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Heroes Get Remembered ...

From Early Moonshine Runners ...

... turned race drivers like Buck Baker and Fonty Flock to modern heroes like Earnhardt and Wallace, tuners like Smokey Yunick and builders such as Holman & Moody, these guys are the idols of the sport. Drivers that haven't just driven these cars (you know like Jeff Gordon) they've dreamt about them, slept with them and built them with their own money. Drivers like Trickle.

When money, sponsors and TV took over auto racing they left us with a watered down tradition in the Indy 500. They got the corporate naming rights to the Charlotte Motor Speedway for $35 million, so far, the highest bid in the auction for stock car racing's tradition. The new speedways, the wide television exposure and the lavish corporate involvement, which have made the sport far more than a regional fixation, are also the reason that this tradition is for sale.

And since this is obviously The NASCAR Way, let's just go ahead and let the breweries fight it out for signage space on Curtis Turner's headstone, and concede that everything in this sport

But the true tradition of stock-car racing still moves from track to track with drivers like Trickle.

The true tradition of stock-car racing hasn't changed, even as the sport has become more popular. When women became big fans of NASCAR, that brought in families and sponsors. You see sponsors such as Tide. Years ago, it had to be Joe's Repair Shop. The drivers are a pretty close-knit family. The racing fraternity is a bunch of good people. They'll give you a can of beer once in a while and a little country music.

Trickle: A True Original

Dick Trickle. A walking definition of what it means to know who you are. If you're looking for a hero, you needn't look any further.

Trying to figure what a MBNA Pole is or why they're having a race in a lumber yard, has us looking for two things in this world. First, a good way to distinguish between the open-wheel Indy 500 and the stock-car Coca Cola 600. Second, a hero ... a role model upon whose life you can base your own. Fortunately, the resolution to both searches can be found in the same place.

A story, possibly apocryphal: Last year, at the beginning of the NASCAR stock car season, long-time Cup driver Geoff Bodine suddenly announced to reporters that he henceforth wished to be known as Geoffrey. When asked why, thinking perhaps of Jeff Gordon and Jeff Burton, he said, "There are too many Jeffs in the garage." Reporters merely rolled their eyes. Driver Dick Trickle took things to the next level:

From now on, I want to be known as Richard.

OK, Dick, why's that? Obvious, he would leer:

Ladies and gentlemen, Dick Trickle. The man whose funny name the "SportsCenter" guys couldn't get enough of a few years back. The guy who in 1989 was named the NASCAR Winston Cup Rookie of the Year — at age 47. The Wisconsin racing legend with more than 1,200 short-track victories under his belt, who is 0-for-about-300 with the big boys. The guy who every single driver or crew member in the Winston Cup garage does an imitation of ... walking around in a bowlegged, simian gait, cup of coffee in one hand, cigarette in the other, adopting a thoughtful frown and Wisconsin accent, telling stories of the thousands of races they've run. Trickle only laughs.

But with Dick Trickle, it's way more than that. Look around the souvenir trailers that infest a Winston Cup race and you'll see bumper stickers: "Dick Trickle is not a social disease." Ha-ha. But the thing about Dick Trickle is that the bumper sticker and the "SportsCenter" guys are, well, just too easy. And he knows it. How hard is it to make fun of a name like that? So don't look to Dick Trickle to get mad at jokes like that or to try to cash in on them. That's just the sort of cosmic funkiness that rolls off the back of Dick Trickle. Don't even ask him about it. But if you get a chance to wander up to him in the garage some day, ask him some questions. You'll never regret the answers. At a race a few weeks ago I ran into Dick Trickle in the Cup garage, and I asked him about some of the more-widely circulated Dick Trickle stories. His answers were predictably honest.

First, "too many dicks." A true story? A nod, and a twinkle in the eye.

Next, another famous story. Trickle, an inveterate smoker, has an in-car camera. During the first caution period of the race, the camera inexplicably cuts to black. It happens again during another race, and it is eventually discovered that Trickle, who smokes in the car during cautions, has put black tape over the in-car camera so nobody could see him smoke. Is it true, Dick? He smiles.

So getting a cigarette in the car wasn't a problem. And the tape?

Cool. OK, who's got the best Dick Trickle imitation in the garage?

And it's true. Wallace virtually becomes Trickle when the mood strikes him. Trickle loves it.

One thing isn't true: There is no bourbon in Trickle's omnipresent cup of coffee. He even offers the cup for a sniff. He's not lying. So what makes you tick, Dick? In a sport becoming maddeningly corporate and virtually free of true character, how do you maintain your dignity, your self-respect and your sense of humor?

Only Dick Trickle could sound like Popeye and still command respect.

Honestly, this is a guy who lives by his word. He's a guy who could easily make $10,000 for a two-hour personal appearance every day of his life but tries to have a life outside the racetrack, so he does only a few.

Between his full-time Busch series ride, his common fill-in spots at the Winston Cup level and everything else he does, he's busy ... but not tired. He smiles conspiratorially,

Dick Trickle ... one of the last originals in NASCAR or any other sport. Oh, and as for the difference between open-wheel Indy-car racing and stock car racing?

You could watch Indy cars for a century and never find anyone like Dick Trickle.

The History of America's Greatest Stock Car Tracks: From Daytona to the Brickyard Subtitled: From Daytona to the Brickyard. The history of stock car racing is fulled with famous names like Allison, Waltrip, Yarborough, Petty, Earnhardt, and Gordon. But just as famous are the names Daytona, Talladega, Charlotte Motor Speedway, Darlington, Bristol, Rockingham, and the Brickyard. Each track currently in use on the NASCAR circuit, as well as some of the tracks no longer in use, are featured as well as stories about the best races, the drivers' memories, unique construction designs, fan-friendly features and much more. Hardcover, 10-1/4' x 12-1/4', 160 pages, 48 color, 2 b/w

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