Dirt Track Saturday Night

July 23, 2006





When visiting rural North Carolina there is probably no better experience one can have to get the true flavor of the place than to attend a race at one of the many local speedways that can be found in many communities. This area is where NASCAR racing was born from local moonshiners creating cars fast enough to outrun the law and then creating venues to race the cars they created.




That spirit is still alive at the new 311 Speedway in Madison. Billed as the “Daytona of Dirt”, the track puts on a full bill of dirt track racing every Saturday night, something better experienced than described. I enjoy Indy Car racing, but I had never seen anything quite like this. Marika, Brian & Kathy had never been to a dirt track either, but we braved the threatening weather and headed out to watch the action.




Our incredible weather luck held, and though storms raged around us, creating incredible lightning shows, they missed the track and the entire slate of racing went off without a problem. It was hard to follow exactly what was going on, there were a series of qualifying heat races in various classes followed by the actual 20 lap features. The racing was fast and furious, the cars sliding through the turns kicking up waves of red dust in their wake, bumping and maneuvering to try to get o the front. It was something. Perhaps the most fun is when they invited fans on the track to race their personal cars between the races. Sadly we did not take or car, because we certainly would have participated, but somehow Marika’s Volvo station wagon did not quite fit in with the local’s selection of trucks and hotrods.



Earlier in the day, I had added another battlefield visit to my list of historical sites. Kathy opted to stay at home and read, so Brian & I drove over to Greensboro to visit the Guilford Court House National Battlefield. It was the first Revolutionary War site I had been to and was the site of a costly British victory in March of 1781 which led to their ultimate defeat later that year at Yorktown. The British led by Charles Earl Cornwallis defeated the Continental Army and local raw recruits led by Nathanael Greene, but the British lost so many men during the fight that they were unable to win the war itself. We watched the movie and then toured the battlefield which was also significant personally because it was the last battlefield my father visited shortly before his death.