moves on.”
BLACK BUGS AND TRADITION
Fran Weatherford leaned over the counter at the Express Mart, where Turns 3 and 4 at the track are framed through the front window.
“Is this the week they would have raced?” she asked.
Not everybody in town marked this on the calendar as the first Labor Day weekend the track sat quiet. Not many of the drivers will think about it today in California as they qualify for Sunday’s race.
“I’m not into tradition,” Rusty Wallace said. “I’m into cool weather. I don’t like the traditional (stuff). Christmas, that needs to stay. Thanksgiving, that needs to stay. Easter, that needs to stay. Anything else is up for grabs.”
Wallace never has been a big fan of the “Track Too Tough To Tame.” It has more to do with the weather normally associated with the Southern 500 than the fact he has never won here.
“That place is miserable, man,” he said. “It’s always so hot down there and sticky and gummy, and those little black bugs are everywhere. I’d rather take a (butt)-whooping than have to go there during the day.”
There’s no sense of loss for Michael Waltrip, either.
“It doesn’t bother me any,” he said. “I’m going to be at a racetrack, whether it’s at Darlington or California. It might be different for some, but to me it’s another race weekend.”
Petty said if he got sentimental about losing the Labor Day race at Darlington, then he would have to get sentimental about losing races at the old Charlotte fairgrounds and the old dirt track in Spartanburg.
“When we get to California, we won’t even think about Darlington,” he said.
But not all drivers like the change.
“The tradition always has been to go to Darlington on Labor Day, and I still think it’s a mistake not being there on Labor Day,” Sterling Marlin said. “They’ve been doing it since 1950. I’d run it on Saturday night if they wanted to keep it that weekend with the lights up.”
Points leader Jeff Gordon, who helped unveil the new lights last week, agreed.
“I’m hoping that one day we get it back there on Labor Day,” he said. “But what is going to be a lot stranger (than not being there on Labor Day) is this race under the lights. That place definitely is going to be a lot different.”
A GHOST TOWN
Gail and Roy Neff of Yorktown, Va., like Black and her daughters, had just finished touring the track. Their next stop was the museum, which hadn’t had a visitor in more than an hour.
“It’s like a ghost town,” Gail said.
The museum typically has thousands of visitors during Labor Day weekend. The numbers during a non-race week like this are in the hundreds.
“It affects the whole town something terrible,” said 65-year-old Wesley McKnight as he worked in his body shop across the street from the track. “Some need the money they make this weekend to survive the year.”
McKnight isn’t one of those. He always shut down his business the week before Labor Day because customers couldn’t get to his shop through all the campers.
Because he accepted donations instead of charging rent, he only made enough money to “pay the light bill.”
“But the people that have been coming for 30 years are upset,” McKnight said. “Some say they’re still going to come in November. Some say they’re not coming back at all.”
The economic impact on the region — $50 million for two races, according to a 2002 survey by the University of South Carolina Department of Sport and Entertainment Management — will not be felt until next year, when the track plays host to only one race.
The biggest impact now is emotional.
“Now that it is Labor Day weekend it has suddenly struck everybody, the beer distributors, the (soft drink) distributors and the guy who brings the copy machines that we’re not actually racing this weekend,” Elliott said.
That’s not all bad. Myrtle Beach Speedway plans to fill the void left by Darlington. The track has expanded its normal Labor Day weekend program tonight through Sunday and is calling it the Carolina Labor Day 500.
“We’re trying to provide a fix for everybody,” said Bill Hennezy, the track general manager.
Elliott is busy preparing for the November weekend that will have a huge bearing on who wins the Nextel Cup championship. Media credential requests are up, as are ticket sales.
Elliott expects the track attendance record, which was set last Labor Day weekend, will be broken.
Plans are in the works to showcase the track’s Labor Day tradition during pre-race activities. Some traditions, such as the Southern 500 parade, will not be the same. It will be combined with the Darlington Christmas Parade on Saturday, Nov. 13.
“We’ll have Santa Claus waving the checkered flag,” Elliott said with a laugh.
But it will not feel like Christmas, at least not the way it has on Labor Day weekend the past 53 years.
“It’s really quiet out there,” Elliott said. “Right now we’re going through that feeling of waiting for something to happen. Unfortunately, we have to wait for 10 more weeks before it does.”
