I’ve been out in the barn putting a motor together.  It’s hot.  I’m sweaty and greasy.  Yet I’m feeling pretty good.  I’m going to race again.  It’s been more than a year since I sat behind the wheel of my race car.  I’ve considered giving it up.  I’ve seriously thought about selling the car and the parts I’ve stock piled over the years.  At least I think I’ve thought seriously about it.  I’ve never told anyone that any of it was for sale.  I keep wondering why I want to do it.  I’m forty three years old.  I keep telling myself that I’m not trying to impress anybody by doing it.  I truly think I’m not, but I can’t be for sure.  Such is the nature of one’s vanity.  I really love dirt track racing.  It satisfies the inner and outer hillbilly in me.  I love watching it about as well as I like doing it.  I could just go watch.  That’s what I’ve been doing, but here I am out in the barn sweating and greasy.  Why?

     I think I can answer why easily.  I recently went to watch the races.  I’m setting there really loving watching guys, and a few girls, flying around the track trying their best to pass the next guy or hold off the guy that’s doing the passing and something hit me.  I started looking inside the cars and watching the driver.  I started to remember what’s going on in one’s mind when your out there.  I saw a friend of mine get tagged in the back and spun out.  I couldn’t wait for him to get back on the track.  I knew what was fixing to happen.  I knew he was hot.  I knew he would drive as hard as he could to catch the guy.  He put on quite a little show for the remaining laps.  He didn’t catch the guy but you could tell he was trying.  I started feeling like a driver again.  I started seeing the race as if I were driving.  That felt good.  My nerves seem to come alive.  I knew then that I was going to drive again and have a little fun.  I’ve never raced in the big classes-the expensive ones.  I’ve always raced the lower classes where the cars don’t go quite as fast or the payout isn’t near as big.  That’s ok.  I know there are some very competitive people in the more expensive classes, but you ought to try and beat a guy that rolled into the races and entered with his last dollar.  He wants to win badly.  He needs to win.  That guy, or girl, will race the hell out of you.  That’s fun when you can be up in the front and contending with those guys that spend every waking moment working on getting faster.  Learning how to get faster.  Those guys are tough to beat.  I promise they’re tough to beat.  I’ve gotten to do that on occasion.  A lot of times I end up in the infield because something fell off or caught fire.  Such is the case for the truly broke race car driver.  As long as I get some laps in I’m happy.  Still though.  Why spend the money and the time.  Why get nasty and sweaty for some laps around a dirt track in hicksville nowhereland.  I’m getting to the answer I swear.

     It’s because it’s being done.  That’s it.  That’s the whole thing.  It’s being done.  If you love something and it’s being done, you have to do it.  I must race.  It’s being done out there in the mad American world.  People all over are working a full time job so they can come home and work another full time job getting their car ready to race.  People all over this still-wild American experiment are sweating and getting greasy so they can go get in on the action.  It’s being done and I’m doing it to.  I’m with it.  I’m in it.  You people out there already doing it better beware.  My junk heap is hitting the track.  Bump me and see what you get.  All race car drivers turn into transformers when they strap in.  If we’re pushed around we will transform.  If we are wronged we will transform.  It’s being done every Friday and Saturday night everywhere.  There’s no more western expansion.  No more wilderness to conquer.  People don’t load everything up and go somewhere where there is nothing and try to keep their family alive.  We don’t have that outlet anymore.  At least the common man doesn’t.  We strap ourselves in race cars and roll, blast, orbit, blow, tear, dig around a path that has no end.  People left their families and friends to go live in the wild wilderness.  They did this because it was being done.  I can see them standing there watching the next wagon roll out of town and thinking “if you can do it, so can I.  How dare you do this without me.”  When it’s being done you have to do it.

