Yesterday was the official kickoff of the NASCAR season with the Grand Daddy of all races – The Daytona 500.  So I thought I would use this as an opportunity to tell you a bit about my Nascar prowess (or lack thereof).

I am,  what is fondly referred to down here below the Mason Dixon line as,  “A Yankee”.   Growing up in the Greater Chicagoland Area, we didn’t have NASCAR.  We had Da Cubs, Da Bulls and Da Bears. When I was younger,   I would randomly hear advertisements on the radio for the ‘US Smokin’ 30 Dragstrip’, which was located in Joliet, Il.  Yes, the same location as the State Penitentiary and home to the infamous Al Capone until the day he died.   Back then, in the Greater Chicagoland  Area, we didn’t have anything called NASCAR.

That being said, it wasn’t long after Michael and I met that I was first introduced to this sport.  I will admit I found it very difficult to categorize this as a “sport”; that is until I actually attended a race and was startled by how FAST these guys go!  Over time, I came to enjoy watching races, but primarily for the social event of it more so than the race itself.  I never  had any driver that I followed or really paid attention to.  My neighbors are Denny Hamlin and Jeff Gordon fans and over the summer, that’s pretty much where we end up in cul-de-sac conversations;  who was “on the pole” and who is “points leader”.  To me, it’s kind of the sound of Charlie Brown’s teacher…..wha wha wha…

Several years ago, one of our neighbors was coming up on his 40th birthday.  The rest of us got together and decided to throw him a Surprise Party.  Being the uber-shy guy that he is, we decided to wrap his party around a NASCAR race – to make sure he showed.  It was fairly common for our neighborhood to all get together at one persons’ house or another to watch a race, we figured that a perfect ruse to get him over.  We enlisted the help of his sister, who lived in another state.   She agreed to plan a visit with him that weekend for his birthday and we would invite him over to watch the race.  It wasn’t unusual for him to change his mind at the lasts minute and not show to some event  and this time was no exception, but having talked with his sister, all it took was her to say “hey, you talk about your friends all the time, let me at least meet them”.

The whole group was over, we have the house decorated with Over the Hill stuff, streamers, do not cross tape, etc.  We have the obligatory baby picture on a large poster board where everyone has written birthday wishes, Steve is filming the surprise on his face as he enters the house.  As he walked in it literally took a minute for him to figure out what was going on.  He had walked past all of the Do Not Cross ribbons, didn’t even notice Steve filming and completely missed the cake and poster sized card with his baby picture in the middle of it.  Once it clicked and we all had a good laugh about it, the party began.  The NASCAR race truly was part of the invite, so it played on the monster screen in the living room where it is clearly visible from the kitchen where many of us mingled.   Another of our neighbors, Danny, decided to go around with a name of each of the race drivers in a hat and have everyone pick one.  This way even if you weren’t a fan, you had someone to follow and pay attention to – fun idea we thought.  Everyone threw in a buck and the person with the name of the winner would get the pot.

Michael loves the movie “The Princess Bride” and if you are familiar, there is a character Inigo Montoya in the movie.  “Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya, you killed my father, prepare to die”.  He must say that line 1000 times in the movie.  Well, as it turns out there was a newer driver that year named Juan Pablo Montoya so of course I wanted to pull that name – just for the joke factor.  No such luck.  In fact, I pulled Denny Hamlin, who happens to be neighbor Steve’s favorite driver.   Just as I pull Denny’s name,  Steve is there and launches into this whole story of Denny Hamlin, how he grew up in Southwest Virginia and he drives for Fed Ex.   I’m listening and when I hear the part about driving for FedEx,  I look at Danny (also a Fed Ex Driver) and say; “Wow, that’s pretty cool that Fed Ex lets him off work on the weekends to race?  I wonder how ……..?”   I stop mid-sentence because of the look of shock amazement and amusement on Danny and Steve’s faces that I was serious.  It quickly turned to cackling laughter between Danny and Steve.   I may be blonde, but it only took a second before I figured out what a stupid thought that was and laughed right along with them.

