One for Dad

              Father’s Day: a day for ugly ties, electric shavers and obnoxious cards.  Father’s Day of 2008 will be one that I will never forget and it’s not because I gave my father an over the top gift, it was a day that we both bonded and cheered as we sat and watched a sporting event. I hadn’t been the best daughter that day seeing as I didn’t give my beloved father anything on a day that was all about him. Instead I followed my mother’s orders of appearing in church on this special day and then headed home for my favorite Sunday tradition: NASCAR.

                My father was the one who introduced me to my first race and when I started to follow the sport it gave him reason to rejoin the sport that he loved during his childhood. The days when it was all about the racing and there was little concern about the business end of it. When it appeared Richard Petty was the only man on the racetrack. Except he began to lose interest as Rusty Wallace changed the color of his car and Dale Earnhardt became everyone’s favorite driver they loved to hate.  “I watched the sport when I was a kid then lost interest when Richard Petty won every week. He was my driver but as a fan it took all the excitement out of it when he won all the time so I blew it [NASCAR] off. Then John [his friend/Earnhardt fan] and I started hanging together and we began to watch again and you happened to be there the day Dale [Earnhardt] died and I think that’s when you became a fan. But you heard both of us talk about having to watch the Pepsi 400 and after you did that’s when you realized you like this and here we are.”

                In 2001 I gave him reason to have interest again as I watched the Pepsi 400 at Daytona when Dale Earnhardt Jr. would take the emotional victory. I had found my favorite driver to root for and dad was close behind, he was rooting for the son of the driver he couldn’t stand as a child.

                Just as NASCAR drivers go through a journey in their careers, dad and I went through our own journey. Our closets, well mostly mine, were filled with Budweiser red. But dad took it a step further and decided to start collecting die cast cars for me going as far as to buy a case and start purchasing every car that Earnhardt Jr. had driven with a special paint scheme. The collection is still going and there are about 20 cars with finely painted detailed logos on them with plenty more to come. Now the house was filled with posters, cars, jackets and anything that carried an eight.

                We would always watch the races together and form judgments on the events that took place. This was how father and daughter connected, in a world with fast paced cars. But I never realized how much we both loved the sport until after Earnhardt Jr. had won the 2004 Daytona 500, when I would hug my father and say “We did it,” as if both of us were apart of the team. What makes that day special was the fact that 24 hours before, on Valentine’s Day, my father had lost his uncle, and instead of grieving he was watching NASCAR’s biggest event with his daughter. The next day as he drove to the funeral with me in the backseat, we listened as Earnhardt Jr. swept the weekend by winning the Nationwide, what was once the Busch Series, Hershey’s Kisses 300 that had been postponed until Monday. Whether he did it for his own sake, to take his mind off of where he was headed, or to makes sure his daughter didn’t miss her hero win, I still don’t know but he turned on the radio that day and we haven’t missed a race since, whether on TV or in person.

 As my Christmas present in December of 2003 there were tickets for 2 for the July Pepsi 400, my first live NASCAR race would be the same one that made me fall in love with the sport 3 years earlier. I’m not sure who was more excited-my father or myself considering that for months all he kept saying was he couldn’t wait and “This is going to be so cool.” The advertisements certainly lived up to the hype as I realized that I belonged at that racetrack and soon started calling it my second home. However the biggest gift came from seeing my father spend the weekend with his camera and the expression of a young child. He was experiencing everything for the first time like I was. As I write this, dad and I have been to five July classics and experienced our very first Speedweeks in February, during which my father was trying to understand why his daughter was upset that her driver didn’t win. “But you were here for the 50^th Anniversary and no one can take that away from you. You can always say that you were here.”

                We’ve stayed loyal to Earnhardt Jr. through the years of him not winning or making the Chase for the Championship, in fact my father’s the one who told that a fan will stay with their driver no matter what. So when Earnhardt Jr. announced that he would be joining Hendrick Motorsports in 2008 it was time to buy new merchandise and change the colors of our closets. However it took some time to get used to seeing that we would be teammates with Jeff Gordon, a man my father said was like a fruit loop, and Jimmie Johnson, a cheater in dad’s book who was undeserving as a champion. But as 2008 began I saw a change in the man who always stuck by his beliefs, he started to root for the men he so lovingly criticized. If our driver was in no position to win then he turned to the 24 and 48 for the victory. “Might as well have the company win then somebody else” he would say.

                So by Father’s Day weekend we were still waiting for Earnhardt Jr.’s first win of the year and with Hendrick Motorsports. As I said I didn’t get my father anything on this day, not even an obnoxious card, which looking back shouldn’t have been that hard. I had told him that his gift was the Giants Superbowl jersey I had bought him which also doubled as his birthday present. So we settled in to watch the Lifelock 400 at Michigan and it didn’t take long for dad to fall asleep next to me, and my textbooks to become more appealing than the race. That was until Earnhardt Jr. decided to play the fuel mileage game and I quickly sat up to wake dad, “You might want to wake up” I said, “Jr.’s got the lead with six laps to go.”

                Both of us would be on the edge of our seats as the caution came out and it appeared the win would be coasting away. I couldn’t breathe, we were so close, dad stayed quiet as he stared at the TV.

                But Earnhardt Jr. would strengthen the bond between my father and I as he took his first checkered flag in two years. "'Happy Father's Day to all the fathers out there — I hope it was it was a good one for them. I sure had a good day,' Earnhardt shouted in Victory Lane as he kissed his No. 88 Chevrolet." While Earnhardt Jr. remembered his dad and wish all of ours a Happy Father’s day I jubilantly celebrated as my dad went his own way, the race was over and so was his day. Except I felt like this was the perfect way to end the day, celebrating the driver and sport that had brought us together on my father’s day. A couple hours later as I tried to whine down from my rush of adrenaline, I went to my father as he sat on the couch in front of his big screen TV and hugged him after another Earnhardt Jr. victory, and jokingly said “This is why I didn’t get you anything today because Jr. and I had it planned so he would win” he just laughed and nodded, “I think this is a pretty good gift though,” I said as I walked away and couldn’t help but smirk. The feeling was the same all around, Earnhardt Jr.  had finally won and he had done it on Father's Day, honoring the man that many viewed as their father and hero, and he won for a car owner that had lost his son four years ago, a son who promised that someday Earnhardt Jr. would work for him. While my dad may not have had a gift to hold, he had a day and a win by NASCAR’s Most Popular driver and our driver, which was just for him