    I’ve been dodging rabbits lately.  I mean, I seem to be dodging them more than usual.  Rabbit dodging is a common practice when you drive out in the country.  I dodge because I don’t want to kill them even though they are delicious and I have eaten my share in my life.  I know some that say  they don’t dodge them.  I don’t really believe this.  It sounds like bravado to me.  Who runs over a little furry rabbit on purpose?  I bet Hitler wouldn’t have run over a rabbit for no reason.  Well Hitler is probably a bad example, but who runs over a rabbit for the hell of it?  I dodge them.  I used to hunt them when I was young.  Now I dodge them.  I don’t mind if you hunt them.  Hunting is fine, but I digress.

       The rabbits running into the middle of the road set me to thinking about our current political climate.  I believe I am a middle of the road type political person.  I believe a lot of us are.  Unfortunately for us, we get lumped in with nuts on the extremes within our particular party.  Both sides have nuts.  We don’t like nuts.  I must say something here.  When I say “nuts” I mean people with extreme political views.  I didn’t want anyone to get confused since we just had this big wiener picture scandal with that politician named Wiener.  Sorry I had to explain that.  I don’t know if there is a congressman Nuts but if there is I didn’t want to offend him or start a rumor that Congressman Nuts is sending pictures of his actual nuts to young women.  That would be nuts both literally and figuratively, but I digress.

        What I am talking about is this area in between both parties that we occupy.  I think we have common sense.  I  think we can compromise on almost anything.  I’m going to speak for us now and if it offends you, then you are not one of us.  I believe we can compromise on abortion.  We could easily say no more abortions unless in the case of  rape, incest, or life of the mother.  That’s reasonable.  I don’t think reasonable people believe that abortion is the best  form of birth control.  It’s just not.  We can compromise however.  We can limit who can get one with this one  big caveat-sex education must be taught in school.  I mean reasonable sex education of course.  I know what some of you nuts are thinking.  You’re thinking I’d have the janitor and the cook demonstrate various sex acts in front of a class of third graders.  I’m NOT thinking that.  I’m thinking teens need good honest information about how someone gets pregnant.  I think we must insist on this.  It’s a good compromise.  It’s right in the middle where we are.  Here’s another one- I think gays should be able to get married only we won’t call it marriage.  We’ll call it fairiage.  Fairiage has the same legal rights of marriage but it’s not marriage.  It’s Fairiage.  See how easy this is.  We can compromise on taxes and the debt ceiling and cutting spending.  We can easily do it because we are not being sucked into the crazy two party vortex.  We need a name for this new party.  It’s has to be something middle sounding and it also needs to pay homage to the rabbits who gave me this idea.  How about Centerhares?  That sounds too nasty.  Harems?  I think that’s already a nasty word.  Midfurcrats?  That sounds pretty bad as well.  Dammit, I’m undecided.

      There are all kinds of sayings that deal with repeating mistakes.  I’ll give you one of my favorites, “screw me once, shame on you.  screw me twice, shame on me.”  I understand this.  At least I believe I do.  This is how my Dad raised me and my brother.  We never got into much trouble for a mistake.  He understood that mistakes are always going to happen.  We would get into horrendous trouble if we made the same mistake twice.  I saw him use this philosophy many times in real life.  My dad worked at a factory for 35 years.  He made many close friends.  I worked there a short time when I was just out of high school.  It would always amaze me at how he dealt with issues that would come up.  I saw one of his friends borrow some money from  him.  It wasn’t a lot of money.  I remember it being something like twenty dollars or so.  Weeks went by and the guy didn’t pay him back.  I asked Dad one day if it bothered him that the guy had never paid him back.  He said it didn’t.  I asked him how this could  be.  He explained to me that he had bought this person for twenty bucks and that the guy would never ask him again for a loan.  He said twenty bucks was a cheap price to pay for a person.  He figured it was the same principle as not making the same mistakes.  He figured it was a mistake to loan the guy money and he wouldn’t make it again.  Plus he would never be put in that awkward position again by that person and if the guy did ask for another loan he would be immediately reminded of how the last one turned out.  Of course this principle wouldn’t work for large sums of money.  Maybe that’s why he never loaned more than twenty bucks. 

