In the Blink of an Eye (3 page)

CHAPTER 8
MEETING DALE

W
e were in Darlington, South Carolina, in 1986. The Darlington Raceway was tough. This track even had nicknames: “Too Tough to Tame” and the “Lady in Black.”

Late in the going, Dale Earnhardt, the Man in Black, was leading the Southern 500. Those two made a pretty good pair. If anyone could tame her, it would have been Dale. I was having a pretty good run for a rookie that day, as long as you didn’t compare my rookie season to Dale’s.

I was running up in the top ten with just twenty or thirty laps to go in the 367-lap, 500-mile race. It was hot, I was tired, the end was near, and I was glad. I came off turn two, swung out to the wall, and made my way down the backstretch for what seemed like about the thousandth time.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, Dale was right beside me, looking over and pointing his finger at me. Back then you could totally see into another guy’s car, and I could see Dale wasn’t happy. I had cut him off coming out of turn two. Dale had cut me a break and didn’t wipe me out. He could probably tell by the sloppy way I was driving that I wasn’t exactly as focused in the final laps as I should have been.

I don’t know if you’ve ever been to Darlington in September. But if you have, you know it gets a little toasty there. I’d had about all the racing I wanted for the day. I didn’t know Dale that well yet. But I knew the Intimidator, the driver who had just pointed his finger at me and driven off toward turn three.

I could imagine him saying: “You don’t know how lucky you are, boy. I coulda just busted your butt. Keep your shit together. These races are five hundred miles. This ain’t one of those sissy-ass Dash races. This is the big time.”

I met Dale Earnhardt
when I first showed up in 1983. By then, Dale was already a giant personality and a NASCAR champion. In the racing world, most everybody lived in awe of Dale, including me. We definitely didn’t become instant friends or anything. Like a lot of people, he probably only knew who I was because of Darrell. Dale and Darrell didn’t like each other too much. That was obvious. But I figured Dale knew Darrell hadn’t exactly gone out of his way to help me get started, yet somehow there I was, making my way through the lower divisions of NASCAR. He probably appreciated that.

Dale grew up in the North Carolina town of Kannapolis. Racing was in his blood. His dad, Ralph Earnhardt, was one of the best short-track drivers around, although he never made it in racing’s big time. Dale’s father did what he could to discourage his son’s racing dreams, just as mine had. But Mr. Earnhardt’s efforts failed as miserably as Mr. Waltrip’s had. Maybe more so. Ralph worried that if Dale didn’t complete his education he’d be stuck in one of the cotton mills around Kannapolis. But Dale dropped out of school when he was sixteen to pursue racing, disappointing his dad badly.

Dale told me his dad was tough on him. He wasn’t always patient or supportive. Ralph died of a heart attack in 1973, when Dale was twenty-two. The fact that he had dropped out of high school and let his dad down haunted Dale. I think it pushed him to prove himself early, which he got busy doing at the local short tracks.

And Ralph’s boy, he could drive! Whether on dirt or asphalt, he would win.

In his rookie NASCAR season of 1979, Dale won the race at Bristol, captured four poles, had eleven top-five finishes and seventeen in the top ten. He finished seventh in points despite missing four races because of a broken collarbone.

When I said not to compare my rookie season to Dale’s, these numbers are the reason why. My stat columns were full of zeroes. No wins. No poles. No top fives. No top tens. In my defense, most rookies’ results look more like mine than Dale’s.

But Dale was special. If he hadn’t gotten hurt in his rookie season, he would have been a contender for the championship. He proved that the next year. Right off the bat at Daytona, Dale won the Busch Clash, a special event for all the pole winners from the previous season. Then he took Atlanta, Bristol, Nashville, Martinsville, and Charlotte, winning his first of seven Winston Cup championships. Dale’s the only driver ever to follow up Rookie of the Year with the Cup championship.

Although I was around from ’83 on and had met Dale’s glare eye-to-eye on the track, he and I didn’t speak much, if at all, until ’86. That was my rookie season in Cup and the year that Dale won his second championship.

