The First Family of Racing by Earl Hayden & Danny May

Author:Earl Hayden & Danny May [Hayden, Earl]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2014-08-12T18:30:00+00:00

Working for the Weekend

There was a lot of traveling on the weekends. That was part of it. When they started road racing, we had to travel a lot further. There was a series in Texas that let them do it at a young age.

That’s what Tommy was really good about: thinking ahead and packing the box truck. I mean perfect.

They’d start working on it a few nights in a row and then throw it all in on the last night. I’d get home from work at four on Friday, and that meant they had an hour to pack the truck from the time they got home from school till the time I got home from work. When I got home it was straight to the box truck.

I’d drive all night, no sleep. It would take 12 or 14 hours sometimes. If we left at four in the afternoon, we’d get there at six in the morning. Usually sign-ups would be about seven.

During the daytime I might sleep a little. At that time, we were taking a guy with us who was a really good mechanic. I might catnap a lot to get through the day, but back then I didn’t need that much sleep like I do now. I can’t stay up now. Nine o’clock and I’m ready for bed.

Practice, qualifying, and heats were on Saturday. We’d race all day Sunday and then leave about six Sunday night and head home.

I had two fuel tanks on the box truck, so I didn’t have to stop much while they all slept through the night. I had beds in there, so they’d get to sleep most of the way. We’d get back in Owensboro at seven Monday morning and they had to be at school at eight. As soon as we got home, they had to take showers and get to school.

They’d make it to school, but it might have been a little rough on them on Mondays. I might sleep a few hours and go into work at noon. That was their middle school years mostly, maybe up until freshman and sophomore year when they turned 16.

Rose deserves as much credit as I do. She did a lot. I mean everything under the sun . . . she’d pack the coolers, cook all those meals, have lunch laid out, did a lot of cleaning of leathers and boots, and she’d take care of the boys when they were cut and bruised. She played a big part in it.

Driving all night and being gone all weekend—it was fun, but I knew I had to do that then. I was looking at that five-years-down-the-road plan and I knew I had to do that only till they were 16 when a factory would hopefully take them. It wasn’t like I’d have to do that forever. It was like a little light at the end of the tunnel.

Another thing I liked about those weekends was being able to look at the results on a Sunday night and see how we were doing.

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