Issue 15: A Land Without Law

I haven’t lived a crazy life. I know you all see me as this renegade living life to the fullest, pushing the boundaries of what is possible, and inspiring millions daily. However, I’m just a regular fella with a handful of fancy words. Until recently, I never dreamed of fame and fortune, but after the unprecedented success of this newsletter, I can hardly go to the Porsche dealership without being recognized. My butler delivers me letters from fans by the sackful. I wanted to see if I had lost touch with the common man. I wanted to see if I could still be one of the guys. The answer to that lies somewhere between “yes” and “no”. 

If you aren’t a major gearhead like myself, you may not know that the beginning of a NASCAR race is not like the beginning of a horse race. First of all, NASCAR has a lot more horsepower ironically. More to the point, in horse racing, they open the gates and the horses go from full stop to full sprint. In NASCAR, they start with pace laps. Pace laps allow for the cars to get their engines warmed up and to get themselves more into their starting positions. A slower paced warm up. When I arrived at Talladega’s GEICO North Park on Friday night, I expected that evening to act as a pace lap for the weekend. It was not. 

Don’t get me wrong, there was a bit of chillin before wildin; but not much. I will not be stating exactly what happened throughout the weekend, rather, I will give some highlights, observations, and lessons learned. You can pick your reason for why I’m not telling the timeline of the weekend. Be it to not incriminate anyone, I can’t remember exactly what all happened, or a combination of the two, I truly believe the “why things happened” behind the stories is more important than the “what happened.” 

The number 1 observation, the thing that transcended and rang more true than anything else, is the fact that everyone HATES Kyle Busch. I’m not kidding nor exaggerating. “F*** Kyle Busch” is a more common greeting than, “Hi”. In fact, we got out of multiple sticky situations and near fights by stating those magic words. The following story is in no way modified nor exaggerated but is exactly what happened per my recollection. I watched a young man walk up to a group of men standing around a fire. The fire had been built on the ground with no sign of a fire pit nor way of stopping potential spreading. That is beside the point but was true of the majority of fires I witnessed. The campsite where the fire was built was adorned with symbols of and devotion to the University of Alabama. The young man walked up to the fire, basked in the warmth for a moment, and said to the generous men who allowed him to partake in their camp site, “I heard Bear Bryant was gay.” He had heard no such thing but was trying to instigate a fight for no reason at all. “What did you just say?” the men asked, not because they didn’t hear, but rather they couldn’t believe they heard what they had heard. Incredulity rather than inaudibility. “GO VOLS!” retorted the young man as he began to back away with the confidence of a much larger man than he. The actually larger men began to get angry, understandably. I immediately stepped in and, with all the poise and elegance of a professional linguist such as I am, said, “Aye! He’s an idiot but F*** KYLE BUSCH!!! Right?!?” to which the group, seemingly forgetting everything else, almost Pavlovianly, exclaimed back, “F*** KYLE BUSCH!” No fight broke out. 

Lesson Learned – NASCAR fandom encapsulates the entire range of human beliefs. I met people who, in no uncertain terms, reminded me racism is still alive. I also met people who, in no uncertain terms, showed kindness and extreme generosity to all. Semi-related (speaking of ideas, not married couples in Talladega, Alabama) is the next story. I saw the door to a camper swing open. Standing in the doorway was a woman caught somewhere between dressed and undressed. Further inside the camper was a man caught somewhere between dressed and undressed. There was a man stumbling down the road in front of the camper. He was caught somewhere between dressed and undressed. He saw the woman. He may or may not have seen the man. He stopped in his tracks, walked to the steps of the camper, pleaded his case, and was invited inside. Kindness and extreme generosity to all. But seriously, there was a group of men who made an entire crawfish boil late Saturday night and gave it all away to anyone who needed a bite to eat. 

I mentioned in the intro I saved a life. There used to be a series of Coke commercials about kindness begetting kindness or a smile yielding smiles in others. Likewise, I was inspired by the generosity of the crawfish boil. Two young men stumbled their way through our camp at one point. They were each wearing white t-shirts with various tally marks. One man had 18 tally marks, the other had 24. We learned they were each attempting to beat Wade Boggs’ record of drinking more than 70 beers in a single day. To be fair to the king, Boggs did it on a single cross-country flight. The tally marks were their total beers so far that day. Seeing the state they were in, we offered them some chicken wings and bean dip. They ate their fill and went on their way. I believe we, if not saved their lives, prolonged them ever so slightly. Other guests that made their way through our camp included a 17 year old boy who was hiding from the police because he couldn’t afford to get a DUI. He had 3 reckless driving charges already.  We also met a guy who I literally remember nothing about. He just wandered up, talked to us for a moment, and left. 

Interesting Character – We interacted with someone I will call The Whiskey Sherpa. At one point late Saturday night, we were in the infield of Talladega. We had a craving for whiskey. The whiskey place was cash only. We didn’t have cash. One man did. He guided us to our poor decision. He said, “Cashapp me $100 and I will give you $100 cash.” Done. He then leaned near to me and whispered, “What whiskey will not cure, there is no cure for.” He walked away into the crowd. The whiskey was not good. The Whiskey Sherpa was. 

I went undercover. I mixed and I mingled. I learned, I taught, I almost fought. I saw a race. I saw racism. I slept less than 10 hours total. I slept in my car. I celebrated my brother. I saw things I wish I could forget. I forgot things I wish I remembered. 

I mentioned the “why” of Talladega is more important than the “what.” I still believe that to be true. Talladega was wild. A lot of insane and crazy things happened. There were bad people and there were good people. A few weeks ago, I wrote about being unique. I wrote about being yourself and not trying to be someone else. A lot of people live their lives doing what they are supposed to do and trying to be who they are supposed to be. They don’t have a natural outlet for self expression or authenticity. Somewhere in history, Talladega became, as I have said, a lawless land. It seems people have all this pent up expression and oddity inside and this is the place to let it all out. However, they don’t have an emotional pace lap and way overdo it to the point of primal, sometimes hateful, ego driven expression. There seems to be a sense of moving from “should” in the real world to “should” in madness. “If you want to be crazy, this is what you do.” There is almost a reluctance by many to the supposed acts of freedom. That is the difference between guys making their own crawfish boil or even attempting to beat Boggs (proper self expression) and people screaming nasty things just to be radical. It’s like when kids first learn to cuss and put it poorly into sentences to seem cool. Forced rebellion leading to unauthentic self expression. Express yourself, but do it authentically and kindly.

Communal, tribal, radical: Talladega.