A Voice for the Fans ~ Those Silly Ol’ Lug Nuts
|
I bid
you welcome gentle readers, and of course our always cordial welcome goes out to
that lucky person assigned by NASCAR to read here today and keep us in line. We
wish you luck…
I read
something on Friday that instantly resonated with my logic and common sense,
and the more the speaker continued, the more sense he made. Chip Ganassi says
that NASCAR’s new fascination with lug nuts is “Silly.” Bravo Chip, for calling
a spade a spade, and not only that but calling it a silly spade!
This
scribe has no intention of borrowing so much as a word from any other writer,
but quotes are quotes, and they do not change with time. What is spoken is
recorded and preserved within quotation marks and cannot be copyrighted or
patented. With that in mind, I’d like to present several sentences spoken by
racing great in several venues, Chip Ganassi, to journalist and interviewer
Claire B. Lang on Sirius XM Radio last week.
“I just think the whole lug nut thing is a silly
thing. We’re in a major sport that on any given weekend we have over 100,000
people that show up and watch and it’s the most-watched sport on television
sometimes on the weekend and we’re sitting here talking about lug nuts. Are you
kidding me? Please! They need to move the conversation. I’m saying NASCAR needs
to move the conversation to something a little more relevant than lug nuts.’’
When
asked about replacing Kyle Larson’s crew chief Chad Johnston this week after
NASCAR placed him on suspension through the Michigan race because it was found
in post-race inspection that a lug
nut was
not installed in a “secure manner”, this was his response.
“We have qualified people that will be there.
That’s the other thing is these suspensions; you can have the guy on the phone;
you can have him on the computer, but he can’t be at the track. What’s the
point of being suspended? You really could probably suspend everybody on the
team except the pit crew. It’s silliness. It’s
complete silliness.’’
Let’s
face it gentle readers, this “Lug nut affair” is one of NASCAR’s in-your-face
responses to criticism. Tony Stewart was bold enough to step out of line (Well,
there’s a surprise for you!) and chide them for not policing the way lug nuts
are affixed to the wheels. His point was that now, without a NASCAR official in
each pit, teams were leaving loose one… two and maybe even three, depending on
how long the car must remain on track.
In my
humble opinion, once one driver took a trip into the SAFER (Hopefully) barrier
in a crash caused by a wheel departing his/her car due to lack of lug nuts, the
drivers themselves would have been on the crews like a herd of frogs on a swarm
of June bugs to get those nuts tight every single time. However, rather than
wait for that to happen, NASCAR took a familiar “Oh Yeah?” approach, fined Tony
for speaking, or maybe for breathing, and drew up a set of new rules concerning
lug nuts that makes all the sense of Lewis Carroll’s “Jabberwocky”… the epitome of no sense at all!
“’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did
gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And
the mome raths outgrabe.”
All
right then! I think that made my point. Because NASCAR has never been
known to be wrong, let alone apologize for anything, they made a terminal
disease out of a hangnail. If General Washington had responded in like fashion
upon hearing that the “Redcoats” always went into battle with every button on
those coats sewn firmly in place, we’d still be sewing fancy buttons on shabby
farm-wear and bowing to Her Majesty, the Queen. William Shakespeare called it
“Much ado about nothing.”
Continuing
now to the rest of Chip Ganassi’s oration, we’ll find
one point that I have reiterated time and again, and refreshingly, another
point that I had never even considered, and I’ll wager that most of you had not
either.
"I think all sports are challenged with how to
grow their sport," he said. "We're on the back-end of the
baby-boom generation. All these sports were built on the baby-boom
generation and there just aren't the fans following any sport as much as they
used to. There just aren't the people behind the baby-boom generation that are
watching television or watching sports. There seems to be this trend toward
participation sports, not viewing sports."
That
gentle readers, is the point to which your scribe had never given serious
thought. As a pre-war baby, I come from the other side of that huge generation.
Usually, that meant that everything I had to fight to get or couldn’t have was
given to them merely by the sheer strength of their numbers. I, and others like
me, fell smack dab in-between the Great Depression and WWII, which meant we
were also between the “Greatest Generation” and the “Baby Boomers”, but we had
no name. We just were.
