So whatever happened to the likes of Earl Balmer and other blasts from NASCAR’s past? A long-time fan wonders.

Some people say that Pres. Barack Obama is trying to do too much too soon. Some say the same about NASCAR.

This is not my father’s NASCAR. It’s still a work in progress insofar as being mine.

I can see myself in old Instamatic prints, a chubby kid in a homemade sweatshirt – I used to make my own football jerseys with painted, iron-on cutouts, the memory of which greatly embarrasses me now – posing alongside Wendell Scott or Bobby Allison, Greenville-Pickens Speedway, circa 1970.

In my soul resides prejudice for the past. Any time I see a restored old Torino or Roadrunner, it stops me in my tracks, and I think to myself, “By God, there sits a race car!”

I can’t help it if the prettiest race car I ever saw was painted electric, i.e., “Petty,” blue, with a shadowed, slanted “43” on its sides, and the only words above the back fenders were, simply, “Plymouth by Petty.” Few things displeased me as much as STP slapping garish, glow-in-the-dark orange all around that heavenly blue.

My generation has passed, though, and a man has to change with the times, even though he has no inclination. I don’t like those cars out there as much, but they’re still, after all, racing.

A man can’t turn back the clock, but he can certainly cherish memories of the past.

I’m reminded of the words to a Statler Brothers song:

Tex Ritter’s gone and Disney’s dead
And the screen is filled with sex

I don’t worry as much as about “Whatever Happened to Randolph Scott?” (that’s the title of the song) as whatever happened to Earl Balmer, Dr. Don Tarr and Neil “Soapy” Castles.

What doesn’t make it easier is reaching the point in one’s career where virtually no one in the same zip code (race tracks are big enough to have zip codes these days) recognizes any of these names.

Most of these folks, well-versed on the art of racing as it now exists, are blissfully ignorant of NASCAR’s past, and I’d probably be a lot more content if I was, too.
 

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