Mark Stuertz is a writer for the Dallas Observer and father of Amelia, 12. They live in Dallas.
Flashback 2006: On the way to the NASCAR Samsung 500 at Texas Motor Speedway.
Me: Who’s your favorite race driver?
Amelia: Jeff Gordon!
Me: Why?
Amelia: He’s cute. He’s a good driver. He’s cute. He’s won four championships. He’s cute. He has almost 75 victories. He’s cute. Do you like Jeff Gordon?
Fast forward 2007: 8:30am, Sunday, on the way to the Samsung 500.
Me: So, who’s your favorite driver?
Amelia: Jeff Gordon.
Me: Why?
Amelia: Because he’s a good driver. He’s won championships.
Me: I thought you liked him because he was cute?
Amelia: No way! He looks like Bert. He has a unibrow.
Me: A what?
Amelia: That was when I was little, before I realized his eyebrows were bushy.
Me: A what?
Amelia: No, that was kind of mean. I kind of think he’s cute. No, I mean really cute. Can I get a Jeff Gordon T-shirt?
The morning drive to the race is always our special quiet time. Amelia eats a plate of prime rib and plays voice-activated Nintendogs with headphones on her pink Nintendo DS. I drink black coffee from a tall travel mug and listen to pre-race and traffic reports on Satellite radio. The tornado from the Friday night before dominates the coverage. The racetrack was evacuated. “How do you evacuate 20,000 RVs lickety-split?” asks one frustrated crew chief. “Lay down!” yells Amelia.
9:20am Traffic comes to a standstill. I play lane-change pinball with a semi and Chevy Cobalt SS. I’m desperate to reach Dale Earnhardt Way and exit the freeway. Reason: My tall coffee mug is empty. Its contents are now inside me, trying to get out. “Sit,” yells Amelia.
9:45am I see a sign: Dale Earnhardt Way, 1 mile. We aren’t moving. I’m pinned in traffic. I prepare for the worst. I take my water bottle and undo the cap. I roll down my window and dump the contents onto the pavement. I try to figure out how I’m going to put my NASCAR cap over Amelia’s face without arousing suspicion. “Roll over,” yells Amelia.
9:50am For some strange reason, the theme from Rocky is blaring in my head in full horn section regalia. I tighten my grip on the steering wheel. I rev the engine. “I’m gonna make it,” I say to myself, running the scene of Stallone stampeding up the steps of Philadelphia Museum of Art in my head for inspiration. Traffic starts to move. Some race crewmember on the radio says he was never so scared in his life as he was when those tornado sirens went off. “I thought I was going to wet my pants,” he says.
10am Traffic starts to pick up. I dart through cars and pickups and Hummers, looking for the perfect place to park. I see it in the distance: two bright green Porta-Potties near a woman in a bright orange vest waving cars into the parking lot.
10:10am I park near the potties, open the car door and run.
10:15am I return to the car huffing sighs of relief. The car door is still open. “Why did we park so far away?” Amelia asks. “Exercise,” I say. I gather the cooler, race scanner, headphones, binoculars, and walkie-talkies. Amelia gathers a book (Princess Academy), her Nintendo DS, and her Jeff Gordon cap, her Jeff Gordon seat cushion, and her Jeff Gordon can koozie.
10:25am We stop at the Jeff Gordon trailer and Amelia picks out a T-Shirt; a tight-fitting one with “Jeff” emblazoned across the chest. I balk. “But it’s the cheapest one,” she says. Good point, I think. We stop at a table where they’re selling race programs for 10 bucks. “For five bucks more you get a T-shirt and a die-cast racecar,” says the hawker. “I got a lot of those,” says Amelia of the racecars. This is true. I got two of them as birthday presents from her the week before.
10:30am Amelia wants to go into the bathroom to change into her Jeff Gordon T-shirt. I give her a walkie-talkie. This is our new procedure. When she went to the bathroom at the speedway last November during the Dickies 500, she never came out. Seven police officers, a dozen security personnel, and six sympathetic mothers later, I found her near the pretzel cart.
10:45am We take our seats. I immediately start programming my scanner. Amelia resumes Nintendogs. The sky is filled with paratroopers. Hot pink smoke is coming out of their shoes. “Can I get a pretzel?” asks Amelia.