Its been 5 or 6 years since that incident, but it continues to come up at least once a race season.  And I’m ok with that………..cuz it still causes me to giggle every time I think of it.

Go Juan Pablo!

Do you remember the first time you saw the movie Helter Skelter?  I do.  If you know the subject matter and violence of that movie, you will understand why at 14, my parents told me I couldn’t watch it, but thanks to my “baby” brother Keith……..I saw it anyway.

It was 1976, I was in the 8th grade and had a babysitting job for the summer for some family I barely knew and 2 little kids I don’t really remember.  What I do remember is calling my mother at work one summer day and someone who was not my mother answering the phone telling me my mother left early because of a family emergency.  She didn’t know anything more.

As the story goes, Keith, Tony Benassi, Jimmy Hardy and a another friend had decided that they were going to “scare” Grandma Caranni .  Grandma Caranni lived at the end of Windsor Road and had THE BIGGEST yard (the size of a football field) on our entire street.  Lots of neighborhood kids used to wander down the street to play in her front yard.  Apparently,  for the boys, she stopped letting them play football in her front yard as they were tearing it up, so they had decided to take revenge.  Along the right side of the long driveway near the detached garage was a huge weeping willow tree.  Here is where the “scare” was to take place.  The boys had fashioned a clothesline from a high spot in the tree and had a skeleton on a hook and were going to let it down the line just as Grandma Caranni drove into the driveway.

Keith and Jimmy  were up in the tree with the others hiding behind its huge trunk.  Just as Grandma Caranni pulled into the driveway, they let the skeleton go.  It didn’t work as expected and Grandma Caranni  drove right by without any notice of the boys.  After the failed opportunity, Keith and Jimmy had to get out of the tree and the best method to do so was to swing off a branch below them and jump down to the ground.  Keith went first.  As he leaned forward to grab the branch and swing down, the branch broke and Keith went head first about 20 feet down to the ground.

Keith hit the ground, limbs bent in unusual directions and lay on the ground in shock.  As you can imagine, the boys FREAKED.  My Nana lived next door, so they ran over to her house, got her to call an ambulance and Keith was carted away to Highland Park Hospital.  1 Surgery, 2 compound fractures and a week in the hospital with his arms hanging above his head to reduce the swelling later, both Keith and his friends were feeling a bit silly about their effort to scare poor Grandma Caranni.

But back to Helter Skelter……All of the “scare” happened early afternoon.  My mom was at work and after my Nana got the ambulance and they carted Keith off to the hospital, she called my Mom who went up to the hospital to be with Keith.  Since he had to have surgery, she was there most all evening, not getting home until after 11pm.  There were no cell phones in 1976 and I never heard from my mother, so I went over to my backyard-neighbors house – Vera Ballan.  Vera and I had been friends for years, she was a year ahead of me in school, but we spent all kinds of time together in grade school and middle school.  Vera’s family was from Yugoslavia and I could never understand what her parents were saying to her, but they were nice to me, fed me that night and I hung out there until it started to get dark.  I still hadn’t heard anything from my mom, so I had Vera come back over to my house to hang around with me until they got home.

What should 2 girls do with no parents around and undoubtedly one of the scariest movies ever coming on TV that night??  Duh……WATCH THE MOVIE of course!    We made popcorn, watched the movie and she went home about 10pm when it was over.   I was left home alone and TERRIFIED after watching that movie!  I understood why my mother didn’t want me watching it, but it was too late by then.  I went to my room, locked the door and waited there until my mom got home.  I still get shivers when I remember how scared that movie left me.

As for Keith and his broken bones….He was a star catcher on the baseball team for Deerfield HS.  He worked his tail off after he got his casts off,  throwing a ball against the wall of TOPPS department store and catching it in an effort to strengthen his arms and be ready for spring season.  I was still in 8th grade at Shephard Jr. High and not a day went by that some girl whom I didn’t know at school asked me “How’s Keith Doing?  giggle giggle, giggle…..” and I just wanted to slap them.