The championship banquet in those days was held in the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel’s Grand Ballroom in New York City. NASCAR would invite all the drivers in the top twenty in points to join in honoring the championship team. I finished nineteenth in the standings that year and made my first trip to the Big Apple. And what did I do when I got to town? Went straight to my room and got room service. And watched TV. I had a lot to learn about that big city. The next night, Dale and his wife, Teresa, started a tradition that carried on for many years. They held a gathering for some of the race-car drivers and owners and their wives in their suite, the presidential suite. Drinks were served. And it sometimes turned into lots of drinks. There were hors d’oeuvres too. The champion had a lot of responsibilities during that week in New York. We all thought it was very gracious of Dale and Teresa to spend some time with Dale’s peers.

And they did it in their hotel room, just like I had the night before. More or less.

Dale was one of those people who seemed at home wherever he was, at the racetrack or in a fancy hotel suite. Just over six feet tall in his trademark Wrangler jeans, gargoyle sunglasses, and cowboy boots, no one pulled off the rough-and-tough look at the track better than Dale did. The first thing you’d notice was those sunglasses and his mustache. He looked like a cowboy who might ride bulls—or fight them. But drop him in New York City in a sport coat and loafers and Dale looked like he could run a corporate board meeting. And he could. He was a very smart man.

At those parties in New York, we had a few pretty interesting conversations. The talk would mostly be racing stories, maybe about what had happened in the course of the season. But my favorite part was when Dale would tell stories about his dirt-track racing days. Wrecking. Winning. And fighting. Then having a few celebratory beers. They’d celebrate the wins. Both wins: the race and the fight. That seemed to be the usual order.

The best way to describe Dale back then was plainspoken. Fifteen years and seven championships later, you’d still describe him the same way. Unadorned. Direct. Frank. Even if you barely knew him, you never had much doubt what Dale Earnhardt thought.

Being with Dale in New York City was an education. Over the years, he taught me where to go for a fine dinner when I finally ventured out of the hotel. We got to hanging out more and more up there. In New York City, he was loose. But not at the track. There, he was the Intimidator. Everyone knew he was that way in the car. He was the same in the pit and around the garage. He always looked pissed off to me. I just steered clear of him. I knew he didn’t much like my brother back then, and whatever Darrell had done, I was pretty sure that made me guilty by association. They eventually got over their differences. Darrell even drove a few races for Dale.

Over time, I learned that Dale had a quieter, gentler side. It would come out when we were fishing or spending time together with our families. The people who knew Dale best, a small group I would eventually become part of—we saw a far more complex person than the driver most fans were aware of, a man capable of doing just about anything.

But it was the tough Dale—the death-defying Dale—that most people focused on. That was the one I first got to know.

He picked up his
nickname,
the Intimidator, in 1987 after a battle with Bill Elliott near the end of the Winston, the high-stakes NASCAR All-Star race. Dale then became the “Man in Black” after GM Goodwrench became his sponsor and the #3 car got a fresh, fittingly intimidating black paint scheme.

The nicknames certainly fit Dale’s driving style. He was aggressive, unwavering, and fearless—and maybe a little bit nuts. When he climbed behind the wheel of a race car, Dale didn’t think of death. He thought of winning. Looking back at some of Dale’s crashes, it’s hard to see how he got through as many of them as he did.

Like in July 1996 in Talladega. He and Ernie Irvan got together, setting off a crazy crash that sent Dale head-on into the outside at two hundred miles an hour. Dale’s car flipped and slid through traffic across the track. His car was hit in the roof and on the windshield. It didn’t look like there was any way anyone could survive that. But Dale climbed right out of the car and waved at the crowd.

In fact, he showed up the next week in Indianapolis and qualified his car. At the first pit stop, a broken collarbone forced him to hand off the wheel to Mike Skinner, one of his Richard Childress Racing teammates. The crash at Talladega didn’t bring him to tears. But handing off his car at Indy certainly did. Dale said: “It was the hardest thing I ever had to do.”

Then, in true Dale Earnhardt style, the next week he was back in the seat driving his car to the pole at Watkins Glen. That spawned a T-shirt fans bought by the thousands. On the shirt was a picture of Dale’s face. The caption read: “It Hurts So Good.”

