Dirt track Saturday night

The Chugach Range and Pioneer Peak rise over the south end of Alaska 
Raceway Park as moderns start a race on the inaugural Saturday night.

Give human beings anything that moves and soon enough we'll find a way to race with it. Perhaps nothing has captured the competitive compulsions more than the advent of the automobile, and racing them has become embedded in the American culture like almost no other. And the one type of automobile that has captured the interest more than any other is the stock car. Stock car racing has been the country's most watched spectator sport for years. Part of the allure of the stock car is almost anybody can recognize the car itself, why, it's the same Chevy Gramma drives to the store ­– almost anyway.

And, stock car racing isn't just a once-a-year  event where professional drivers steer exotic looking open-wheeled vehicles like at the Indianapolis 500 or sleek sports cars built in remote European conclaves. Nope, just about anywhere in America on a Saturday night you can find an oval where local folks are racing what could be Dad's sedan on a dirt-track seldom more than half a mile long.

In one part of that misspent youth I keep alluding to, a trip to the local track on date night constituted the go-to arena to take your favorite girl – not that she did anything but feign interest while the men discussed cars and engines and drivers while all manner of wheeled vehicles roared around the track raising dust mixing that with exhaust fumes and ear splitting noise contained within the bowl formed by the raised edges of the banked raceway.

At the time, when service stations really were service stations, each with a couple of bays with huge doors where mechanics worked on customers' vehicles, you couldn't drive by one of those gas stations without spotting some sort of wildly colorful stock car parked somewhere on the property. Today all they sport are mini marts and Subway shops.

During that aforementioned misspent youth a summer Saturday night lured us to the nearest track with its beer and loud cars, living vicariously through people who we could almost be driving cars we could almost drive ourselves.

As I thought about it, going to a stock car race sort of conflicts with what I want Alaska to be and going somehow seemed a betrayal of all that is Alaskan. But, this past Saturday night that lure came back – big time – and it was stronger than my loyalty to the North.

Every summer Sunday since I've been here this neighborhood has suffered the roars of big-bore-high-rev engines at a drag strip not half a mile away. Neighbors complained. Not me. The sounds of those Sunday races took me back to the drag strips of that youth, like music from a song that spoke to you in years past. In recent years the folks who own the strip wanted to put in an oval. Hearings were held, arguments argued, neighbor against neighbor for and against more noise and more racing in this neighborhood which is relatively quiet if you don't count the occasional rifle shot.

The Butte guards the north end of the track.

After that dust settled, the folks built their oval over there and last night the first racers took to the track. I have always meant to watch the drag races but never went. The new oval, stock car Saturday night had a lot stronger draw and I went to the races.

I was barely out of my car and walking across the dusty parking lot when the nostalgia hit almost full force. My eyes welled up and a flood of memories from the past washed over me. The occasional roar of an engine tested in the pits, the crowd, all manner of people dressed in combinations of NASCAR paraphernalia mixed with Alaskans' need to stay warm on aluminum bleachers with a healthy wind blowing down the Knik River Valley from the glacier not even 20 miles away.

There probably isn't a track in America in a more beautiful setting with Pioneer Peak looming over the south end of the oval and the Butte rising from the horizon to the north, both sometimes wearing fluorescent green when the sun briefly came out from the clouds overhead. The only thing missing was the dirt. This track is paved.

Soon enough races started and ran for about three hours.  Classics, mostly cars that looked like the Ford coupes of the 30s with wide fenders; then a class I hadn't heard of consisting of modern smaller models (think Camry); and of course modern with recognizable Chevys and Dodges, the loudest and fastest of the bunch. There's also a mini stock class with four-cylinder engines, but only one of those showed up.

None of that really mattered. I didn't know any of the drivers, didn't recognize most of the cars, barely cared who won; all I wanted to see and hear and smell was stock car racing itself, all the while feeling the cold creeping through my clothing despite long underwear, heavy wool socks, turtle neck, heavy hoodie and a winter jacket. Even back in Western New York we would feel chilled as the evening wore on. I do remember applauding particularly adept driving and some good duels between a couple of cars.

For a time I was transported to that dusty dirt track in Holland, New York, where I had spent many a happy Saturday night in years past, sipping beer and cheering over the roar of the engines and sometimes holding hands with a date who needed everything explained to her or at least I thought so. Now that I think about it there were very few second dates to the stock car races.

As the evening moved along with many delays between races that taxed the patience and made enduring the creeping cold more difficult, I was tempted to leave but just about the time I decided that, another raced started and I remained glued (maybe frozen?) to my seat. I stayed through the main feature with the moderns racing for 50 laps and then on the way out I paid $25 for a flimsy ball cap heralding the inaugural season of stock car racing in this neighborhood. 

All that's missing is the dirt.

I suspect from now on I will be content to listen to the races from my own yard as I have done with the drag races, but there probably well come another Saturday night when the lure is stronger than the resistance and I will find my way over there again.

Alaska Raceway Park