It's a very sad thing.
Do any of y'all think this is worthy of pasting into this weeks thread?
I can't stand the thought of the Labor day race on CA.
NASCAR has forgotten the fans who made them what they are today. Its all about money!
no
"When it comes to pure stock car racing, the Southern 500 is our heart," Kyle Petty said. "That is our tradition. Yeah, the dirt tracks and the old bullrings and all of those kinds of things were important, but Darlington is where we started. That's where superspeedway racing started.
"You had race winners at Hickory [N.C.] Speedway, but you had stars winning races at Darlington. Good race car drivers won on the bullrings - great race car drivers won the Southern 500."
Instead, the Nextel Cup Series will head to California Speedway this Sunday night for the Pop Secret 500 at a bland, two-mile, cookie-cutter track.
The circuit just raced at Michigan two weeks ago at a track almost identical to California. The drivers will say the tracks are different, but the nap-inducing racing lets fans know the tracks are the same. Darlington is a different beast from anyplace else.
California and Michigan are known for terms such as "aero push," "driver's tracks," and "fuel-mileage races." Darlington is known for being "Too Tough to Tame," and "Darlington stripes."
Take your pick, but Darlington has a mystique and history that should never have been pried away from its traditional date.
NASCAR suits can talk all they want about taking their sport to new markets, but when they forget that the racing itself is what sells tickets and makes the sport more popular - not the facilities - that spells trouble.
Nobody has ever explained why a ho-hum race in California is more attractive to TV executives than a thrilling race at Darlington. Does the TV viewer really care where the event is taking place? If Darlington is more exciting, then it will pull in better ratings. .......................................................
It also will diminish the memories of David Pearson racing his way to 10 victories at Darlington, two more than the late Dale Earnhardt. Then there is Jeff Gordon, who won an unprecedented four straight Southern 500s from 1995-98.
Slouches do not back into Southern 500 victories. The list of winners includes Gordon, Earnhardt, Pearson, Darrell Waltrip, Bill Elliott, Harry Gant and Cale Yarborough.
These are all drivers who maintained their focus on the narrow track for more than four hours on hot and humid afternoons, overcoming walls that have been said to reach out and swat at the cars.
Darlington is the type of track that makes heroes out of its conquering drivers. At California, they barely break a sweat.
"As hot as it could get there and as miserable as the weather could be, Darlington is special," Petty said. "The Southern 500 is special.
"While I am grateful I won't see mosquitoes big enough to pick somebody up and carry them off, I will still miss the Southern 500."
As will nearly every other racing fan who has ever had a Labor Day picnic and listened intently on the radio, waiting to find out who that year's Southern 500 hero would be.
The Southern California 500. ... Nah, it just is not the same.
Sure.. Thanks!
It's already been discussed earlier in the thread.
For most of us that have followed the WINSTON CUP Nascar races for years, nothing can replace them.
IMHO there is no other kind of racing that gives you the thrill of horsepower and speed like the Cup cars. Go stand by the fence at any track as they pass you at 150-200 mph, it will take your breath away.
Since Nextel took over, things have rapidly gone downhill, there were rumors earlier in the year that they would like to bail out already........so only time will tell.
We can only hope.
Daytona is on my list of races to see!!
How hard is it to get tickets?
I remember going to Darlington over 30 years ago. I remember the covered grandstand. I remember standing with my face and fingers in the chicken wire that separated the grandstand from the frontstretch, race cars roaring by just inches from my nose. I remember the sand and rubber pieces stinging my face. I remember Richard Petty, David Pearson, Cale Yarborough, Bobby and Donnie Allison, Buddy Baker, Bennie Parsons...
Oh why has na$car forsaken us?
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I can't tell you how many races I saw from the infield - because of my beer intake...
Did you see Earnhardt there?
It's really sad that Nascar forget where they started.
The Lady In Black....Too tough to tame!! And, the Darlington stripes.
It's a real shame.
No, He came along later, after I was grown up and in the Navy.
Too sad. I met my husband in April, 1975 at the Rebel 500 (how's that for a non-PC name?). Last spring we took 2 of our grandkids to the track and museum.
We quit going to NASCAR races about 10-15 years ago--the suits have taken over and they're doing their best to ruin it. Now we follow dirt super late model racing--no suits to be found at those races!
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