From
Rolling Stones (issue #873) July 5th 2001
Dale Earnhardt Sr was a man of few words, gruff and
slow to trust.
Before
he was killed on the track at the Daytona 500 in
February, he was
considered
one of the best race-car drivers that ever lived.
Quite a bit has been
said
about Dale Sr by many people. Tributes by the dozen
have sprouted up,
with
Earnhardt's Number 3 set in roses in the infield at
tracks around the
country and trios of doves released before races.
This is the first
time
his twenty-six-year-old son, Dale Jr, a rising NASCAR
star, has talked
at
length about his feelings toward his father since his
death.
Dale Sr had a reckless dirt-track style marked by
banging and bumping
his
way to the front, as well as an almost supernatural
ability to find
the air
ahead of him. He was as successful as Jordan, as
powerful as Shaq, and
as
controversial as Rodman. He won the Rookie of the
Year title in 1979,
the
season championship the next year, six more during the
next 13 years
and
seventy-six races in total. He painted his Number 3
Chevy black and
became
known as the Man In Black, Big E, the Intimidator,
Ironhead, and fans
loved
him or hated him - a drama that helped infuse the
sport with a new
level of
passion. He became one of its biggest draws and
helped shepherd NASCAR
into
its modern, multi-million dollar, network-television
era as he parlayed
his
own image into a mulitmillion-dollar enterprise. At
his death, Dale
Earnhardt Inc, a 250 -person company, owned an auto
dealership, five
planes,
one helicopter, thousands of acres of real estate, a
seat on the New
York
Stock Exchange, four chicken houses under contract to
Perdue and home
to
some 36,000 chickens, and a single-A minor league
baseball team in
North
Carolina called the Kannapolis Intimidators.
Dale Earnhardt Jr didn't see his father alot while
this empire was
being
built. "When I was a little kid, there was not alot
of hangin' out and
becomin' buddies, " he says. As Jr grew up, there
were personality
clashes.
Where Senior was driven and serious, Junior was a
slacker. Senior
awoke
with the sun; Junior slept till noon. Senior loved
country music and
deer
hunting; Junior preferred PlayStation, the Internet,
hip-hop and rock &
roll. Senior criticized him often and worried openly
about his future:
"When I was eighteen, he said, 'Junior, what I worry
about is if I
leave the
world today, will you make it on your own? I know
Kelley [his older
sister]
would make it, because she's workin' already, but I
don't know about
you.'"
In 2000, when Junior began racing in the Winston Cup
circuit along
side his
father, their relationship changed. "Immediately,
when I started
driving
race cars, that's when we started to relate as
adults," he says. In
the
seventh race of the season, the DirecTV 500 at Texas
Motor Speedway in
Fort
Worth, Junior took his first Winston Cup victory.
After the race,
Senior
ran to his son's car. "He didn't say he loved me
often, but he said it
as
soon as he got to the car in Texas. 'Good job, I love
you. Get the
fuck
out of this car.' Our relationship was primo from
then on out. We
talked
like equals almost. We had conversations that were a
whole lot fuckin'
cooler."
Junior won two more races last year, and as the world
took note of the
hot
young driver, he became a man in his father's eyes.
"He felt content
with
what I was doin' with my life," Junior says. "'OK,
you've gotten to a
point
where you can take care of yourself. I'm done trying
to direct you,
and now
I'm just going to be here for you.'"
On February 18th, father and son were at the Daytona
500, the first
and
grandest stock car race of the year. Before the race
they went to the
drivers' meeting where all drivers convene to hear
special instructions
and
a group prayer. The Earnhardts sat together in the
front row, as they
often
did. There is great symbolism in where each driver
sits in the
meeting, and
though Junior's sophomore status should've put him
toward the back,
Senior
often saved a seat for him in the front - a way of
saying that Junior
would
soon be one of the leading drivers. After the
meeting, Senior threw
his arm
over Junior's shoulders, and they walked out together.
"He said the
typical
kinda stuff that he would say," Junior says of that
final conversation.
