Spark Plug – A device inserted in the head of an internal combustion engine cylinder that ignites fuel mixture by means of an electric spark.
Since I retired, a lot had changed in our lives. Aiden and Spencer had retired too and our mission in retirement seemed to be one upping each other. Currently I was in the lead.
Easton, having just married my little girl, was doing an amazing job racing my car and living up to the big footsteps he had to fill in the number nine car with Kyle there to guide him. Kyle claimed he wanted to see that kid get a championship before he retired. After watching him race at Bristol and Texas, it was only a matter of time before it happened.
Arie traveled with him now along with Lexi who was together with Brody Williams. Yeah, Spencer wasn’t happy about that one, but there wasn’t much he could do. She was eighteen.
From what I gathered, Arie was enjoying herself and found the lifestyle interesting. I wasn’t sure how long that would last as Easton still had a heavy involvement with sprint cars like I did. Part of me hoped that he would come race again so we could spend more time with them.
Axel was doing good in the Outlaw series but had yet to pull off a championship. Justin, Tyler, Rager, and Cody were all heavy competition for him this year but Justin swore it was his last season. He was doing an amazing job at handling the success and having a family. He did a lot better than I did at his age.
Tate took over most of the Cup team and merged it with his but kept the Riley Racing name in honor of Jimi.
I merged my sprint car team with Dad’s and ran them all under JAR Racing. It was so much easier that way and for tax purposes was ideal.
Alley was able to relax, too. She no longer had to keep me in check at the track so she finally got a chance to be with her family as did Emma. Both were still active participants in the fan clubs, publicity, and charity events but it was a lot more easygoing these days. They spent most of their time traveling around with us just like our early summers together. The only problems I had with all of us traveling now were the pranks that didn’t swing in my favor and having Rosa with us. She was still with us. We did manage to get her to cook though. It was a fucking miracle.
Casten, our only child still at home, managed to graduate his sophomore year at sixteen and then started working full-time for my sprint car team and CST Engines. Some people thought it was strange but aside from being full of wit and charm, Casten was extremely smart. We always knew he was intelligent when he was younger but never thought much of it when he decided he didn’t want to be potty-trained until he was damn near four years old.
Though it was incredibly hectic at times, Casten, Noah and Charlie made a good team with CST Engines.
Lane ended up coming to work for us too working primarily with Rager’s team as his crew chief. Willie moved over to be Tyler’s crew chief when Justin decided to retire and Tommy stayed with Axel. Cole, the delinquent, when he wasn’t in trouble, did most of the web designs, videos and social media for JAR Racing which I appreciated because I knew nothing about it.
We were doing well that year and back to traveling with the sprint car team. Being back around all the tracks where I grew up racing was like reliving our summers together. The only difference was that I could finally show my wife just how much I wanted her whether it was in the back of my hauler or the bed of my truck. I didn’t have to think about how this would change our lives or interfere with the Triple Crown. I was retired and racing the way I wanted to race, for fun.
And my Mom, well she went with us and we wouldn’t have had it any other way. It was the perfect setup for all of us. I missed Arie and wished she was with us too but she had a good thing going with Easton, and with me still partial owner of Riley Racing, I still saw her a couple times a month, if not more.
Some probably want to know when that first win came for me now that I was back to racing sprint cars. The first win came at a track I knew well in Banks, Oregon, called Sunset Speedway, late in the fall.
I loved Sunset Speedway almost as much as I loved racing at Grays Harbor.
Spencer always missed the turn to Sunset Speedway. Every single time, he missed the exit and every single time, we turned around and he would say, “Damn, I thought it was down further.”
With thick red clay and grandstands inches from the front stretch, it had some of the most exciting racing on the West coast. On the front stretch there was a rut right under the flag stand. As soon as you came out of four and got back on the gas, you went straight into that trench.
Walking the track prior to the main that night, I remember so much about that track and our summers here. I remember the time I blew the engine in my late model outlaw and Sway convinced some guy to give me his engine so I could run the main. I remembered watching my Dad break the track record here countless times and as a kid following him around wondering if I would ever be as good as he was.
After walking the entire track, I made my way to the pits to see that Sway was doing the very same thing, staring at the track.
Sway loved Sunset because you can get within feet of the cars on the front stretch if you were brave enough. You can see straight in the cars, watch the drivers’ movements with their aggressive driving styles and hear the pop of the throttle, see the sheet metal vibrating and all the unique sounds of racing that you don’t usually hear sitting ten rows back.
When I got back to the hauler, the horn sounded for the drivers to return to their cars and line up. All the usual outlaw guys, including my son, were there.
At times, it was still hard racing with him. Mostly, it was from fear but it was easy to get over that when I realized how much it meant to him having me with him.
Before that race at Sunset, as I was getting my suit on and making sure I had plenty of tear offs on my visor he came by and wished me luck.
