Leigh Montville - At the Altar of Speed: The Fast Life and Tragic Death of Dale Earnhardt

There might have been a hole in the sun. That was how different everything felt after Dale Earnhardt died. The props for familiar fun were laid out in their familiar places on this little piece of the infield at the Talladega Superspeedway eight weeks laterthe canvas and plastic lawn chairs in front of Terry Higginss thirty-foot Pace Arrow motor home, the camping tents and the coolers behindbut the day seemed as hollow as the beer keg that had been unloaded with a boiiiiiing from the side door on Thursday night at the end of the seven-hour drive from Hixson, Tennessee.

What now? What?

A keg holds 170 cups of beer, Terry Higgins said, because this is what he always said, what everybody said, trip after trip. OK, do the math. There were ten guys in the motor home. Two of them dont drink.

And I couldnt drink because I was driving, Steve Fox said.

And Steve couldnt drink because he was driving, Higgins continued. So thats seven guys who were drinking. The keg held 170 cups of beer. Do the math. Seven hours. Seven guys. The keg was empty when we got here.

What now? What?

For ten straight years, the mathematics of beer consumption had been a running boast, a challenge, a fine countrified primal scream of April as the same cast of midlife characters attended the Talladega 500, the first of NASCARs two annual Winston Cup visits to the Alabama track. The keg is for the trip and then we have twenty-nine cases of beer and six bottles of liquor for the weekend! Including a fifth of Jack and a fifth of Crown Royal! Do the math! Two years ago we RAN OUT of beer! We re here to kick some serious ass! We re here to party, we re here to What? The beer, the fun, now had become almost an obligation. The ass-kicking was out of the question.

The three days at the track stretched across the calendar as if they were some mandatory appearance at some mandatory function. Be there. Do the business. Go home. There was a joyless form to everything, but certainly no direction. One step simply followed another.

We didnt know what to do, Terry Higgins said. Should we come? Not come?

We came. Were here. And we still dont know what to do.

None of us.

An army without a cause is no army at all.

The ten guys in that motor home, nine are Dale Earnhardt fans, Higgins said. Solid Dale Earnhardt fans. Total. The tenth guy, Jim Davis, hes a Jeff Gordon fan, but even he loved Dale Earnhardt. Look at him. Hes wearing a Dale Earnhardt hat.

I like Gordon, Jim Davis said from underneath his black baseball cap, but I know whos the king. Theres never been another one like him. There never will be another one.

Dale

Dale

Dale

The unexpected events of February 18, 2001, when the forty-nine-year-old stock car legend the seven-time Winston Cup champion, The Intimidator himself, crashed his familiar No. 3 black Goodwrench racing machine into the wall at over 180 miles per hour on the final lap on the final straightaway of the Daytona 500, virtually dead on impact, had caused tremors across the country that no one could have expected. Whod have thought something like this could have such an effect? The furniture of countless everyday lives somehow had been rearranged. More than rearranged. Someone had removed the big living-room couch. Maybe the color television set, too.

Whod have thought?

I watched the race on television at the bar. I saw the crash, Higgins said. I knew he was hurt, just the way he hit, but hed been in a lot of crashes. Hed always walked away. I was here for the one at Talladega in 96. The one where he was upside down and someone drove right into him? That looked a lot worse than this one. Then I got the call. I was driving my son home. A guy said Dales dead. I couldnt believe it. Im not ashamed to say I started crying. Im not ashamed at all.