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)