Axel was hard to beat these days so I knew it wasn’t going to be easy but I also knew that tonight I had this track and setup figured out. After all, I broke the track record that, until tonight, was still held by my Dad.
That night you could feel the excitement in the air and it was impossible not to feel the energy around us. I knew that I might able to pull off a win. It wasn’t like me to have not won already but then again I had only raced in a handful of races so far this year.
There was about a ten-minute delay when a couple cars got caught up in a wreck which drew the red flag in the B-Main so I pulled Sway inside the hauler when I heard a familiar song from our past.
When Alabama’s Dancin’ Shaggin’ on the Boulevard came on, I reached for her hands and spun her around, one hand on her hip, the other holding her hand. Whispering the lyrics, I got in tune with the song and even pegged the higher lyrics.
The team around me laughed as I serenaded my wife loud enough for the entire pits to hear. Some took pictures, others taped it and Willie sang with me.
Sway giggled almost the entire time and then looked up at me, her hands in my hair. “I’m gonna tell you the same thing I said the last time we danced to this song at this same track... ” she paused leaning in to whisper in my ear. “Win for me.”
I smiled. “Will do honey.”
I absolutely loved the feeling that washed over me when I sat in the stands of a local dirt track and Jameson came rumbling onto the track. It was different from any NASCAR race. This, with the dirt spraying up and the thick lingering methanol, was us.
Tommy and Willie, along with Casten and Lily, took a seat next to me while Jack sat securely on Spencer’s shoulder’s as Jameson tested the grip up high drifting up there in the pace laps and blipping the throttle. The action sent his rear tires into a spinning drift.
A squeal rang through the stands from Jack when he saw the double zero of his daddy come onto the track. We all looked back at him smiling knowing he was our little race mascot now.
As they did pace laps, Arie, who we hadn’t seen in weeks, showed up with Easton, Kyle, and Tate close behind her.
She’d brought the Cup team out to watch her daddy.
I nearly cried.
We immediately hugged and the guys started making small talk. These days Arie was traveling with Easton and living the lifestyle that Jameson and I had for so many years. Most of the team, aside from Spencer and Aiden, was the same so I knew they had a good thing going there.
Knowing my daughter and her personality, I had a feeling that she didn’t care for the lifestyle but she did care for Easton and that was all that mattered. Like me, she wasn’t a jealous person, which was also important.
Easton wasn’t sitting in front of us two minutes and he already had kids and women surrounding him, all looking for the same thing they wanted from Jameson for all those years. A piece.
Arie watched the crowd carefully but her eyes were on her Dad’s sprint car as they lined up side-by-side. “I really miss this,” she said, bumping my shoulder. “I miss you guys.”
I wrapped my arms around her kissing her hair. “We miss you, too, sweetie.”
My heart leapt anytime I saw that four-wide salute. In honor of Jimi they had modified this to a three-wide all season.
When the race started, the roar from the cars silenced any conversations.
Believe it or not, butterflies still danced in my stomach when I saw Jameson drift up the track and pass cars on the high side, just like he’d always done racing sprint cars.
Just a few laps into the race and you could see the guys moving the wings back searching for traction. I don’t care how good of a driver you are. Setting these cars up is hard and a guessing game because the track is always changing. What may have worked the last time you were here wouldn’t tonight. What worked in the heat races suddenly didn’t in the main. You’re fighting wheel spin, pushin’ the wing back and battling for everything you are worth just to hang onto fifth.
Taking a place near the fence, I could feel the dirt pelt my face every time he flew by me. I watched Jameson’s hands in the car, smooth movements and the pop when he let off the throttle halfway down the front stretch. Then he blipped the throttle just once to drift into the corner and back on it until he reached three and four. He had the lines figured out and was working on second place with three laps to go when they called a caution.
I thought for sure he wouldn’t be able to pull it off since Tyler was getting such a good jump off the line every time.
When they threw the green flag, Tyler got that same jump on him but lagged on the backstretch for some reason. Jameson caught him and threw the car hard into one and two the following lap and then crossed over to take the lead from him.
Next flag was the checkered and my voice was gone. I’d never screamed so loud for him to win in all my life.
Jameson brought the car to just below the flag stand and got out to do the wing dance. It was also the first wing dance I had seen since his win in Williams Groove three years ago.
I lived for those wing dances. The wing dance had always been my favorite. I have this photograph at our house of Jameson, at seventeen, standing on rear tires of his sprint car beating his hands on the wing and another one of Axel, at the same age, and at the same track doing that very same thing.
After they got my energetic husband down off the wing, I went down onto the track to celebrate with him and Axel who had pulled his car alongside Jameson.
“I’ll be honest here,” Jameson laughed when the announcer pushed the microphone in his face after asking how he felt winning again. Running his hand through his hair and then across the back of his sweaty neck, his smile was breathtaking. “I wasn’t sure I could win again and to do it at a track where I grew up racing on, it is exactly what I needed.”