"That I had a car that was capable of winning if I
just stayed out of
trouble. 'Be careful.' Things like that. Gave me a
hug."
During races, Senior would occasionally give Junior
little hand
signals,
telling him to watch out or complementing him on a
nice maneuver. With
only
twenty-six laps to go in this Daytona 500, there was a
nineteen-car
pileup
that sent driver Tony Stewart flying in the air. The
cars that had
survived
the crash -including those of both Junior and Senior-
stopped on the
track
while a crew cleared away pieces of car. During the
red flag, Senior
silently praised Junior for avoiding the melee. "He
pulled beside me
and
was like, 'Good job makin' it out of there,'" Junior
says. "That was
the
last bit of communication me and him had."
Once the racing began again, Junior's car was fast
and loose, and he
led
the pack for five laps until he was passed by Michael
Waltrip, a
veteran
driver in his first race for Senior's team. As the
race wound down,
Junior
was second, just feet behind Waltrip, while Senior was
third, a few car
lengths back, just ahead of a crowd. Senior was
battling to hold onto
his
position, swerving a bit to block cars from passing
him, s typical
racing
maneuver. Many have surmised that Senior was blocking
less for himself
and
more for Waltrip and Junior, but Junior doesn't
believe that. "He
woulda
blocked anybody from his position no matter what
position he woulda
been
in," he says.
On the final lap, a car tapped Senior's bumper.
Number 3 rocketed up
the
track and went head on into the wall. Junior saw thw
whole thing is
his
rear view mirror. "I'm goin' through the corner, and
as soon as I look
in
the mirror," he says, "I kinda see his car shoot up
the racetrack, and
I was
like, 'Shit! Fuckin' had a wreck. Damn! We were
gonna have the top
three.
Now we're not.'" He had no idea he'd just seen his
father die.
When he pulled around the track, Earnhardt saw his
father's car and
all the
smoke. "It looked just like a movie scene," he says.
"Like somebody
was
over there with a smoke machine. It looked really
dramatized. Just
looked
odd to me." He thought about jumping out of his car
then but didn't
want to
draw too much attention to the scene, so he pulled
onto the pit road
and
asked what had happened to his father. No one knew.
He made a beeline
for
the medical center. "There were alot of TV and radio
that were ready
to
interview me, but I just didn't wanna do that," he
says. "I wanted to
go
see Dad." At the medical center he got into a car
with Teresa
Earnhardt,
Dale Sr's wife, and went to the hospital, still
knowing nothing. "I
was
pretty nervous," he says. "I was really nervous. I
did not like the
fact
of not knowing. That was the worst part. Still - "
He pauses and is
silent for awhile, the words are hard to say. "Him
dying hadn't
crossed my
mind at that time. I just thought that it was maybe a
little more
serious
than his past injuries had been."
Senior broke both his collarbones in 1979, his
sternum in '96 and
various
ribs in other crashes. There were also countless
other injuries that
he
kept to himself for his personal doctor to fix. But
no matter how bad
the
crash looked, Ol' Ironhead always jumped out of his
car and waved to
his
fans, creating an aura on invincibility. Senior
became known for being
unbreakable in spirit and body. It's not so much that
racing fans like
to
see horrific crashes - they like to see drivers walk
away from horrific
crashes. At that, no one was better than Earnhardt.
But this time he'd gone head on into the wall, and,
Junior believes,
his
seatbelt broke upon impact. "The only thing that
could explain the
injuries
is he broke his seatbelt," Junior says. "He broke
alot of ribs on the
left
side of his body from impact with the steering wheel.
How did he get
there?
How did he fly into the steering wheel if he's
strapped in?"
There was some controversy over the cause of
Earnhardt's death and
whether
the seatbelt was broken by the force of impact or cut
by EMT's trying
to
save him. Bill Simpson, the president and CEO of the
company that made
the
seatbelt, has demanded that NASCAR publically absolve
him or
responsibility
for Earnhardt's death. Junior feels certain of the
cause of his
father's
death, but he's also not looking to place blame.
