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A Blast From the Past

Today, I was surfing YouTube… er… I mean… I was working… yeah, working. That’s it. I was working and stumbled across the video below. The fact that I stumbled across this completely by accident is pretty amazing.

Long ago, I posted about my glory days racing “thunder bombers” and Dirt Track Speedway in Amarillo. Well, the video below features thunder bombers racing at that very same track! The name has changed and, based on the website, they’ve closed once again, but this video has left me washed over with memories of the sights and sounds of that glorious summer. The glare of the lights. (We ran at night back then.) The smell of burning oil and rubber. The grit of the dirt in your teeth. Good times!

Yes, chi’ren, this is what your Uncle Trint used to do for fun! And, holy cow, was it fun!!


YouTube link

A few things to notice:

The giant tractor tires sitting on the track were put there to slow us down. The idea was, if we had to slow down to avoid the tires, we’d be driving at a saver speed. Yeah. Nice try.

Keep an eye out for the co-drivers, sitting in the passenger seats. You can see them looking back trying to spot on-coming cars for the driver as you have to race without mirrors.

This was a pretty small race compared to those I raced in. We always had at least 20 cars on the track. The biggest race I was in had over 50!! And, as you can see, there are no yellow flags to let disabled cars get off the track. If your car quits, you just have to sit there and hope you don’t get hit until the race is over. Out of that more-than-50 cars I raced against, less than 10 finished the race.

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