Hawaiian punch.
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Somehow I still have with me this old coffee-table
book about the history of stock car racing. And
it's full of old pictures of cars and drivers and
races from long ago, and a lot of text to read.
There is this one picture that I have always loved
the most for some reason. It is a picture of a
red car taking a pit-stop, with the crew gassing
it up and changing tires. The caption says it's
from 1979, Donnie Allison at the Daytona 500. And
of course the race car like most from those days
looks like a barely modified big 'ol Pontiac or
something. But it's the crew that gets my
attention. When I used to watch pro-level racing,
crews all wore full helmets and padded fireproof
safety suits. They probably work out 5 days a
week to keep in peak shape. They looked
astronauts out there, running around the car. But
in this old picture it's like just a bunch of guys
wearing short-sleeve shirts, and if you look close
you see one's wearing cowboy boots and the other
moccasins. And then there's the safety guy in the
back hanging around with what looks like an
unbuttoned raincoat and leather dress
shoes. There's something about that picture that's
different from most others in the book. There's
this energy in how it's not entirely centered on
car or driver, but rather it captures the whole
crew candidly, caught in a focused moment of
urgency, and yet in the way of danger still so
casual-looking compared to modern safety
standards. And I just marvel at that for some
reason.