"This was a new belt
that
was in my dad's car," he says. "It should not have
broken. All the
belts
that they tested with stood, like, five times more
force than my
father's
body put on the belt, and it makes you wonder whether
we're doing
something
wrong when we're mounting the belts."
At the hospital, Junior looked into the operating
room just once - "I
didn't get in there real close or anything; I just
kinda peeked around
the
corner of the door and saw a table full of doctors,
and they're all
elbows
and assholes" - then went to a waiting room. For
forty-five minutes he
sat
with his Uncle Danny. "All kinds of stuff's runnin
through your head,"
Junior says. "Like, you don't know how serious it is,
you don't know
whether someone's going to come say, 'Well, he's in
stable condition,'
or
'He's in critical condition,' or 'He's paralyzed' -
you don't know what
they're gonna tell ya. Then they come in there, and
the lady said they
did
the best they could. That was her words exactly. You
felt like..."
He's
quiet for a moment. "'This is not happenin'.'" He
stops again and is
silent for a long time. His demeanor is calm, and
though it seems as
though
the words are already chosen, getting them out is
hard. "You're just
like..." He stops. "Fuckin' blown away."
When they told him his father was gone, there was a
burst of tears.
"I was
hysterical. I just fuckin' exploded." He was given
the opportunity to
see
his father one last time but couldn't do it. "I wanna
remember what he
looked like when he had life in him," he says.
"There'll always be
that
side of me that says I wish I woulda looked at him one
last time. I'd
do
anything to see his face, and that woulda been the
chance, but it's not
the
same if he's not alive, man."
Soon, a lot of friends arrived, and Teresa was
surrounded by people
she
loved. Junior made sure she was taken care of, and
then he bolted from
the
hospital. "I just, like, wanted a cigarette real
bad," he says. His
voice
is even, but intense. "Just wanted to smoke one after
the other."
After he
left the hospital, he did not cry. "I couldn't cry
because..." He
pauses
for awhile, thinking. "I just wouldn't for some
reason."
Earnhardt jumped on a private jet and flew home to
North Carolina,
trying
to corral his thoughts. "I was like, 'All right,
let's try to sit down
and
try to make some kinda sense.' This was so much
bigger than me losin'
my
father. I had to keep that in mind. And that kinda
made it easier at
times
to, like, deal with it. He meant so much to all these
fans, all these
other
people. It was like, 'A lot of people kinda feel my
pain, ya know?
And
it's not my pain, it's everybody's pain. And it made
ya feel really
good
that your dad meant so much to so many people. He was
just fuckin'
cool, ya
know what I mean? He's just like..." He stops to
search for the
words.
"Hero material all the way."
Later during that jet ride home he thought, "I'm
never driving another
race
car again. Fuck this sport!"
Earnhardt's front door stays open, and friends often
drop by without
calling. When he got home from Daytona that day, alot
of his friends
were
already there. Then a few of his ex-girlfriends and
his mother showed
up.
They all went down to the bar he built in his basement
and drank beers,
told
stories about the old man, stayed up till four in the
morning and did
the
same thing the next day. "I didn't cry much at all,"
Junior says. "I
just
hung around with friends and talked about him."
He is soothed by the fact that he was beginning to
build a really good
relationship with his father. But he's also hurt by
the fact that he
was
just beginning to build that relationship. "It makes
it easier overall
that
I had a good relationahip with the man," he says. "He
knows how I feel
about him down to the core. We had some good times
together, and we
were in
the Winston Cup Series together, so I can sleep at
night. But it
hurts." A
giant garage recently went up behind Junior's house to
store the bus he
uses
each race weekend. Senior and Junior were
constructing it together,
sharing
all the decisions, and now that the garage is
finished, the
accomplishment
in bittersweet. "We were buildin' that together, and
I can't escape
the
thought that he'll never get to see it. If I win
another race, he
won't be
able to see it. If I get married, he won't know my
wife, and he won't
know
my kids."