Sadly, that continued even to my 30 year High School Reunion, which will forever be my LAST High School Reunion

It was 1970.  Our family car was a dark green Ford Country Squire complete with wood-paneling on the side (think National Lampoon’s Vacation) and my parents packed me, Keith and Neal into the car for a 2 week driving vacation to California.   (Can I say right here they were NUTS to let Todd stay home alone – that’s another story though).   We dropped by the Rouses’ house on the way out where Lisa had packed us a bunch of snacks, hard candy and for this eight year old girl – the biggest lollipop I had ever laid eyes on.

My parents’ best friends ‘Aunt Enid and Uncle Bill’ lived in San Diego, our final destination, but we followed a random route through Colorado, down to 4-corners in Arizona and over to San Diego.   I will never forget going through Colorado over the mountains following this road that went through Wolf Creek Pass.  A 2-lane road, with us on the outside with a sheer drop down to a river so far down it looked like a trickle of a creek.  The oncoming traffic was against a sheer cliff wall.  No shoulders, no guard rails.  My mother just jabbering at my dad while he was trying to drive until he finally had to ask her to stop talking.  My brother Neal teasing me about how if we went over the cliff and actually survived that crocodiles lived in that river and they would eat me anyway.  On the other side of the mountain at the bottom of the pass was a small general store.  I swear the guy was giggling when we walked in and he saw the look of terror mixed with relief on our faces.  In talking with my dad, he said it’s rare a traveler will come over the pass and not need to stop at his store.  Perhaps THAT was really why he was grinning.

We went to the Grand Canyon on our way to San Diego.   I have never seen anything as stunning.  I’m pretty sure this is where I developed my fear of heights, however.  Back then there was nothing more than a wooden rail between your viewing area and going over the edge of a cliff.  As we were standing there looking, my brother Keith grabs my shoulders from behind and says “Save Your Life!”.   You know that old trick kids play on each other.  We used to do it all the time, but these days, I can barely look out a 2nd story window – thanks Keith!

After the Grand Canyon, we made our way through deserts and on to 4-Corners.  Until we finally made it to San Diego.  Aunt Enid and Uncle Bill lived in a new neighborhood out on the edge of the desert.  There was a dead end of what I remember to be a large hill of dirt and scrub brush.  Neal and the boys would go out hunting snakes in the afternoons and we would go back to our hotel (more like what today would be a suite with a kitchenette) and go swimming.  Marco-Polo was a favorite game to play and we would see who could do the best cannon-ball and make the biggest splash.

An important thing to know about me, especially when I was little, is that I get HORRIBLE car sickness.  I know now that was one of the key reasons Lisa Rouse gave us all that hard candy – it was her effort to keep my stomach settled for 2 weeks of driving.  This came into play when we drove from San Diego down to visit Tijuana Mexico.  I was feeling poorly the whole drive and by the time we got the to lot where cars are left on the US side and you walk across the bridge to the Mexico side, I needed to be ill.  Without any alternative, my Dad handed me a paper bag to get sick in.   After I was done, he rolled up the top and put it on the roof of the car, saying we would dispose of it when we got back from Tijuana.

We had a blast in Tijuana.  Our cab driver called himself “Chicken Driver” and was our tour guide.  We went to all the booths to shop and my mother thoroughly enjoyed haggling with the sales people.  She went back to one of them three times and finally “won” to purchase a HIDEOUS velvet painting of some tall mast sailing ship on a stormy sea.  That painting hung in our TV room for many more years than it should have!

After a long day in Tijuana, we made our way back to the car for the drive back to San Diego.  As we approached the car, prepared to take the package we had left on the roof of the car to be disposed of, we were surprised to see it was gone!

To this day, I wonder if some poor guy grabbed that bag and ran thinking he was going to get some free leftovers or a bag lunch that someone had forgotten.  I imagine his surprise when he opened it…….and I smile just a bit.  🙂