COUSINS: RUN, BUDDY, RUN!!

Perhaps you know someone to whom things seem to happen on a regular basis. Well… I’m one of them. My best bud, Frog, and I decided to go to a stock car race at the old Fairgrounds track at Strawberry Hill. Back when it was dirt. We didn’t have any money and figured we’d get there early and jump the fence on the backstretch like we always did. When we arrived, we changed our minds and decided to climb one of the trees. Frog went first then I climbed up and got one of my feet stuck in a ‘V’ limb. I yelled at Frog, and he said for me to swing my other leg. I was concentrating so much on swinging my other foot that I forgot I wasn’t holding on to the tree. The next thing I knew was BAM! I had fallen 30 to 40 feet in a nano-second. DAMN THAT HURT! Frog climbed down, checked me over, and we decided that tree climbing wasn’t for us. We went to the fence between the third and fourth turns and began climbing. Frog went first (again), hit the ground, and ran to the infield. I climbed to the top, turned around (facing the fence), and pushed off. You couldn’t see the ground, and when I landed, I fell backwards onto my ‘Tail Bone,’ which stunned me. When I snapped to, I heard the sound of a racing engine. I looked towards the backstretch, and there was a race car, coming out of the second turn and heading towards me. NOT GOOD! I heard people yelling, “RUN!” And then I saw Frog waving and took off toward him. As I reached Frog, a security guard was running toward us, and we took off. There was no way that heavy-legged guy would catch us, right? WRONG! We ran between cars, trucks, trailers, etc. We ended up in the late Johnny Roberts’ pit area. You could do that back then. We had just purchased a couple of Pepsi’s when the security guard walked up and said he would arrest us. HOLY BAT CRAP, ROBIN! Johnny Roberts to the rescue. He told the guard we were with him and to take a hike. Later that day, Roberts crawled into a raging inferno due to a huge pile-up on the backstretch and pulled another driver to safety. Saved his life. Roberts won an award from NASCAR for his heroics. Sadly, he died in a crash a year later. Note: The photo shows the aging wooden fence we climbed at the half-mile dirt Fairgrounds track now 3/4-mile paved Richmond Raceway.