Junior has found some solace talking to people who
have also lost
their
fathers, but, really, nothing can make this time
easier. "It changes
your
life," he says. "It is nothing that you want to
happen, but it will
better
you as a person. It will force you to decide what
side of the tracks
you're
gonna walk on. When you lose somebody you depend on,
you've gotta make
some
serious fuckin' decisions, and that's one of the few
fortunate things
that
comes from such a tragedy as that. You roll up in a
hole and be a
little
bitch, or you get up and you become really strong."
Earnhardt's decision to quit racing didn't last long.
"After a day I
was
like, 'I just can't wait to get to the racetrack,'" he
recalls. "And
then
another day goes by, and I'm like, 'Man, it's gonna be
different
without my
dad at the racetrack. Without Dad, where do I fit in?
Who am I? Ooh,
this'll be interesting.' And you go to the track and
you're like,
'This is
where I belong.'" (The other drivers have let him
know where he
belongs in
a subtle way at the driver's meetings. "Now Dale
Jarrett or Rusty
Wallace
or somebody like that sits in [Senior's] seat, and I
gotta sit in Row
Six.
And I sit back there because that's my position."
He's not concerned.
"When I whip everybody's ass on the track, I'll whip
everybody's ass in
the
seating order, too. That's very minute, but it speaks
volumes.")
He threw himself right back into racing, getting on
the track the week
after his father's death. At first he struggled,
doing better than
twenty-third only once in his next five races. But in
the following
five
weeks, he finished eighth or better all but once.
Just days before
this
interview, at the Napa Auto Parts 500 in Fontana,
California, on what
would
have been his father's fiftieth birthday, he finished
third, his best
result
since Daytona. After that race he announced, "I ran
well today. Think
I'm-a go home and do like the rappers and pour one out
for Daddy."
Earnhardt has exhibited many of the classic responses
to death.
According
to those around him, he has grown up seemingly
overnight. "When you're
a
kid and your dad would go away on business, on his way
out he'd always
tell
you, 'OK, dude, your the man of the house,'" says
Steve Crisp, Junior's
former manager. "On a much larger scale, that's kind
of the case.
Right
now, people within the company and within the sport
are lookin' to him
to
step up. And he's done it."
Now he's racing for himself, and he's taking on more
responsibility in
his
life. "I really grew up and began dealing with people
more on a
professional level instead of hoppin' and skippin'
through life like
it's a
field of roses," Earnhardt says. "I really became
alot more assertive.
I
was always afraid to ask for what I wanted, because I
thought people
would
consider me conceited and a brat, but it's made me be
more demanding -
not
in a bossy, asshole way but to be pretty honest about
how I feel, so
people
will know what to expect."
But his emotions are difficult to control. He's
still expecting his
father
to walk through the door, he notices people who look
like him ("That's
not
too fun"), and his day can be made or ruined by a
comment or a story
about
him. "He's like a yo-yo," his bus driver, Shane
Mueller, says. "He
does
really good until a fan who means well hands him a
picture of his dad,
and
that sets him back three days."
He's also immersed himself in making highly detailed
miniature radio
controlled cars, some of them models of his own race
car, piecing
together
one a week, the kind of consuming busywork people
often take on after a
death. He tried to maintain a relationship with a
gorgeous brunette, a
young woman every bit as breathtaking as a race-car
driver's girlfriend
in a
Hollywood movie would be, but it's hard to let anyone
get close now.
("There'll be a black Number 3 cloud hanging over him
for a long time,"
she
says.)
These are all sorts of mementos of his dad in his
life, like Senior's
black-and-white Goodwrench hat, plucked from the
gearshift of the
wrecked
car, which sits ceremoniously in Junior's truck.
"Some people would be
scared of that," he says, "but it gives me strength."
At his home
there's
lots of photos of him and Dad. On the fridge there's
Junior, just a
little
runt, sitting beside Dad, whose shirt is off, his
chest thick with
manly
hair. On the wall there's he and Dad sitting side by
side in their
racing
suits at the track. "I never had pictures of my Dad
in the house," he
says.
"It never crossed my mind. But pictures of me and
my father are
really
kick-ass now. You see those, and it'll be a jolt of
energy."