CHAPTER 10
GETTING FRIENDLY

B
ack in North Carolina, I’d been spending more and more time around Dale.

I would stop by the Busch Series shop behind his house in Mooresville. His guys would be working on the cars, and I’d hang out with them, just trying to be one of the boys. Dale’s Busch Series cars were the black #3 Goodwrench Chevys just like he raced in Cup on Sundays. The Busch Series cars were Dale’s though. He was the owner. And as an owner, he was very hands-on.

Some of the time when I walked into his shop, I’d see Dale’s feet hanging out from underneath a car. He’d be installing a transmission or changing a gear or whatever he might be doing up under there. But when the work was done—that was my favorite part. We might have a beer or two and tell racing stories.

The talk would generally go from racing to deer hunting or something that involved shooting a gun or a bow and arrow. That talk would then lead to target practice. Those were the first times I’d ever shot a gun. I could tell that target practice helped Dale relax. While we were shooting one night, I asked Dale if he’d let me drive his Busch car sometime.

“Darrell let me drive his, and I won,” I told him.

I didn’t really need to add the “I won.” All I needed to say was, “Darrell let me drive his.” Dale didn’t want Darrell to have anything up on him.

“Yeah,” he said. “You can drive it at Rockingham. And I’ll pay you half of what you win.”

There. It had happened again. Me getting the answer I was looking for. This was getting fun.

“Deal,” I said. “Me and the black Goodwrench car.” How cool would that be?

Half was about fifty percent, I figured. That was way more than the ten percent Darrell had offered up.

I couldn’t wait to find Darrell and tell him about my deal with Dale. I was going to be driving for Dale Earnhardt. Not only was I going to be driving for him, but he was going to be paying me half. No more of this ten-percent B.S.

When I found Darrell, I told him, “I don’t think you’re aware of this, but I’m gonna be driving for Dale Earnhardt. And by the way, he’s gonna be paying me fifty percent of the winnings. Not bad, huh?”

Darrell put his arm around me. “Little brother,” he said, “when you get your check from Dale, you let me know which one was more—the one for a thousand dollars I gave you or the one you get from Earnhardt.”

I raced hard for Dale at Rockingham that day. But I finished seventh. Seventh place in a Busch Series race in Rockingham, North Carolina, in 1989 paid $1,025. About a week later, my check from Dale showed up. Five hundred and thirteen dollars. Well, lookie there. He rounded up. I got a little more than 50 percent. But it still came up well short of the $1,000 Darrell had paid.

Big Brother was right. Darn it.

What I wouldn’t give to still have Dale’s check today!

That Rockingham race was my first opportunity to drive Dale’s car. We tried to work it out for me to drive his car some more. And I actually did in 1994 up in Dover, Delaware, the track where I’d gotten my first Busch win driving for Darrell. But sponsor and team conflicts—again!—got in the way.

Even though I wasn’t racing for him, Dale and I continued to develop something even more important: our friendship.

First it was just me, Dale, and the boys, shooting targets and racing cars. But then I started dating a girl named Buffy. Elizabeth Arrington “Buffy” Franks was the girl of my dreams, beautiful, sweet, and smart. She was a senior at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and a part-time waitress at the Sandwich Construction Company, a local restaurant where a bunch of us racing guys all hung out. What I liked most about her was she wouldn’t give me the time of day.

I was one of many racer guys competing to be in her company. She wasn’t falling for me or for any of my lame friends—and our stupid boilerplate pickup lines. Lines like, “Does your heinie hurt? ’Cause it’s killing me.” Or, “Can I have your phone number? I lost mine.”

Despite my lameness, I caught a break. When Buffy graduated from college, she got a job working at an apparel company that sold some of the drivers’ licensed souvenirs. The company’s star driver? Dale Earnhardt.

I had talked Dale into letting me drive his race car. That worked out pretty well. Now I wanted Dale to talk Buffy into going out with me.

Dale stepped up.

“He ain’t that bad,” Dale told her when he got her alone. “I hesitate to say this, but he’s actually kinda smart.”

“Like book-smart?” she asked.

“No way,” Dale told her. “The people-smart kind. Definitely smart enough to know a good girl when he sees one.”

