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The early evening air was thick and heavy, filled with moist humidity, the kind that would fall later as dew and leave the ground wetter than a burst garden hose.  It had rained earlier in the day, a typical mid-summer shower in the Eastern Tennessee mountains.  This kind of mountain storm snuck up like a cat, quickly and quietly, and it left just as fast.

It was just short of 6 o’clock on Sunday night, and the regular crowd was filing into Sleepy Hollow Speedway.  In the grandstand, track regulars had already come and taped blankets down to reserve their seats.  Now, there was a line out front that stretched most of the way to the road, people standing three- and four-wide waiting for 6 o’clock and the ticket window to open.

The activity was a little more paced in the pits.  The pit gate opened at 3 p.m.  There had already been two hours of hot lap practice, starting at 4, that had just ended.

The pit area was a hardscrabble patch of ground.  Gravel roads led from the highway to the pits, through the pits and to the edge of the weary paved quarter mile that served as a race track here in the hills outside of Flag Pond, Tenn.

Buzzy Ethridge sat on the tailgate of a beaten and battered Ford pickup sipping iced tea from a plastic Tupperware tumbler.  Buzzy was lean and looked lanky even though he stood just 5-foot-10.  He had hair as black as coal and dark green eyes that sat way back in his head.  From that distant perch, those eyes seemed to be able to see everything but keep it all at a distance.

Buzzy’s face, always locked in a semi-sad expression, was marked with the ruddy remnants of adolescent acne.  He covered the sides as best he could with shaggy mutton-chop sideburns and grew a beefy, fuzzy mustache.  He sat on the tailgate, dangling and kicking his feet in a rhythmic pattern, every sip of tea leaving more and more moisture on the whiskers lapping at the edge of his mouth.

“Gonna be another wet and sticky one out here tonight,” he said to no one in particular.  “Once that sun goes down, it’s gonna get slick.”

With that, Buzzy jumped from the tailgate, slugged the last couple of sips of tea from the tumbler, placed it on top of the cooler and began to walk away.  He strolled past a couple of clusters of men chattering about pigs and this year’s crop and up the paved ramp that leads from the pits to the race track.

At Sleepy Hollow, that ramp intersects the race track at the end of the fourth corner.  The opening pushes the retaining wall on the front stretch out in flaring fashion and makes the fourth turn much wider than its twin in turn two.

Buzzy was staring at that front stretch wall as he hit the top of the ramp and started the slight decline onto the racing surface at Sleepy Hollow.  His mind was racing as he began walking the length of the track.

It was a couple of minutes after six, the front gate had just opened and the fans were filtering into the grandstands.  Qualifying would start in 30 minutes, and Buzzy was where he was every other Sunday night, from late March to late October, at just after six o’clock.  He was walking the track at Sleepy Hollow Speedway.

The walk was unconventional, and sometimes controversial.  A couple of older drivers tried to get the practice banned years ago when Buzzy, just 19 at the time, first started racing at the Hollow and racking up wins.  Seventeen years later, Buzzy was the older driver, and if he wanted to walk the track at six, then, by golly, he would walk the track.  He’d earned the right.

Some people liked to say Buzzy owned the race track. He may not have held the deed, but he did have a set of keys.  Former promoter Marty Akroyd gave him those more than a dozen years ago when Buzzy spent so much time at the track practicing on week nights that Akroyd got tired from driving over from his home in Marysville to open and close the place.

Buzzy certainly owned the track when he was racing on it.  Over the past 17 years, he won more than 100 late model stock car feature events, set fast time 65 times and finished as the track champion 13 years, including the last six in a row.  He was well on his way to a seventh straight this year.  It was mid-July and he was way out ahead of Lenny Meadows, Phil Woods and Frank Heyden.

Buzzy knew Sleepy Hollow Speedway like the proverbial back of his hand.  He knew every crevice, every rock, every seam and every stone.  Most had been his friends, so every week about six, he took a quick stroll to say hello.

He knew that on a day like this, when it had rained and now the humidity was up that the track would be different by nine o’clock or so, when the feature event was run, compared to now.  The dew would fall and add moisture to a track that already oftentimes “weeped” in the corners with water seeping up through the ground.

He knew that the sap had quit running in the big maple tree that hung over turn three.  Earlier in the season, the sap would fall on the track and add a natural adhesive that helped the race car hold the track.  In his walk, he’d see the sap was dry and know to back off a bit more early heading into turn three.

He knew the quirky angle of the wall exiting turn four.  The ridge that was the banking of the corner ran naturally out to the wall, but the wall jutted away to make room of the pit access road.  The quick way off four, and therefore down the front straightaway, was to put the right rear tire on top of the ridge and hammer the gas.  The car would follow the ridge until it intersected the wall.  Since the wall was trailing away, it didn’t slow the car down, merely guided it back into a straight line and sort of shot it down the straightaway.

