Pardon me for another wave of nostalgia; but I find a level of comfort in moments revisited.  How about the pre-ESPN era of television sports that opened every Saturday afternoon?  Jim McKay’s poetic phrases overlapped dramatic music which blared from our 19 inch black and white TV:  

“Spanning the globe to bring you the constant variety of sport; the thrill of victory, and the agony of defeat.  The human drama of athletic competition.  This is ABC’s Wide World of Sports!”       

This is how the public north of the Mason/Dixon line learned about something called NASCAR.  Wide World of Sports would film some of the big races and show them on tape delay.  The Daytona 500 was no exception.  So reporter Chris Economaki talked about Buddy Baker,  David Pearson, Cale Yarborough, and of course the King himself.  This one never played Vegas or starred with Ann Margaret, but Richard Petty merely won The Great American Race seven times.  

In those days, even the Daytona 500 was shown on tape delay on the following Saturday afternoon.  But that mattered little to a seven year old boy who sat glued to our little TV watching faint monochromatic images of cars that looked like Dad’s roaring around an asphalt jungle at speeds approaching 200 miles an hour.  I imagined myself behind the wheel of one of those Detroit monsters racing for the checkered flag! 

Something happened in the 1970’s.  The Pittsburgh Pirates, Steelers and Penguins stole my sports soul during adolescence.  But I found NASCAR years later,  like a reunion with a lost love. 

In 1996, I started a job with WESH-TV in Orlando, and less than a month into this career move, I scored press credentials to the Daytona 500.   I was awestruck by the sea of humanity which descended on The World Center of Racing in the wee hours of a chilly Sunday morning.  I wandered aimlessly through the winding roads of the infield-absorbing the frantic activity that assaulted the senses.   Seats in the upper level of the grandstand were laid out in a black and white pattern resmembling a checkered flag contrasted with a cold blue sky illumintaed by the Florida sun.  It was quite a different look from those black and white filmed images beamed through our little RCA nearly 30 years before.

Soon the black and white seats would be filled, and the chaos of cars, silently rolling through the pit area, accented by runs of brightly colored crewman pulling huge fuel cans,  along with various mechanical gadgetry would give way to a serious sense of order.  Forty-three cars lined up on pit road, and shortly after the command to start your engines reverberated through this city of 200,000, the ground shook with a gasoline-infused grumble,  like forty-three tigers looking for their next meal. 

I stood close to the track on the roof of a small pump house outside turn two with a gaggle of magazine and newspaper photographers.  Having the day off, I was free from the contraints of covering this event for the days newscasts.   So I munched on a roast beef sub, as the pace laps brought the simmering noise closer to my perch.

Then, off in the distance, amidst a wave of cheer from the NASCAR faithful, that mechanical rumble exploded full throttle.  The race was on!  The photographers nearby anticipated their moves as the decibel level increased, and brought the cars into full view.  My feet tingled as the roof the old pump house felt like the floor of a West Coast building during an earthquake.  The bright colors adorned with corporate logos stamped with bold numbers flashed before my eyes as my senses struggled to keep pace with the action before me. The cars also brought  full assault on both eardrums.  Animal screams of horsepower pieced my head  as the field shot down the backstretch and away from view.   The silence was fleeting, at best.  For this Doppler effect on steroids repeated in mere seconds.  I was hooked.

It wasn’t long before a flash of fear took over, if only for a few seconds.  John Andretti slammed the backstretch wall out of turn two and careened into the wall right in front the pump house.  It was a startling sight, that brought a hush among our group, but Andretti emerged in one piece with only a few bumps and bruises.  

It came down to a duel between Ford and Chevy, between the great Dale Earnhardt, who at this point never won the Daytona 500, (he finally snapped that streak on his 20th try two years later) and Dale Jarrett who was going for his second 500 win.  Unfortunately, my position restricted my sight of the last lap pass Jarrett made on Earnhardt’s legendary black Mr. Goodwrench machine.  But this experience brought me back to NASCAR.  I’ve been to nine 500’s since, and now enjoy the high definition roar provided by Fox43.  A long drive that began with a spectator’s taste of “the thrill of victory, and the agony of defeat.”