The Days Of Bologna Sandwiches Are Gone

by Motor Sports Unplugged | January 3, 2012 at 04:49 am

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This is the time of year Sprint Cup teams most anticipate. A new season approaches.

The crackle of welders and high-pitch whistle of air sanders help new cars take shape. Color schemes are wrapped and contingency decals are added to fenders. A new year of racing is about to begin.

A vast number of changes have taken place in Cup racing over the past 30 years, but what’s done during the short yet productive weeks of winter have remained very much the same.

I can make such a statement firsthand, as I once worked as a crewman for Richard Childress Racing during the 1980 season.

After I drove race cars on local North Carolina short tracks a year or so out of high school with limited success, I decided to pursue a career with Childress when he was behind the wheel of his own Chevrolets.

From 1969 until the summer of 1981, when he hired Dale Earnhardt to drive his cars, Childress enjoyed a rather impressive career. Even though he went winless he managed six top-fives and 76 top-10s in 285 starts.

Teams raced with little in those days. There were usually four or five cars in the fleet as opposed to the 15 or 20 teams have today. But the cars were nicely built and made up of bodies and parts ordered off the Detroit assembly lines.

An engineer was someone who pulled coal and corn on local train tracks. Specialists were those who wore long white coats and diagnosed complicated medical conditions.

Testing? That was something routinely done in math and science classes in high schools and colleges. It would be another decade or so before specialization – engineers and such – came into play.

Being a crew member then required a general knowledge of race cars and an incredibly willing attitude to do whatever it took to get the car race ready.

That meant a lot of very long days and, in many cases, many long nights doing a number of jobs.

The only job description then was the word “work" and it covered everything - from running for parts to changing tires on race day.

Lunch was 20 minutes of bologna and cheese sandwiches on a chassis jig and then back to work.

Childress often brownbagged it with us and talked about the fun he had racing against fellow shoestring owner-drivers such as James Hylton, Joe Frasson and Cecil Gordon.

The offseason between 1979 and 1980 was extremely quiet. Racing ended in November, as is the case today, but afterward, it was the true definition of dead of winter until engines were fired in mid-January on the road course at Riverside Calf.

For the teams the offseason was consumed by the first two races of the year and the cars that would carry Childress through them – the road course at Riverside and the Daytona 500.

The modest single-building that housed the entire RCR operation was located on Gumtree Road in Midway, N.C. just south of Winston-Salem.

A small lobby and office at the entrance led to a open general shop area with an engine teardown room to the immediate right. At the rear of the shop was an enclosed area for steam cleaning cars as they came back after races.

That was the entire operation - nothing like the normal state-of-the art mega shops of today.

Like every other employee I usually stayed busy with a vast number of tasks. But my main job was to help disassemble engines that had just come off the race track.

They were disconnected from the transmission, pulled out of the car, placed on an engine stands and taken apart piece by piece. The car was steam cleaned and send to a body area for repairs. Then it was refurbished with anything electrical or mechanical within the car and ready to race again.

Truthfully, it was a pretty simple process by a crew of no more than a dozen workers - mostly consisting of volunteers.

I still harass Childress concerning a funny story that happened in the summer of 1980. After I arrived at the shop around 7:30 one morning, Childress called me into the teardown room, the place where he usually held meetings with individual crew members.

A bit nervous at first, I wondered, “What does the boss want to talk with me about?’”

He pulled up metal stools. We talked about high school a bit and how I still lived at home with my parents in nearby Welcome, the location of his present-day mammoth operation.

He said that if I would allow him to hold a week’s pay (about $125 at the time) until the first of July, he would be able to buy tires for Dover.

He was operating on a shoestring and his request offered evidence of just how tight his racing budget really was.

I readily agreed. He bought the tires and paid me just as he said he would.

Thirty years later, I kid him about how I still don’t remember getting paid and how the principle $125 plus a great deal of interest owed should add up to a lot of money, something he has plenty of today after numerous championships and wins.

He just grabs me by the back of the neck and says, “Sure thing, ol’ buddy. The check is in the mail!” We always have a good laugh each time I bring it up.

One thing is clear: The dynamic of stock car racing has changed dramatically over the years.

The days of bologna and cheese sandwiches and $125 loans are long gone.

But what has always remained is the fun of racing and the added excitement of getting started for a new year.

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