11:30am “Can I get a sausage on a stick?” asks Amelia.
12:15pm “Can I get some kettle corn?” asks Amelia.
1:05pm We sing the National Anthem. A B-52 bomber flies low over the track. “That’s a B-52,” says Amelia. The man next to me leans over toward my ear. “I crewed on one of those in Vietnam,” he says. “Flight engineer.” I lean over to Amelia. “That man used to fly on B-52s in Vietnam,” I say. She leans over and gets a look at him. “Isn’t he a little old for that?”
1:30pm There’s a big wreck on the first lap. David Ragan takes out J.J. Yaley and then slides onto the infield. In the melee, Ricky Rudd spins and backs his Snicker’s car up onto Ragan’s hood and nearly flips over. “Cool,” says Amelia, returning to Princess Academy.
2:30pm “Can I have some nachos?” asks Amelia. I pull off my scanner headphones and make my way to the concessions booth. The line is long. There are two women ahead of me. One wears a Dale Earnhardt Jr. visor. The other has a lime green iPod Nano banded to her arm. She is dancing. They get to the counter and turn away their nachos order for a redo. Not enough meat. “Hi,” says the one with the Nano. “Who’s your favorite driver?” “Carl Edwards,” I say. “Why?” she asks. “Because he does back flips off the car when he wins,” I say. “Do you do back flips?” she asks. I suddenly realize she is under the influence of racecar corporate sponsorships, maybe Kurt Busch’s Miller Light Dodge, or Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s Budweiser Chevrolet, or perhaps David Stremme’s Coors Light Dodge. I’m hoping she wasn’t swayed by Clint Bowyer’s Jack Daniels Chevrolet. “What kind of music you like?” she asks. “Rock ‘n’ Roll,” I say. “This will change your mind,” she says, putting the Nano ear buds into my ears. The song is Fergalicious, by Fergie; a song I refused to let Amelia download because of its, um, suggestive lyrics.
3pm I return with the nachos. Amelia devours them. I grab one of her chips and inadvertently flick some melted Velveeta into a Budweiser in the row in front of me. The guy holding it screams something at me that I can’t make out on account of racecar engines. It sounded like a line from Fergalicious.
4:10pm Dale Earnhardt Junior wrecks. The whole speedway is dejected. Most of the fans around us evacuate. Amelia moves from Princess Academy to Nintendogs.
5pm The race ends. Jeff Burton out-duels Matt Kenseth on the last lap for a nail-biting win. Jeff Gordon finished fourth. “Jeff Gordon led four times for 173 laps,” I say to console Amelia. “I know,” she says. “He’s a great racer. Maybe the best ever.” “He’s a legend,” I assure her. “And his racing career very nearly came to a tragic end two years ago.” “You mean he had a bad wreck?” she asks. “No,” I explain, “he tried to sing Take me Out to the Ballgame during a Chicago Cubs game.”
5:25pm We are in the car maneuvering out of the parking lot.
6:35pm We have driven exactly 100 yards.
8:30pm We pull into the garage and Amelia runs into the house.
8:35pm Amelia returns to the kitchen. “You know dad, I had to go to the bathroom really bad on the way home,” she admits. “But I didn’t want to make you get out of the traffic jam line, so I just concentrated real hard on holding it. I almost didn’t make it.” “Yeah,” I say. “That happened to me once, too.”
Sidebar: All About Mark
Most Prized Possession: Old Porsche 911
Favorite Movie You’re Afraid to Admit You Like: John Carpenter’s The Thing
Dream Car: RUF Rt12
Autograph You’d Pay to Get: Frank Zappa
High School Celebrity Crush: Jane Seymour
Take Out Guru or Grill Master: Grill
Dad You Admire Most: Besides my own, my father-in-law
Where to Find You on a Sunday Afternoon: Sunday is race day
Most-Frequently Broken Man Law: Putting fruit in beer to prevent scurvy
No. 1 Parenting Rule: Never fear NO
Best Dad Moment: Getting knocked over by my 3-year-old daughter in the airport jetway as she welcomed me home from a long trip
Diaries are penned by actual moms and dads in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. The authors volunteer to share a day of their choosing and are not paid or endorsed by DallasChild. If you would like to be considered for a future column, please contact editorial@dallaschild.com. All submissions are subject to editing and may be cut for space.
