Grandfather's Walk

After the tour, I bought some gifts and food at the museum. The food wasn't too great and neither was customer service in general. They seemed to be in a bad mood except for that one dude in that pit crew exhibit. I think it was because it was Sunday and everyone wanted to be at church. I can tell most of these folks weren't from the south or NASCAR fans. Because in the South this is church, god damn it." I have to say that they knew there NASCAR stuff but as John Riley once told me that in a sports job (broadcast monitoring), you want a guy who loves sports but knows and does his job well. You either get one or the other rarely both.

After some time at Wild Wing Cafe adjacent to the museum (them wings were hot), I took awalk around downtown on a lazy cold day (less wind, thank God). It reminds me of walk that I had with my grandfather in the summer of 1987 before his death a few months later. We were walking around the town of Karaikudi. We may have bought something. One things stands clear: I remember him wearing dress shirt, with a lungee, and a towel over his shoulder. It was hot. I don't remember him saying much except him sayin "don't watch too many movies or television and when he caught me looking inside at every Ambassador taxi cabs on the street, "all Ambassadors are all the same."

Except, I was trying to find the 1975-1979 one. Inside it had a grill background in the middle with glove compartment on the passenger and driver side. Inside the grill, you had a big circular speedometer with these small rectangular cube lights: red and orange on the sides indicating the engine; green beside the red indicating signal; and blue indicating high beam (Something you see at an old 70's RCA TV on their logo with the colors of red, green, and blue something). Next to the lights were small circular fuel gauge and amp. Depending on certain cars, there were would be one with the speedometer and four gauges with the light cubes below them. That made it difficult for the driver to see but it took awhile for the engineers to place the gauges on the driver side with indicators on the sides of the speedometer and have only one glove compartment. It was small to begin with, you literally could only put a glove inside that. Yet, I miss that design.

My grandfather also told me not to say bad words or say Oh my God but came up with a more positive phrase. Before I left, he told me to get stronger was to roll your wrist in a circular(its a crutch, I know) motion either for twenty minutes or twenty times. I don't remember because I never did them since I was seven when a girl mocked me at an Indian outing in Maryland. Maybe, I will. My dad use to tell me stories of grandy running yak races on a wagon cart on a open field in southern India. He also used to carry "illegal rice" but I came to find out it was the Indian version of moonshine where you can extract from rice and coconuts. He use to carry a hand axe and a gun.

When I read the stories about the lives of these drivers, I couldn't help think about my grandfather. I think my grandfather could have been a racer in the 30's-40's when it was a bootleg league. But he never liked cars because animals, he could control. But he did like speed in his day. Maybe, if he grew up in America, his attitude would have been different. As far as the racial climate, he looked a lot like those race car drivers. He certainly acted like a lot of them. I don't know. Junior Johnson. Fireball Roberts. Lee Petty. Just to name a few.

Whatever? A my mind wandered. I saw other places and went back to my hotel on that monorail. Got into a philosophical debate with an Indian guy who ran the Daisy Inn conerning women while watching Forest Gump (Guess? India born women over American). He didn't even know about the movie. He graduated from UNC-Charlotte with an engineering degree in 2000. But he got a wife from back home. He started making generalizations about my character along with my tribal heritage in a fun way. I liiked the guy but he seemed to be a Carrie Underwood's servant. I mean could he get away with dirt running on the shower head over my head and not warn me before hand but afterwards and do it in a joking, patronizing manner? I think not. Then again, I would do the same thing but without the Indian values bull.

The only thing that I will take with me is the race simulator. After my failure in my trials. I got on this track that a resembled a go-cart track with real race cars but simulators above the steering wheel. I would use brakes, accelerators, and the gear on the steering wheel. But before I entered, there was a video presention of Dale Earnhardt Jr. on what to do on the race course. He talked about safety but he also mentioned about this being a race car and that you need to go fast. However unlike the trials guide, he told us when and how to go fast. He said that once you have reached a certain speed: shift to a higher gear but meet the speed and if you need to down shift do so but get back to speed and continue to go faster. I remember that once I got out of the pits and into the track. I always wanted to go slower but remembering Jr.'s advice, I went faster and got the number results that I couldn't get at the trials. Now, there is somebody who loves racing and is good at it.

For this Sunday, I reached for something that I couldn't get before. If that isn't spiritual then I don't know what is? I wonder if my grandfather would get it. I know he would be proud. How and why, I'm not sure nor do I care.