Still,
when thinking it over, Chip makes a veritable mountain of sense in saying that.
The Greatest Generation is gone, save for a very few, and they are leaving daily.
My generation, whatever you might call it, is also fading. Most of my friends
today are of that Baby Boomer category, as too many of those I grew up with
never stayed to grow as old as I have. We look at folks the age of a couple of
our own writers here at Race Fans Forever, Dave Fulton and Frank Buhrman, and
that generation as well is beginning to thin. Most no longer go to the races,
and if they do, most choose local races where they can afford to have fun like
they used to… watching the races, not listening to ear-splitting music that
hurts their no longer keen sense of hearing.
Let’s
move on now to Chip’s final comment, and this point your scribe has made over
and over again through many years. The age of the automobile is over. In the
1950s, when NASCAR was young and so was I, we lived for those new cars that
were once again rolling off the assembly lines in Detroit! American steel was
once again being used to construct American cars! The war was over and the age
of the Automobile had begun. If you didn’t live it, maybe you can’t really
appreciate it, but I lived it and we lived, quite literally, for our cars. A
driver’s license was our rite of passage, our ticket to adulthood and freedom.
That is just a small insight into what Chip is feeling and saying here.
“We need to do a good job of telling young people
that cars are still fun. I think sometimes between the government and Detroit …
we teach young people that cars are really just transportation things from Point A to Point B and pretty soon you’ll
be able to do it with a driverless car. I think we’re missing the point here.
There are a hell of a lot of people out there that need to realize that cars
can still be fun to drive. That driving of a car can be appreciated and can be
respected and can be applauded. That’s what racing is all about.’’
Good
luck with that one Chip. They either don’t get it or don’t understand. Maybe if
the manufacturers once again made cars pretty or macho, depending on the target
customer and made them in colors other than shades of grey it might help.
Matching interiors were also a very nice touch. If that ever comes to pass, the
first move made by NASCAR is to make the term “stock car” relevant again. Folks
in my time loved the idea that a car greatly resembling the one in their
driveway could also be seen racing on tracks across America. Today, the term is
a sad joke.
The
little guitar tells us it’s time now for our Classic Country Closeout and I
thought it would be in keeping with this article to share a few of the songs we
were listening to in those early 1950s, when the cars and the teenagers were
all much younger. In the very early 50s, one singer almost completely eclipsed
all the rest. You might remember him or have heard some of his songs. His name
was Hank Williams, probably the greatest singer and songwriter of the Classic
era. Here first is Hawkshaw Hawkins to do a song
called “The Life of Hank Williams.”
The
music behind that recitation is borrowed from one of Hank’s earlier recordings
called “Help Me Understand.” This one was recorded on a “Luke the
Drifter” album, a pseudonym used by Hank when singing very sad or very pointed
songs.
Also
mentioned by Hawkshaw was Hank’s last hit, which hit
#1 concurrent with his death. Ironically, it’s called, “I’ll Never Get out of This World
Alive.”
Next
we’ll hear one of the hundreds of songs Hank both wrote and sang. This one has
lasted over all the intervening years and Country Music artists are still
recording it today. This is, “I Saw the Light.”
In
closing, we’ll be hearing Jack Cardwell’s recording of “The Death of Hank Williams.”
I was only 14 when Hank died and this song followed shortly after. In the video
that accompanies the song, you’ll see one of those too-beautiful-to-be-believed
automobiles from that era… a 1953 baby blue Cadillac convertible. No wonder we
loved the cars of that era, and the singers as well.
One
more thought… Hawkshaw Hawkins was married to Country
Music superstar Jean Shepard. He died in the same Camden Tennessee plane crash
that also claimed the lives of Patsy Cline and Cowboy Copas,
in March of 1963. They had one small son, Donni, and
Jean was pregnant at the time with their second son, Harold Franklin Hawkins
Jr. After the death of Hawkshaw, Marty Robbins wrote
this song for Jean. Singing it must have been the hardest thing anyone could
do, but she did sing it. Here is Jean Shepard singing, “Two Little Boys.”
Be well
gentle readers, and remember to keep smiling. It looks so good on you!
~PattyKay