As Buzzy walked down the front stretch, he looked toward the grandstand section in turn one.  There, sitting about four rows from the bottom, was a teenage boy in blue jeans and a yellow Pennzoil Racing t-shirt.  He had sandy blonde hair and dark green eyes, set way back in his head.

He smiled and waved as Buzzy got into turn one.

“Hey Pop!” the young man yelled.

“Hi David,” Buzzy answered with a small wave and blank stare.

*****

David Ethridge was 15 years old, still seven months short of his 16th birthday and, therefore, ineligible to sign the adult waiver and buy a pit pass.  He was so excited about crossing over that line, getting from grandstand kid to pit area adult, that he took a calendar and marked off in reverse order the number of days until next season’s opener, his first time in the pits.

Today was July 16.  David turned 16 on February 18.  Sleepy Hollow Speedway opened its season March 25.

When David got home tonight, he’d cross out the date on his calendar with a black Sharpie like the one his Dad used to sign autographs.  It would leave 253 more numbered days.

*****

Buzzy made his way through turn two and on toward the back stretch.  David sat down in the grandstand next to his aunt and uncle, Mike and Judy Watkins.  Mike and Judy were younger than Buzzy, and at 26 they were something of a gap between father and son, particularly on race days.

Judy was Buzzy’s sister, a hard-faced woman with skin tanned almost to a leather texture.  She smoked Camel Lights and cursed the other drivers as they raced around Sleepy Hollow.

Judy had been coming to the track since the night Buzzy first raced.  In all the years and all the races, at tracks all over Tennessee, Kentucky, North Carolina, Virginia, Alabama and Mississippi, she’d missed only three races.

Mike was less a fanatic, marrying into the racing life when he married Judy.  The two had met at the Lemmons Warehouse over in Jamestown.  Mike was a truck driver and Judy charted inventory in the office.

They started dating when they were 21 and got married just short of two years later.  Now, with their third anniversary coming up next month, they were past newlywed and before cranky married couple.

Judy had been sitting at the race track with David since he was just a few weeks old.  She helped his mother, Rose, diaper him in the track office and warmed formula for him in boiling water in the back of the concession stand.

Judy chased him around the sand pit and pushed him in the swing when he was a toddler.  She held him on her lap when he’d fall asleep and carry him to the pits to be put in his father’s truck at the end of the night.

As involved as Judy had always been in David’s rearing, she wasn’t prepared for the change after Rose died, killed on a cold early March night eight years ago in a traffic accident coming home from Arizona.

Rose’s oldest sister, Mary Ann, was ill in Tucson, so Rose went to visit for a few weeks while Mary Ann recuperated.  She drove back across country alone, making it to within three miles of Flag Pond.  Her car ran off the right side of the road, skidded into a ditch, flipped and came to rest at the foot of a tree.  Police say she must have fallen asleep at the wheel.

After the funeral, most of the racers at Sleepy Hollow thought Buzzy would take a few weeks off and miss the opening race at the end of the month.  They were wrong.

He painted a yellow rose on the hood with a small red heart in the middle with Rose’s initials, RAE, underneath.  The yellow rose was her favorite, the flowers she chose for their wedding.  The heart was a symbol of his love.

On the day of the opening race, Buzzy took one wreath to the site of the wreck and another to the graveyard.  He then towed the race car to the track, taped a small satin yellow rose in his firesuit, set fast time, won the dash, won his heat, and won the feature.

People in the grandstand were crying as pit announcer Harvey Carter interviewed Buzzy in victory lane.

“She knows this one’s for her,” he said.  “She’ll always be riding with me.”

*****

By the time Buzzy finished his walk and headed back down the ramp into the pits, the public address system was cracking and humming.

“All late models.  All late models, pull to the infield for qualifying.”

Buzzy strolled across the pits toward a Lumina.  The sides were ruffled and the fenders rumpled, but the combination of bright blue and electric orange shone through the scars of a summer full of side-by-side racing.

Buzzy approached the car, put his right hand on the roof and faced toward the front.  He kicked his right leg up and then bent it into the window.  His left leg followed, leaving him sitting on the top of the door ledge where the window would be on a passenger car.

He sat in that pose for a moment, staring at the yellow rose on the hood, slapped the roof and slipped his shoulders between the door panel and the roof and into the car.  He twisted into the seat and began untwisting the safety belts that would wrap around his waist and over his shoulders, placing them carefully so as to not crush the tiny satin yellow rose that was stitched inside his racing suit.

He laid the belts flat against his body, gathered them in his lap and hooked the buckles together.  He reached across to the right floor board, picked up his helmet and pulled the flame retardant gloves from inside.

After pulling the helmet down over his head, he pushed his hands into the gloves.  Finally, he reached up and placed the window net into its rail just inside the roof line above his left shoulder.

