St. Dale

AUTHOR’S NOTE

Dale Earnhardt deserved a book not just for his excellence on the speedway, but also for the extraordinary effect he had on thousands of people he never even met-the people who mourned him by leaving flowers at the nearest speedway that February night, or by writing memorial poems in his honor and posting them on the Web, or by displaying the number 3 with sentiments like “God needed a driver.” I’m sure that Dale would be the first to tell you he wasn’t a saint, but I think the outpouring of grief that followed his death would have moved him.

For years, I have been fascinated by the idea of secular sainthood. When I was in graduate school, I cornered Dr. Charles Kennedy, who was then chair of the religion department at Virginia Tech, and asked him why Elvis had become the new saint, rather than, say, John Lennon, who seemed much more spiritual to me. Dr. Kennedy said that perhaps Lennon was too avant-garde for the general population, but that Elvis, who had served his country, loved his momma, and given away Cadillacs, exemplified a level of righteousness that ordinary people could grasp. We talked about the qualities in the twelfth-century saint Thomas Becket that we could recognize in his twentieth-century counterparts: a rise from humble beginnings to a position of wealth and influence; a pattern of remaining true to one’s roots and not losing touch with the common man; an untimely death that dashed the hopes of admirers who lived vicariously through the hero’s exploits.

I wanted to do a book on the canonization of a secular figure-a Canterbury Tales with a modern saint-but I lacked the proper inspiration to do justice to the idea.

Then on February 18, 2001 a new saint entered the pantheon.

Dale Earnhardt, who was from my home state and my generation, was deeply mourned, even by people who had not been his supporters in life. When the memorial number 3s began appearing everywhere I looked (even in Christmas lights on a neighbor’s roof), I thought I could understand the substance and the underlying sorrow of his loss, and that I could at last write about this theme. Perhaps because my dad was a football coach, I had not grown up as a fan of motor sports, but I knew the time and place of Dale’s story. So I began to study racing, and now I get it.

Since this is a novel, I have taken small liberties with chronology, most notably: the Earnhardt Tower was completed at the Bristol Motor Speedway a few days after the 2002 Sharpie 500; the Richard Petty Museum moved to its present quarters on Academy Street a few months after the Number Three Pilgrims’s visit in the fall of 2002; and Route 136 in Iredell County became Route 3 six months after Cayle’s car trouble. In each case, since the time discrepancy involved was only a matter of days or months, I have described the place as you will find it now if you visit.

My friend Jane Hicks, a published poet with two master’s degrees, has been a lifelong fan of stock car racing, so in the early days of my research-back when I thought that Kurt Busch was the governor of Florida-she took me in hand and introduced me to the world of NASCAR. I could not have done it without her. Now she has to put up with e-mails from me raging over the points standings or the outcome of the last race.

Michaela Hamilton, my wise and fearless editor, took on this project when more timid souls at other publishing houses assured us that no one would buy a novel about stock car racing. Her encouragement and willingness to back this book has been a miracle in itself.

My thanks to Junior Johnson and to Leonard Wood of Wood Brothers Racing for their wisdom and patience; to East Tennessee State University and Bristol Motor Speedway for offering the NASCAR Experience course, which I took, and to Mark Martin, whose book NASCAR for Dummies was my starting point; step one of a long journey.

I’m grateful to the Junior League of Bristol for their help and encouragement. Mike Smith of the Martinsville Speedway let me observe two races from the press box, and he very kindly shared his reminiscences with me on the Earnhardt Era of racing. Thanks, too, to Dean and Teresa Mayer, Henry Knight, Kyle McCurry, JoAnn Reeves, Cal Royall, Amelia Townsend, Tresha Lafon, Chrissie Anderson Peters, Linda Wilson, Gale Whigam, Kathy Calaway, and Laree Hinshelwood for their help and enthusiasm on various facets of this project.

Jerry Bledsoe, the greatest expert on stock car racing that I knew, heard me out at the very beginning (“You’re doing what?”) and was an inspiration and a great critic. Jerry’s Down Home Press also published an early biography of Dale Earnhardt by Frank Vehorn that was most helpful in documenting races that happened decades ago.

Tom Deitz, who knows more about cars than a medievalist and fantasy novelist has any right to, kept me straight on mechanical details and the fine points of drag racing.

And thanks to you who are reading this, for being willing to read a novel set in the world of NASCAR-that makes you part of the miracle.

Sharyn McCrumb