Something strange happened late last night, Dear Reader. I was scrolling through my YT history, to find something I knew I’d seen, and saw something I’d never seen. A video. This video…
From it’s placement above another video. This video…
… And below this video…
… I’d managed to watch something I have never, ever watched – until I watched it whilst scrolling through my YT history late last night – sometime yesterday daytime. How on earth did I manage to do that?
Anyhoo, hears Part 2 of Cade’s mighty missive that I was remiss in not posting last week. Enjoy! ❤
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Did you know that there was a 1.5bn dollar lottery back in October, and the winner just finally came forward to claim the prize?
They were cutting it close
I think you have to claim the prize within like 120 days of the drawing, otherwise, the money gets folded back into the jackpot pool. But can you imagine what it would be like to have someone drop $1,500,000,000 into your lap? That $300,000 house around the corner that you’ve been eyeballing is suddenly possible, but you’ll never buy it. Not now anyway. I mean fuck, the Côte d’Azur is now a possibility.
Financially anyway
Dunno how open the residents of the French Riviera are to South Carolina natives invading their turf, even if they are loaded. Which speaking of, I watched a movie with a certain someone the other day, called ‘Rush’.
Rush (2013 Film)
The movie was pretty good, and I knew the name Niki Lauda from my childhood, but I’d never seen the flick. Anyway, in a lot of the footage in the film, I recognized many of the tracks. God only knows how many laps I’ve done on those tracks myself. What? You don’t believe me?
Well, I have
Gran Turismo (Series)
GT1
GT2
GT3
all tracks, all races, all series, all licenses
All gold.
BOOM BABY!!!
I rock
^Speedway (Theme From Fastlane) (Remastered)^
When Lauda got burned in the flick, all I could think about was…
Cale Yarborough
Cale Yarborough
I remember watching a race on TV when I was a kid. They showed one of the racers in the pits without his helmet, and the guy didn’t have an ear. Just a nub kinda thing that looked like a shrunken cauliflower ear, and I coulda swore that it was Cale Yarborough.
I was a kid, and it shocked the shit out of me because there were other obvious burn types of scarring, so I asked my dad, who was watching the race with me. I recall him telling me…
“Yeah, he was burned pretty bad in a crash and lost most of his ear.”
Yikes
Now, I was no stranger to crashes nor injuries because I’d been around racing since I was born. I think I recall reading in a Hot Rod Magazine article that “Big Daddy” Don Garlits had lost most or all of his toes on one foot in an accident.
Don Garlits
“Big Daddy” Don Garlits Restores Swamp Rat 13, the Dragster That Almost Killed Him
But this was a burn. A burn that resulted in a “disfigurement” that I only previously was unaware as being possible. Not that I was unfamiliar with damn near having my ear ripped off by an angry adult, nor am I any stranger to burns either, but seeing Lauda’s ear in the movie brought back memories of seeing that race as a kid and the image of some dude with his ear burned off.
I don’t know why I always associated that ear with Cale Yarborough. I have no idea if Yarborough ever lost an ear. Maybe it was Lauda, but why would I be associating a NASCAR driver with an F1 driver’s injury? God only knows how much racing I consumed as a kid via magazines, TV, and being at the track every Friday night, Saturday night, and sometimes Sunday afternoons. But what in the fuck would Niki Lauda be doing at a stock car race sometime in the 1970s? Andretti is the only F1 driver I know of that ever was around stock cars until recent times.
^Garlits horrible accident Lions Drag Strip incredible 1970 wreck^
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*You remember what, Clicky? How some video I’d never watched before, was watched yesterday whilst I was at work?*
*/lights up… Yesterday was no smoking day? Didn’t notice… /drags… Hey! Didn’t Cade’s dad smoke Winston cigarettes? …/plumes smoke…*
Library of Libraries 
The team that rescued Garlits looked like they had ordinary clothes on, not flameproof overalls etc.
Brave in the circumstances, considering the fuel was highly volotile.
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Safety was on everyone’s mind back then, but no one really knew what to do about it. Hence, it appears at lot of times that racers were a bunch of cowboys who didn’t care if they lived or died. Welp, my experiences that a lot of people in racing were larger than life, but they certainly weren’t a bunch of cowboys. Rambunctious, loud, and rough as hell? Yeah. But not on the track. Pretty much only “the money” could afford what little protections were available. The big names with the big trailers. Hell, I used to water my dad’s tires for his burnouts, and I was some scrawny 9/10 year old kid wearing a t-shirt and cut-off bluejeans shorts. I prolly didn’t weigh 75 pounds, and here I am holding back two tons of race car with an 800 hp engine in it, using only my hands. Of course, you only get sprayed with blistering hot rubber traveling at high speeds a few times before you figure out that a long-sleeve shirt and jeans are the way to go. You learn where to and where not to stand, what to do, what to not do, and when to just let the fuck go of that fucking car straining to get away from you.
But yeah, loads of volunteers back in those days because all the tracks were on shoestring budgets and couldn’t afford to pay staff. Most of the money went into the purse in order to attract names, which in turn attracted crowds so the track could make money. My dad sometimes served as an NHRA official at a lot of tracks/races because he knew engines and could spot cheaters and rulebreakers. Like being able to identify a 283 c.i. Chevy engine simply by touching the block. I think he once mentioned that he was one of the very few officials at a racetrack that actually got paid. Everyone else was volunteers.
I’ve got some pics around here somewhere of me at around age 6 wearing my dad’s gas mask from when he was driving a 1949 Fiat Topolino (similar to the above) that ran in the AA Fuel Altered class. I’ll hunt them up and post them someday.
But he had a fire-suit, full face gas-mask (which he said didn’t do much at all in protecting you from the fumes, just kept you from dying pretty much), helmet, gloves, and I think he wore work boots with some kind of fire-booties over the top of them. I think he wore something under all that, like some coveralls that he used when welding, but can’t recall. It was spartan.
^Format:B – Chunky^
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