Birth of a Passion

The main activity that my dad and I shared together was motor racing. I was carried into a short-track (may have been Old Bridge, NJ) when I was 2 or 3 years old. It was a NASCAR race and the noise was too much for me. I screamed bloody-murder and my dad had to take me out to the parking lot.
That was my one and only negative racing experience. As I grew older, I remember watching what little racing there was on TV with my dad. My earliest memories of televised racing were of the “Wide World of Sports” stuff – like tape delayed Indy 500 coverage and I believe they carried the finish of the 24hrs of Le Mans live back then. I can see Chris Economaki in those thick, black plastic glasses holding that skinny silver microphone like it was yesterday.
My next memory of a live racing experience was going to the US Grand Prix at Watkins Glen in 1964, I was six years old. I guess the memories of that experience at Old Bridge years before were still fresh in my mind, because I remember asking my dad before we left, “Is it going to be loud?”
“Nah,” he answered. “They sound sorta like bacon frying in a pan.”
Don’t ask me where he got that analogy from, but it was effective enough to allay the fears of a six year old.
I remember getting ready to leave for the Glen in the darkness of the early morning. As the family was gathering by the door to leave my father pointed to a picture and story in a newspaper that was lying on the table. It had something to do with where we were going and it just added to the mystery and excitement.
I know that each one of us has powerful memories of some overwhelming sensory event that took place in our young lives. For me it was the sound of Formula 1 engines echoing off the hills and color splashed trees of upstate New York in 1964. It was the most awesome sound I had ever heard, as musical as it was powerful. It touched something way down deep in my soul.