I walked outside and saw a plumb of smoke in turn four, white against a
lovely blue sky. I hurried to pit road to see what was the matter —
there was a clatter of activity — and there was the No. 17 car (DW's)
sitting there with a mashed hood and smoke billowing upward.
Oh, oh! I could see my lead and notebook going up in smoke.
I hurried down there, found that Darrell and whoever he wrecked with (Dave Marcis, I think) were fine and got a few quotes.
I rushed back to the press center and made the Bill Elliott story my
feature for Sunday. Naturally, I made the Darrell Waltrip piece my lead
story for the next day, and I reworked my notebook so I had a lede
(newspaper parlance for the lead of a story) note to replace DW.
As I recall, there was more to it than a wreck. I don't think they used
radios in practice back then, and this wreck may have produced a rule
that forced Cup teams to use radios during practice. Perhaps that came
out while we were writing; maybe it came later. I don't remember.
I didn't rush, but within an hour and a half after I saw the smoke, the
stories were done. I'd used my copy-editing skills to craft what I'd
already written into something almost totally different.
The guys at the News and Courier (it would become the Post and Courier a couple of years later) probably had no idea what I went through, and they wouldn't have cared.
It was the first time I'd had to deal with something like that, and I
found it exhilarating. I was dealing with "breaking news" of the sports
kind, and I didn't mind the extra work at all.
It was a good weekend all around. Elliott and Waltrip both raced on
Saturday, I filed my stories for Sunday, then stopped somewhere in
northern Florida and watched "The Jetsons" movie. Then I ate somewhere
and headed home.
I expected the extra work to be a pain in the butt. Instead, it was fun.
More EDITOR@WORK blog entries
Entries from The Dog Blog
Blog entries from The Auto Racing Journal
(a book of great stories about the Intimidator)
(the book of great NASCAR stories)
More blog entries by Tom Gillispie
Anecdotes by Tom Gillispie