It was the happiest I had seen him after a race in long time.
Turning to me, he patted the roll bars behind his head. “Wanna ride?”
“You know I do.” Climbing up there, I rode on the back of his sprint car back to the pits holding on to the wing.
Best win ever.
Drivers and crews all stood in a line clapping as we coasted past to his pit near the gate. It felt good to see him being accepted by a crowd who thought he came out to show off. That wasn’t what it was about at all.
When he brought the car around to the pits, Jameson was all grins again when he heard the song his Dad played for him after his last Knoxville Nationals win, “Chelsea Dagger.”
Axel and Lane stood by the stereo and turned it up dancing around.
It was just like our summer only now we had a little bit bigger celebrations.
I know what all of you want to know. When was the first pit fight with Rowdy Riley and who got a taste of that left handed pop from the southpaw?
It was the night he got his first win and it was with a driver he knew pretty well having raced against him when he was younger. Parker Dunn. Jameson’s feelings still hadn’t improved on Parker and Parker was the same trash talker he was when he was eighteen. You’d think being in his mid-forties now that he would have mellowed out but, no, he hadn’t.
The fight didn’t even start over racing. It began the same as it had back when we were kids. It was because of me.
Parker made some smart-ass comment about my ass when he walked by and Jameson wasn’t letting him get away with it. He shoved him, Parker shoved him back, and then before I knew it, swings were being thrown.
Parker didn’t talk much crap after that. Or maybe it was his broken jaw that seemed to mute his obnoxious ass? Either way, I was okay with that and happy to celebrate my husband’s win with him.
Some thought Jameson had lost his spark but looking at him now, with his face flushed from the heat of the night, sweat soaking his racing suit and his green eyes dark with anger, he definitely hadn’t lost that spark. He hadn’t lost himself but rather he had found himself here.
When he spotted Arie and realized the rest of the Cup team had come out, his smile grew wider.
For two hours he stood there talking with them, fans, other drivers and anybody who wanted a piece of him got it. After three hours, I wanted a little piece too seeing his racing suit tied around his waist and the heat of the night got to me. It wasn’t helping that his muscles were calling to me in ways only he knew.
His arms circled around me as his warm laughter brought me back to the moment and I couldn’t wait to resort back to my pit lizard days. Seeing him like this, in the thrill of a victory, was like watching his soul come alive.
I knew what this salacious behavior meant. He looked at me.
It was a look that made you feel like even in a crowd, you were the only one who mattered.
The heat of the night made his hair stand on end and his cheeks flush. Jameson, as most would agree, had intensity in his eyes. And looking at him now, my boy was back.
Pressed to the side of his hauler in the secure shadows, he kissed me and swept his hands down my sides over my ass and then pulled me up to wrap my legs around his waist.
Deepening an already passionate kiss, his hips shifted into mine. “Fuck, honey, I want you right now against the side of this hauler.”
Jameson had always had a secret weapon that could unlock Fort Knox. He knew it, too. It was his smile. And he was giving it to me. And I was unlocking the gates.
Since our kids were here, I made him take me inside the hauler behind closed doors.
We didn’t have long and I wasn’t sure how but I managed to tie him up with tie downs, straddled him, and took care of business like the Mama Wizard could. I thought of changing my Mama Wizard name when I became a grandma but decided against it. I didn’t need to feel any older than I already was.
Back to the point. My dirty heathen was writhing in pleasure beneath me with his hands tied over his head, eyes squeezed shut and mouth open, crying out.
Hot fucking damn was an understatement.
“My God.” He breathed trying to catch his breath when we finished.
“That’s right.” I nodded with a smug grin. “I’m good.”
“That you are, honey... but untie me.”
“Oh right... ” it took me all of two seconds to realize that I had gotten a little worked up and the knot I tied was for Fort Knox and the shit wasn’t coming undone without assistance.
Jameson looked at me, “Don’t joke. Please tell me you have something to get these off.”
“In my defense, I didn’t think they’d get stuck.”
“Jesus,” he groaned. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
“I’ll go get Spencer.”
His eyes went frantic. “The fuck you will! Get back here!”
“Well, what am I supposed to do?” We were both naked in his hauler and he was tied to the wall with shocks and springs. It was laughable when you think about it.
“Cut them,” he said looking around for anything sharp.
“With what?” I couldn’t understand how this wasn’t making any sense to him.
“I don’t know. Go find something but don’t you dare bring Spencer back in here. Sway, I will never talk to you again if you do that.”
“Okay!”
“I’m serious,” he reminded me. “I’ll kick your ass if he comes in here.”
“It’s a little hard to kick my ass when you’re still tied up, isn’t it?”
“Sway?”
“Yeah?”