But not all tributes are welcome. "He get's in the
car," Earnhardt's
publicist Jade Gurss says, "straps in, and then the
announcer gets on a
says, 'In honor of the man who won more races here
than anyone else...'
and
you can see his face and his body language change.
He's totally taken
out
of his agressive mind-set. I feel so horrible for
him."
Earnhardt is not a fan of these memorials. "Rusty
[Wallace] won that
race
this past weekend [the Napa Auto Parts 500],"
Earnhardt says. "His
immediate reaction was to make some sort of tribute.
In a moment that
was
his, he gave it to my dad. That's awesome. That's
honorable. But
just to
be fuckin' throwin' doves in the air for the hell of
it is kind of
ridiculous to me. It's more of a production than
anything else.
Paintin'
the 3 in the infield. It's all you can stand to
fuckin' look at it.
I'm
not sayin' this for just me, I'm sayin' it for you or
for anyone.
Before
long you're gonna be like, 'I'm sick of it.' The
fuckin' guy was
awesome,
but this is tearin' it apart."
In racing-crazy North Carolina, Earnhardt memorials
are inescapable.
On
the way to the airport, Junior came up behind a pickup
truck. In the
back
window the driver had put a homemade decal with
Earnhardt's No. 3, a
pair of
wings and a halo. "That shit is retarded, man," he
says.
More upsetting was the Orlando Sentinel suing for
access to Dale Sr's
autopsy photos. "That really pissed me off,"
Earnhardt says. His
voice
turns loud and defiant. "I'm pissed off about that.
All these people
can
say, 'Oh, we gotta have it for safety reasons, and I
can't believe the
Earnhardt family would be so stingy and ridiculous
about it and not
allow us
to improve on safety standards - and what are they
hiding?' Man, I
don't
want nobody to see a damn picture of my daddy on a
damn metal table!
That's
just not how I want people to remember him. It just
comes down to, 'I
don't
want you to see it. That's all it is. I'm not hiding
nothing. That's
my
dad! You can't look!'"
Anyone who watched his father die in his rearview
mirror might
consider
quitting racing. If Senior's new seatbelt could
break, why not
Junior's?
How could he feel safe in that car again? He says
that he's not worth
much
away from the track, then adds, "The odds are in my
favor that my seat
belt
won't break. Because that's one seat belt that's
broke in the last
fifty-one years. We don't have a belt breakin' every
year. And that's
all
ya got when ya get in that car, to think, 'Well, it's
not happenin' all
the
time.'"
But the real answer is that some people need to risk
their lives to
feel
their lives are worth living. The proximity of death
does not scare
them;
it gets them up in the morning. Even after his
father's death,
Earnhardt
can -he needs- to go to the track every week and risk
his life. "I
don't
wanna die," he says. "But I like the fact that it's
dangerous. It's
treacherous. The possibility of hittin' the wall is
exciting. That's
some
of the draw for me. I'm ballsy enough to do it. When
I'm in the car,
I
feel macho, like I can benchpress 350 pounds." Though
his father is
the
fourth driver to die on the track in the past nine
months, Earnhardt is
not
looking to NASCAR to make the sport safer. "What are
you gonna change?
What? There's not a huge amount of options and
improvements to make it
a
safer sport." He has begun attending religious
services at the track -
"I
believed in God, but I didn't really put alot of
effort behind it. Now
I go
to Church on a regular basis." But he says he will
not wear a HANS
(Head
and Neck Support) device that stabalizes a driver's
head and neck in
the
event or a crash; many say one would've saved his
father's life. "I
won't
be wearin' one any time soon," Earnhardt says. "If I
go into a wall
with an
impact that's detrimental to my health, do I want my
neck to be broke
and
for it to be done and over with, or do I want to be
half-ass broke and
be
like a fuckin' vegetable the rest of my life?"
Yet his dad's death brings home the fact that his
life could end any
Sunday. "Death is close than it was," he says. "If
I'm sittin' on a
plane,
death is sittin' closer than it was before. It's a
couple of rows back
now."
Copyright rolling stones 2001