         I’vemade the same mistake three times this year already.  Every time I think I’m doing the right thing and it turns out I haven’t.  I know my Dad is up in the cosmos shaking his head.  The mistake I’m making has to do with patience.  Dad died in 2007 and left me in charge of taking care of the cattle for my mother.  I’ve taken care of cattle all my life.  Unfortunately, I wasn’t in charge of making decisions.  He made the decisions.  I carried them out.  Now I make the decisions.  This year I’m in charge of twenty head of first-calf heifers.  They’re new to all this.  First the bull molested them.  They were unhappy about that.  Now they’ve gained weight and are moody.  They don’t like that.  Then one day a needy calf comes oozing out of them and they don’t like that.  I watch this process closely.  Earlier in the year I watched a heifer have a calf.  After a few days it was still very skinny and seemed to be laying around a lot.  I got worried it wasn’t getting any milk or it’s mother wasn’t taking good care of it.  I fought off the  mother and grabbed it.  I carried it to the barn where I put it in a small pen with it’s mother.  I mixed some milk replacer in a big bottle.  For those of you who don’t know you bottle feed a calf just like a human baby.  The bottle is just way bigger.  I fought this little skinny calf for an hour trying to make it suck the bottle.  It bawled.  It bucked.  It kicked.  The mother is over the top of us blowing hot air out of her nostrils on me.  I finally gave up.  The calf was fighting and jumping and I stepped back and cursed it.  I told it to die.  See if I care.  Go ahead.  I hope you suffer you little ungrateful jackass.  The little skinny calf then ran right over to it’s mother and began sucking.  He was getting enough all along.  I was just impatient. 

        About a month later I was driving in the pasture and I come across a little skinny calf laying in the tall grass.  It didn’t look good to me.  Its momma was standing over there just eating hay very nonchalantly.  I walked over to the calf and it didn’t get up.  I rubbed its head and it just stared blankly at me.  I immediately went to the house and got my mother.  She drove me back out there and I loaded the calf in my lap and we sat on the tail gate as she drove us back to the barn.  The momma heifer came running over to me and smelled of the calf and of me and followed us into the pen.  I mixed a bottle for the calf.  I fought the calf.  It bawled and kicked and jumped and refused to take the bottle.  I cursed it.  I told it to die.  I told it I hoped it did die of starvation for being such an ungrateful jackass.  I walked out of the pen and my mother began to laugh.  I turned around to see the calf sucking its momma.  That’s twice.  You think I would have learned something by now.

               Four days ago the last heifer had her calf.  I happened to be close by when it occurred.  I watched the heifer lick it clean.  I came back the following day and the calf was laying down and didn’t seem to be doing very well.  I decided I had learned my lesson and would not mess with it.  The next evening the situation was the same.  The calf looked terribly skinny but I resisted the temptation.  The fourth day I couldn’t find it.  I looked everywhere.  Finally that evening i saw it laying in the shade by the fence.  It’s mother was no where near it.  I couldn’t take it any longer.  I drove over to it and rubbed it’s head.  It just stared at me.  I’m thinking this time I’m right.  I go to pick it up and it starts jumping and bawling.  I have a good grip on it.  It’s putting up a good fight, but I’m not deterred.  I will save this calf.  It gets turned around and its head gets between my legs.  I lock my legs around it’s neck.  I’m determined.  It’s pulling back hard and then it decides to jump into me.  I fall to the ground and the calf runs away with breathtaking speed.  Usain bolt would have never caught this calf.  I’m laying on the ground watching this black streak fly through the pasture.  About that time its mother came trotting up and they met a good distance from me.  She licked it and it immediately went to sucking.  I swear I heard her say to the calf, ” what did the bad man try to do to you sweetheart?”  “Did he touch you?”  That’s three.  Damn!  I’m erring all over the place here.  There’s another saying my Dad had that seems appropriate to my situation.  He used to say, “some people live and learn, some people just live.”  Put me in the second category I guess.