Somehow, it must have worked.

It was 1992 when we started dating. In early 1993 I decided it was time to pop the question. We had been dating for more than six months, and we were getting along great. It was a beautiful Wednesday in April. I was lying on the couch in my condo on Lake Norman, staring out the window, watching a couple of boats float by.

The phone rang. It was my old buddy Mercer. He was in town and wanted to golf. He said, “It’s beautiful out. Let’s go hit ’em.”

“Let me call you right back on that one, Merce,” I told him.

I hung up and deliberated this decision.

Here were my options, as I saw them that day. Behind door number one: marry Buffy. I was in love with her, and I wanted to marry her. Marriage was a little scary to me, but if I was going to marry her, it was time. I needed to buy a ring and do it.

Door number two: golf with Mercer and goof off the rest of the day and maybe the rest of my life. As tempting as door number two was, I chose door number one. I called Mercer back. I told him I couldn’t go golfing. I damn sure didn’t tell him why, just that I couldn’t. I got up off the couch and drove to Hayes Jewelers. The owner, Bruce Hayes, was a friend of Dale’s. Any time I needed jewelry, he always gave me a deal.

The races that April weekend were in Bristol, Tennessee. The weather was crappy that Thursday night. So Buffy and I drove up to Bristol instead of flying. That night, Alan Kulwicki, 1992 NASCAR Winston Cup champion, died in a plane crash while trying to land at the foggy Tri-Cities Airport. Alan and I had started in NASCAR together. In 1986 we were both rookies. He won Rookie of the Year honors. I was second. Alan and I weren’t friends, but we had raced together and hung around in some of the same places. I don’t think we had ever had a conversation about anything significant, but his death had a real effect on me. I appreciated that the guy I had raced for Rookie of the Year honors had become a champion so quickly.

Despite Alan’s death, the races had to go on. They always do. The Busch Series race was the first event after the tragedy. I won the race that day and in his honor did what Alan called his “Polish victory lap.” Any time Alan would win a race—no one had ever done this before—he would take a victory lap in the opposite direction. That celebration was Alan’s way of poking fun at his culture.

So that day, when I drove to Victory Lane, I did a backward lap and dedicated it to Alan. While I was being interviewed on live TV with Buffy by my side, I asked her to marry me.

ESPN commentator and former race-car driver Benny Parsons was conducting the interview.

“Are you serious, Mike?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I told him. “I got the ring in the truck.”

I believe Jeff Foxworthy has a line about that exact situation. “If you ask someone to marry you, but you forgot your ring in the truck, you might be a redneck.”

I actually did that.

Buffy and I were married that November. The hours that Dale and I hung out in the Busch shop grew into us and our wives doing even more together. The four of us would go down to the Bahamas and spend time on the Earnhardts’ boat. We would fish all day and then eat dinner together at night. Dale and Teresa’s little girl, Taylor Nicole, often came with us. Sometimes, my daughter Caitlin, who was about Taylor’s age, would come too. It wasn’t much longer until Buffy and I had Macy. She loved the Bahamas too. When the season was finally done, Dale, Teresa, Buffy, and I would fly up to New York. We’d leave the kids at home and enjoy the big-city nightlife.

I kept going by Dale’s shop just to shoot the bull with him—and sometimes targets too. It’s funny though: Despite my prowess hitting targets, Dale never once asked me to go hunting with him. I always got to go fishing on the boat though. I couldn’t figure out why I didn’t get to go hunting too. I came up with two possible explanations. Either he didn’t like the thought of me walking beside him carrying a loaded gun, or he couldn’t figure out a way to convince Buffy to wear a bikini in the woods.

I liked being on the boat better anyway. So who cares?

As we spent more time together, our conversations kept getting deeper. Instead of talking about fights at the dirt track, which we still sometimes did, we talked more about kids and family and losing loved ones. We talked about the things we cared about.

When we would talk about me and racing, Dale always said the same thing: “You can win in Cup,” he’d tell me. “I know you can. I can make you a winner. Maybe one day you’ll drive for me.”

“I hope so,” I told him.

I would do anything for that chance. I’d do anything to prove him right.