Today, the last Saturday in June, I am grieving the loss (hopefully only temporary) of a family dirt track racing tradition. Were it not for the disruption of the coronavirus, we would be on our way to the Grand National Championship motorcycle dirt track race in Lima, Ohio. During our years on the racing circuit (my son’s racing career and his adjunct career as a performance motor-builder, shop owner, mechanic, and sponsor), we almost always pitted near turns one and two, and once my duties of scrubbing leathers were done I would take my stop watches, notebook, pens, water bottle, sunblock, and an occasional book or puzzle book (for the track preparation downtime) and plop myself in my lawn chair by the fence. Even after the AMA started providing lap times via transponders and computer printouts, I did not know how to watch races without timing. It becomes a programmed reaction, and I am still learning to just watch and cheer. (Actually, once the transponders took over, it became a bit of a game to see how closely I and my hand-held watches would come to matching their times. Woohoo!! Nailed it within thousandths of a second! Simple pleasures!)
Mixed with the smells of lime dust, bike exhaust, and sunblock, Lima has always had a wonderful overlay aroma of roasting chicken, so that had to be supper during the open-pit break when the race fans can come in for a tour and autographs from racers who were not too busy prepping bikes for the events to come. (The open pit after the race ended was the best bet for autographs and memorabilia – posters and the like – as the riders’ major “work” would be done for the evening.)
Due to midwestern weather patterns, Lima frequently involved a traditional Lima severe thunderstorm that would send folks scrambling for cover and prolong the evening as the track prep folks had to redouble their efforts to be sure the races could go on. The year we had purchased our first canopy for the pits, one of those nasty storms rolled through. The winds were so strong they deflated the Camel Pro inflatable Joe Camel (the cigarette company sponsored races back in the 70s) and tried to take our new canopy to Oz. Our whole pit crew was hanging onto the metal frame (along with tethering to a ballast of wheels, tires, and toolboxes) to prevent our new investment from leaving.
And there was the year I managed to catch my foot on the van doorstep and land on my twisted other foot, snapping the tendon in my ankle. Yay!! More fun and challenges for the day. Getting from our pit to the track to take times and watch the races was pretty much impossible since I was unable to put any weight on my foot. Luckily, for the short run, the ambulance folks provided ice packs, and the Camel Pro representatives loaned us their golf cart to transport me. First stop was the restroom under the grandstand. But, of course, we could not take the golf cart under the grandstand to get to the door that was open to the public. So the track folks opened a locked door directly from the pit area just so I could get closer. Still, I had to hop…and I am not coordinated at all! To my rescue came a nice, tall Harley gal who scooped me up with an arm around my waist and hopped me through to a restroom stall, commanding that folks in the long line yield right-of-way for me. Then she waited till I came out (bless her!) and hopped me back to the waiting golf cart…which wouldn’t start. The battery had died. Not to be daunted, my husband found a fellow with a wheel chair which we borrowed to get me up the hill to my lawn chair by the fence. Whew!! (Thanks to Mr. Rayburn!) The next challenge was protecting my foot when practice began. My bum foot was propped on a second lawn chair, and we had to design a barrier with a race program brochure to fend off the spray of pea gravel roosting off the tires as the racers would throw the bikes sideways close to the fence. Lima is a half-mile oval “cushion track” wherein the loose limestone is thrown to the outside during the course of racing, creating a soft deep “cushion” on the high line. (For those of you who are newbies to dirt track racing, the term “roost” is derived from “rooster tail”, the visual effect of the dirt spray behind the bikes as they get into the heavy dirt. So…as the riders would test that high line, my poor foot was being pelted with a barrage of pea gravel. Seems Davy Camlin (a great racer, unfortunately no longer with us) was the guy that year who had me jerking (owwwww…) each time he’d spray my poor beleaguered sole.
One year my son fell down at the far end of the track (turns 3 and 4). I had been sitting on top of the race van with binoculars and, despite a speedy slide down the windshield, I could not move fast enough to get to the far end of the track to see what was what. The report from my husband when he returned to the pit was that my son just had the wind knocked out of him but was otherwise okay. I guess his first words, when he saw the huge scissors wielded by the paramedics and aimed at the front of his leathers, were a breathy “Don’t cut!!!” (Racing leathers don’t come cheap, and we were not wealthy folks. We even had a sticker for the van window that boasted, “We race motorcycles, and we’re broke to prove it.”)
Ahhh, the dirt track days. I am missing Lima right now (and it’s probably gonna storm today….)