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It's the off-season...Story time ;)
OK, so it's the off-season (like there's ever really an off-season in racin'...LOL...)...at least the tracks are quiet right now, anyways.
Let's share some stories/memories...
1) When I was about 11, we had Jim Childers driving for us. We were racing at Golden Gate on Friday nights and St. Pete on Saturday nights. We would go over to Nelson Bros. Machine Shop in Largo on Saturday mornings to switch the car setup from Tampa's 1/3 mile to Sunshine's "little" 1/4 mile. At the time, Pletcher was driving the Nelson Bros. #75. I can't recall what time of the year it was, but I believe that Nelson bought Dickie Anderson's car. It was in the shop one Saturday morning, getting ready to be lettered (yeah, at one point in time, race cars really WERE hand-lettered...with actual *paint*....LOL
). The sign guy - I can't remember what his name was right off-hand - asked me if I wanted to help letter that car. He showed me how he hand-drew the letters first in crayon/chalk to get an idea of what he wanted, then started painting. He let me letter up one side of the car 
It was the black Nelson Brothers #75 with the American flag logo and the silver numbers. I thought that was just about the coolest thing ever at the time - when that car was out on the track, I could honestly say that I helped letter that car
2) Childers was my favorite driver that we ever had in our cars. Tampa used to alternate weeks with the Super Sixes and the TBARA Sprints. One weekend, the Sprint car feature either got rained out, or the racing ran late and went all the way to the curfew time. The following week, the Super Sixes and the Sprints ran, along with the regular Late Models, Thunder Cars, and Street Stocks. Childers went out and won the Late Model feature in our car; hopped into the #48 Sprinter and won that feature; then got into the Super Six #07 and went out and won *that* feature. Three different types of cars, three different lengths of features, and three feature wins - all in one night.
3) Probably the best story is not even *at* the race track. In about 1980 - I was ten years old - we were haulin' across SR 64 to Bradenton. Me, my dad, and car owner Bob Kirk were in the truck with a (keep this in mind...LOL) *single-axle* trailer: my aunt Bette, my uncle Jerry, and my brother Scott were in Jerry's truck behind us. We're movin' at about 70mph across the highway, a two-lane road, out in the middle of nowheres. All of a sudden, the truck swerves and jerks, I sit up and look out the back window, and the trailer looks like it's falling off the truck. Dad tries to get the truck slowed up, and a wheel and hub go bouncin' past us at 65 mph +. My uncle has to swerve to miss running into the back of us, the tire and wheel bounce across the road in front of us, hits a barbed-wire fence post, and lands out in a pasture. We run off the side of the road, Dad slams on the brakes, and finally gets the thing stopped. We all get out to look at the damage; the hub apparently broke. We managed to get the race car off of the trailer, and get the tires off of the tire rack and into my uncle's truck. Jerry runs out to the pasture - with some Brahma bulls out there - to retrieve the wheel and tire. Figuring we gotta be close to the track (remember, this is 1980, pre-GPS days...LOL) Dad and I lead in the Green Monster (our nickname for the tow-truck), Bob gets in the race car, and my uncle, aunt, and brother are still in my uncle's truck. We were only about a mile from the track! We get to the pit gate, the girl at the window looks at the Green Monster, looks behind it and sees Bob in the race car, and says, without missing a beat, "Y'all forget somethin'...??" LOLOLOLOL....so anyways...we get the race car ready...and we get rained out :\ Talk about a rough weekend...Ended up getting the trailer fixed, so we go and get the trailer, bring it back to the track, load up, and head the 160 miles back home to Vero....
Let's hear some of your favorite racing - or racing-related - stories to entertain ourselves
Let's share some stories/memories...
1) When I was about 11, we had Jim Childers driving for us. We were racing at Golden Gate on Friday nights and St. Pete on Saturday nights. We would go over to Nelson Bros. Machine Shop in Largo on Saturday mornings to switch the car setup from Tampa's 1/3 mile to Sunshine's "little" 1/4 mile. At the time, Pletcher was driving the Nelson Bros. #75. I can't recall what time of the year it was, but I believe that Nelson bought Dickie Anderson's car. It was in the shop one Saturday morning, getting ready to be lettered (yeah, at one point in time, race cars really WERE hand-lettered...with actual *paint*....LOL
). The sign guy - I can't remember what his name was right off-hand - asked me if I wanted to help letter that car. He showed me how he hand-drew the letters first in crayon/chalk to get an idea of what he wanted, then started painting. He let me letter up one side of the car It was the black Nelson Brothers #75 with the American flag logo and the silver numbers. I thought that was just about the coolest thing ever at the time - when that car was out on the track, I could honestly say that I helped letter that car 2) Childers was my favorite driver that we ever had in our cars. Tampa used to alternate weeks with the Super Sixes and the TBARA Sprints. One weekend, the Sprint car feature either got rained out, or the racing ran late and went all the way to the curfew time. The following week, the Super Sixes and the Sprints ran, along with the regular Late Models, Thunder Cars, and Street Stocks. Childers went out and won the Late Model feature in our car; hopped into the #48 Sprinter and won that feature; then got into the Super Six #07 and went out and won *that* feature. Three different types of cars, three different lengths of features, and three feature wins - all in one night.
3) Probably the best story is not even *at* the race track. In about 1980 - I was ten years old - we were haulin' across SR 64 to Bradenton. Me, my dad, and car owner Bob Kirk were in the truck with a (keep this in mind...LOL) *single-axle* trailer: my aunt Bette, my uncle Jerry, and my brother Scott were in Jerry's truck behind us. We're movin' at about 70mph across the highway, a two-lane road, out in the middle of nowheres. All of a sudden, the truck swerves and jerks, I sit up and look out the back window, and the trailer looks like it's falling off the truck. Dad tries to get the truck slowed up, and a wheel and hub go bouncin' past us at 65 mph +. My uncle has to swerve to miss running into the back of us, the tire and wheel bounce across the road in front of us, hits a barbed-wire fence post, and lands out in a pasture. We run off the side of the road, Dad slams on the brakes, and finally gets the thing stopped. We all get out to look at the damage; the hub apparently broke. We managed to get the race car off of the trailer, and get the tires off of the tire rack and into my uncle's truck. Jerry runs out to the pasture - with some Brahma bulls out there - to retrieve the wheel and tire. Figuring we gotta be close to the track (remember, this is 1980, pre-GPS days...LOL) Dad and I lead in the Green Monster (our nickname for the tow-truck), Bob gets in the race car, and my uncle, aunt, and brother are still in my uncle's truck. We were only about a mile from the track! We get to the pit gate, the girl at the window looks at the Green Monster, looks behind it and sees Bob in the race car, and says, without missing a beat, "Y'all forget somethin'...??" LOLOLOLOL....so anyways...we get the race car ready...and we get rained out :\ Talk about a rough weekend...Ended up getting the trailer fixed, so we go and get the trailer, bring it back to the track, load up, and head the 160 miles back home to Vero....
Let's hear some of your favorite racing - or racing-related - stories to entertain ourselves
,so we'd buy him a pie
. As we all made the "U" to come around into parking lot,we see Bubba's truck and trailor do it last,but his race car keeps going all by it's lonely self on down 8th steet,he been a bit to happy about winning and gitting a free pizza to tie down the race car,how it stayed on tell we all got that far is a wounder.
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