“Go.”
I couldn’t find anything and had to ask Spencer. It was either him or Axel, the only two left out there and I wasn’t asking my son to untie his naked dad. That wouldn’t be right at all.
Needless to say, Jameson wouldn’t talk to me the entire way back to the hotel because Spencer saw him naked.
So dramatic.
To get Spencer back for seeing him naked, Jameson duct taped the hotel bathroom door shut the next morning when Spencer was in the bathroom and left him at the hotel for seven hours.
When we opened the door he was sitting on the floor with braids in his hair, lipstick on and painting his toenails. He claimed he was bored out of his mind and moments away from eating his own arm so he pleaded mental insanity.
Spencer got Jameson back the next morning when we were leaving back to head to Grays Harbor.
We had stopped for gas and were just about to get inside the truck when Spencer came flying around the side of the hauler and screamed for us all to get inside. We did but then I noticed Jameson wasn’t in the truck with us.
“Where’s Jameson?”
“In the hauler,” Spencer goaded pulling onto the freeway.
“He’s going to kill you.”
Spencer wasn’t that great of a driver and managed to take every turn as sharp as he could, hit every bump he could and slammed on the brakes like there was a cat crossing every few miles.
When we opened the door an hour later, Jameson was inside of his sprint car wearing his helmet.
“Oh man, we thought we lost you,” Aiden chuckled holding his stomach. “Were you in there this whole time?”
“That fucker told me to check for a drum and then closed the door!” Jameson shouted slamming his helmet into the ground.
He looked as though he had been cage fighting.
“Where’s my fucking brother?” He asked running his knuckles over his bloody lip. He sniffed sensing blood coming from his nose.
Sure enough, there was.
Spencer hid behind Alley who was laughing just as hard. “Act your age, Jameson,” he scolded me. “You’re being ridiculous.”
The pranks were starting to get out of hand but you know what, it was the spark our family needed.
To celebrate Jameson’s win at Sunset we threw a party. It’d been a while since we had one, and after that party we kind of swore we would never do it again.
I was in the kitchen getting food together when the real shit started to hit the fan. It’d been close to an hour since I saw Jameson disappear with the boys to the lake where we had our houseboat and thought it was time to check on them. Most everyone was down at the lake as that’s where the party seemed to be. Packing up the cooler with snacks, I started to drag it to the truck when I saw Willie stumbling up the driveway with his cup. “Do you have matches? I was told to come get matches?”
“Yes, they’re in my pocket.” He went to reach for my ass but I slapped his hand away. “No, I will give them to Jameson. The last time I gave you matches you set my living room curtains on fire.”
Willie shrugged. “I was trying to light a candle for you because you were crying. Have some compassion. Do you want some jungle juice?” he slurped through his princess straw.
“That has grape Kool-aid, 151 and absinthe in it. It’s a fucking miracle that you’re still alive.”
“It’s good shit.” Willie slurped again. “And it’s strawberry Kool-aid.”
“Oh, sorry, my bad,” I pushed the cooler at him, “take this down there.”
No sooner had we walked down the boat ramp when I saw a disaster forming. Nothing new for our family though.
All the boys were surrounding the houseboat that had fireworks on the roof. I wasn’t exactly sure what the plan was but it smelled like a bad idea.
Ami, Justin’s wife, found me and the concern on her face explained a lot. “You might want to get Casten down from there.”
“Yeah,” eyeing the houseboat, I was sure of the outcome, “it appears that way.”
My attempts at asking what was happening went unanswered, but from what I gathered they were trying to light fireworks from the roof of the houseboat.
Jameson, Spencer, Aiden and Tommy were by the side of the houseboat, on the dock, when we heard Cole yell at the top of his lungs. “It’s gonna blow!”
Everyone scrambled, including me, when it blew into pieces.
Aside from scrapes, a few cuts, and bruises, everyone was fine but that was the night my son blew up a houseboat. You could guess which one.
Casten.
“What the fuck was that?” Jameson yelled at Casten. “Why didn’t you move the fireworks from the top and put them on the dock?”
Casten, clearly shaken by his near-death experience looked to me like he was going to cry. “I’m really sorry. I forgot and then you said get ready to blow it and I thought maybe we changed plans.”
“Not the boat, the fireworks.”
“Well... now that I think about it, that makes a lot more sense.”
“Such amateurs,” Jameson mumbled walking away. “And you’re buying me a new houseboat kid.”
“Damn it,” Casten hung his head. “I just finished paying for his GTO I sunk.”
Offering some motherly comfort, I rubbed his back. “Well, the next time you decide to jump the GTO over the pool, be sure to actually put gas in the car. And when you decide to blow up a houseboat, don’t.”
Casten scratched the back of his head. “Great advice, Mama.”
Watching the fire on the lake, we had a spark all right. Too much spark at times.