He was ready to move.

With a flip of a switch, a 600 horsepower small block Chevy engine roared to life.  Buzzy raised and lowered the RPMs with a flick of the accelerator, a T-shaped steel rod covered by a small cage.

He pumped the clutch with his left foot and he revved the engine with his right.  After a couple of seconds, he put the left foot on the floor, held the right steady, put the car in first gear and headed across the pit area toward the track.

The pair of two’s painted on the door, leaning slightly forward like a person in a chair listening to a good story, seemed to settle back as the car climbed the ramp and headed toward the track.  But once the car reached the top, rolled over that ridge and hit the track, the recline was gone.  The “22” snapped forward and looked ready to rumble.  Just like the driver.

*****

The crowd stood as the three cars roared past the grandstand and under the flag stand.  Chris Duvall unfurled the white flag, signifying that just one lap remained in the 25-lap late model stock car feature.  Just another 14 second run around this quarter mile high banked oval and someone would be a winner and everybody else a loser.

“That’s the bad part about racing,” Buzzy liked to say.  “In basketball or football, there’s a bunch of winners in every game.  Two teams play.  Half win and half lose.  In racing, there’s only one winner.”

A few years later, the No Fear apparel company captured Buzzy’s philosophy and put it on a T-shirt.  “Second place is the first loser.”

Tonight, the crowd was up and hollering to see who would win and who would be the first loser.  Buzzy was battling with one of his arch rivals, Lenny Meadows, for the win with Jim Galloway running right behind them in third.

It was mid-summer, and the track was greasy on the outside.  On a night like this, most of the drivers in the late model class just fell in line and raced.  They’d wait for somebody to slide up in the middle of the corner, or they’d use the nose of their car to encourage it, so they could slip by on the inside.

Buzzy was different.  Even on the most greasy night like tonight, when the track had started slick from an afternoon rain, mixed with heavy dew in the middle of the program and now had a layer of oil on it from Price Ford’s perpetually leaking, always wheezing engine, Buzzy seemed to find a second groove to take his Lumina to the front.

Tonight, he started his charge from ninth position.  He made it to third, tucking in behind Meadows and Galloway, after 12 laps.  He stayed there until the 22nd lap, swinging his car into the outside of the first turn and starting the climb over the last two hills before victory lane.

Racing on the outside at a track like Sleepy Hollow was dangerous.  One flick of the wrist from the driver on the inside and the man on the outside was looking at a long week of repairs to his wrecked racer.

Buzzy had been there, burning enough midnight oil to fill a refinery.  Tonight, he was on the outside again, clawing his way past Galloway and nosing up on Meadows as the trio drove under Duvall’s flag and toward the first turn.

Buzzy held the hammer down until he heard Meadows crack the throttle in his black and silver Thunderbird.  Buzzy counted a quick second, pulled up on the throttle with his right foot and pumped the brakes with his left.  Galloway darted into and out of the mirror mounted just inside his driver’s door.

The smell of burning rubber filled Buzzy’s nose.  He glanced outside the window at the right rear tire of Meadows’ car.  The young driver from Knoxville was leaning heavily on the outside edge, hanging the car out as hard as he could trying to keep a hold of first place.

With his left foot still pumping the brake, Buzzy slammed his right all the way to the floor.  The engine lurched and roared and he felt the right rear tire of his car shake and wobble.  He snatched the wheel right and back left to guide the car back into a straight line as the three cars exited the second turn and started down the back stretch.

Since his car was on the outside, Buzzy was able to hit the gas just a snatch earlier than Meadows.  That wisp of a second pulled his car off the corner and gave him momentum to carry down the back straight and into turn three.

By the time the two cars passed the mid point of the straight away, where the guard rail opened for the exit road to the pits, Buzzy’s Lumina was even with Meadow’s Thunderbird.  Buzzy glanced over at Meadows, his open faced silver helmet pointing straight ahead, and then peeked in the mirror to see Galloway lining up between the two cars.

Just like in turn one, Buzzy waited until he heard Meadows back out of the gas, drew a slip of a breath and cracked his own throttle.  He pumped the brakes.  One.  Two.  Three.  And steered into the corner.

He was looking out at the right front tire on Meadows car this time, meaning the nose of his own car was well ahead, as he slammed the throttle back to the floor, slid the car off the corner and drifted it out toward the outside retaining wall.

Two thousand pairs of eyes were locked as the cars exited the corner.  Buzzy, on the outside, drifted out with his right rear tire grabbing at the pavement and clawing toward the odd shaped wall.  Meadows, on the inside, fought to hang on as his car groaned and slid with its rear end moving further and further to the right.  Galloway, trapped behind, turned hard to the left and looked for a third lane close to the grass.

