Racing Has a Way of Making You Young Again

It’s U.S. Nationals week.

For some people, that probably just means one of the biggest drag races of the year.

For me, it takes me right back to being a little girl in the 1980s, following my dad around the racetrack.

My dad is 75 years old now.

And this week, just like he has for so many years, he's racing the U.S. Nationals.

I don't know that I fully appreciated how special that was until recently.

Because when racing is what your family does, you don't really think about it. It's just life.

And back then, life seemed a whole lot simpler.

When Winston Was Everywhere and Your Heroes Were Right There

If you grew up around drag racing in the '80s, you remember.

Winston was everywhere.

Shirley Muldowney and Don Garlits weren't just names from drag racing history. They were the people you couldn't wait to see.

Just like today, the pros were on one side and the sportsman racers were on the other.

But as a kid?

That pro side felt like another world.

We'd run over there looking for our heroes and getting autographs. And the crazy thing is, you actually could.

You could walk around, find the racers you'd been waiting to see and come back proudly carrying their autograph.

There weren't phones in our hands documenting every second of it.

You just experienced it.

And Then There Were THE Ticket Holders

If you know, you know.

Those giant safety pins with the plastic pouches that held your race ticket.

I cannot explain to someone who wasn't there how cool those things were.

You pinned that thing to your clothes and walked around like you had been handed an all-access credential to the most important place on Earth.

Forget today's lanyards and digital tickets.

Give me the giant safety pin.

That was status.

Our Five-Star Accommodations

Race trailers weren't what they are today.

People had open trailers.

It was hot.

There weren't giant motorhomes with multiple TVs, air conditioning and every comfort of home sitting in the pits.

And somehow, we didn't care.

My dad had a Chevy pickup truck with a topper on the back.

There was a mattress inside.

And we had what I considered to be the absolute height of luxury—a little black-and-white television that plugged into the cigarette lighter.

It had an antenna.

An actual antenna.

You'd mess with it trying to get a picture, and when you finally found a channel you could halfway see through the static, you were living GOOD.

That truck topper was our camper.

Our hotel.

Our clubhouse.

And probably half the reason I thought going to the U.S. Nationals was the greatest vacation imaginable.

It was hot. We were dirty. We entertained ourselves climbing up and down the trailer and inventing games out of absolutely nothing.

And we had the time of our lives.

We Didn't Know We Were Making Memories

That's the part that hits differently now.

As a kid, I didn't know those were going to become some of my favorite memories.

I didn't know there would come a day when I'd think about that Chevy truck and wish I could crawl into the back of it one more time.

I didn't know I'd someday laugh about those ridiculous ticket pouches.

Or remember exactly how exciting it felt to head over to the pro side looking for autographs.

We weren't trying to make childhood magical.

Nobody was planning the perfect family vacation.

We were just going racing.

And somehow, it was magic anyway.

Life was simpler then.

Or maybe being a kid just made it feel that way.

And Somehow, They're Still Here

The other night, I dropped my mom off at the track.

Dad was there racing the U.S. Nationals.

Again.

At 75 years old.

And parked around him were some of the same guys who were his friends back when I was that little girl running around the pits in the '80s.

They're still friends.

They're still racing.

The funniest part is that now a bunch of them live in the same retirement community in Florida.

Apparently, decades of racing together weren't enough. Now they retire together too.

And as I got out of the truck that night, I looked at all of them a little differently.

Maybe it's because I'm older now.

As I've gotten older, I seem to pay more attention to moments I probably would have walked right past before.

I looked at my dad and his friends standing there at the racetrack.

There are a few more wrinkles now.

Gray hair.

Bodies that probably don't move quite as easily as they did 40-some years ago.

But for just a second, I swear I could see the 18-year-old versions of them.

Because the spark was still there.

The excitement was still there.

The joy was written all over their faces.

They weren't a group of guys in their 70s.

They were racers.

Racing Has a Way of Doing That

Maybe that's what I've been trying to put into words all these years.

Racing has a way of making you young again.

You can grow up.

Build a career.

Raise a family.

Become a grandparent.

Retire.

Move to Florida.

Your body gets older whether you like it or not.

But then you pull through those gates.

You unload the car.

You see the same people you've raced beside for decades.

You hear an engine fire.

And there you are again.

Eighteen years old.

Ready to race.

I think that's why people who don't grow up around racing sometimes have a hard time understanding why we do it.

Why would a 75-year-old man still want to race the U.S. Nationals?

I think the better question is:

How could he not?

Because somewhere inside that 75-year-old man is the same young guy who fell in love with racing all those years ago.

And somewhere inside his grown daughter is still that little girl with her giant safety-pin ticket holder, running across the pits for an autograph, climbing all over an open trailer and thinking a mattress in the back of a Chevy pickup was the greatest vacation money could buy.

A lot has changed since then.

The trailers are bigger.

The TVs are definitely better.

The ticket holders aren't nearly as cool.

And I suppose we've all gotten a little older.

But this week, Dad is racing the U.S. Nationals.

His old friends are parked beside him.

Mom is there.

And when I dropped her off and looked around that racetrack, I felt something I hadn't expected.

That same excitement.

That same happiness.

That same feeling I had when I was a kid.

Maybe that's the real gift racing has given our family.

It doesn't stop time.

But every once in a while, it gives a little bit of it back.

And I think that's why we keep coming back.

— Race Mode Co.