Buzzy’s car brushed the wall ever so gently, ending its slide and putting the car back into a straight line.  The blue and orange Lumina grabbed the track and looked like it hunkered down as it started the final run to the checkered flag.  The “22” on the doors seemed to lean even further forward, trying to beat the car to the line.

The first man to steer under the flag stand would get all the glory, an envelope with $650 cash in it and a $20 plastic and chrome trophy.  He’d also get his picture made holding a checkered flag and sticking the index finger of his right hand in the air.

Track photographer Nate Peters would send a copy of that picture to more than a dozen of the weekly newspapers that carried results from the Hollow.  Public relations director Pete Andrews would add a story about the race and a summary of the results.

Second place got none of this.  It was the first loser.

Buzzy’s car was steady and heading toward the win.  Galloway’s car was straight and clawing, but posed no threat.  But in the middle, the young Meadows had the gas on the floor and his car sliding.

Buzzy caught sight of the Meadows car about a third of the way down the straight away, less than 100 yards from where Duvall stood unfurling the checkered flag.  The motion of the car in his peripheral vision caught Buzzy’s attention.  Without even looking, he knew what was coming.

Meadows broke the back end loose coming off the corner and now, having over corrected, he was coming across toward the wall where’s Buzzy’s car was running.  Buzzy’s hand flicked the wheel slightly to the right by instinct, like an expressway driver trying to miss a nail.  His right rear fender grazed the wall.

It wasn’t enough.  The nose of Meadows’ Thunderbird hit Buzzy’s car squarely in the left rear tire.

The impact ripped the wheel from Buzzy’s hands for a second, trapping the left thumb in the spoke.  It sounded like someone had set off a pack of firecrackers inside the steel bodied car.  The smell of flames and rubber surrounded him as he fought to get his head back upright and the steering wheel back in his hands and tried to find the white mark that signified the top.

The car lurched and headed to the left.

Buzzy snatched the wheel, pulling down with his right hand.  The white mark popped to the top as he pumped on the brakes.  He pulled down with his right hand again.

The grandstands, silent for a split second as Meadows and Buzzy came together, shrieked as Buzzy fought to control his car.  The Meadows ride had hit hard, head long into the outside wall.  It’s broken radiator was already spewing like a geyser as Buzzy’s car careened toward the inside retaining wall.

Lost to all for the moment was Galloway.  When Buzzy took to the high road, he’d gone low, hoping to dig past Meadows and steal second.  Now, he was thinking about a win.

Galloway’s Cutlass, a plain white ride with a simple red “3” on each door, was barreling down the front stretch with the engine wide open.

Buzzy, his brain scrambled from the first blow, forgot Galloway was even in the county.  He grabbed the wheel, steered toward the inside wall and started trying to head back toward the flag.

The impact from Galloway’s car was twice that of Meadows.  The two came together about 40 yards shy of the finish line.  Duvall already was waving the checkered flag and flashing the yellow light by the time Galloway’s nose rammed Buzzy’s left front tire.

The sloping nose on Galloway’s car was a perfect ramp.  Hitting Buzzy’s car at about 85 miles per hour, the Galloway car turned Buzzy’s Lumina on its roof and flipped it down the straight away like a child’s toy.

The force tore both of Buzzy’s hands from the wheel and sent them flying like rag doll arms inside the cockpit.  His open face helmet came lose, his chin strap flapping and slapping him in the face like an offended woman.

His knees banged against the transmission cover, the stick shift handle snapped and slapped his upper leg.  His feet were hammered by pedals.

The noise was ringing in Buzzy’s ears and the throbbing of the bruises already starting when the car finally stopped flipping.  It was on its roof about 50 yards past the finish line.

The grandstand was stone silent as the workers reached Buzzy’s car.  Mark Donaldson, who worked on the track truck, was the first on the scene, diving headlong into the passenger side window.

Other cars were still racing down the straightaway as Donaldson’s legs hung out and thrashed.  Others rushed to the left side window.

Inside the cockpit, Buzzy tugged at his seat belts and pulled his helmet back down tight.  Dazed and confused, he didn’t realize he was hanging upside down until Donaldson slapped him across the face to get his attention.

“You okay?”

“What?”

“You okay?”

“Yeh.  Yeh.  I’m fine.”

With that, Donaldson was gone, back out of the car to signal to the crowd that everything was fine.

The place erupted.

With some help from other members of the track crew, Buzzy cut the belts loose and crawled out from under the car.  The wounds were hurting, but he climbed on top of his battered racer and stood on the bottom. He waved to the crowd and was about to get down when Duvall walked up and handed him the checkered flag.  Despite doing it on the roof, he’d crossed the line first.

Buzzy put the flag in his right hand and the trophy in his left, and smiled.

That was the picture that made all the trade papers:  the driver, standing on the bottom of the car in victory lane, a small satin yellow rose peeking from his firesuit.

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"Circular Dreams" Manuscript Copyright 1996, Tim Stephens