Bear Grease – Slang term used to describe any patching material used to fill cracks and holes or smooth bumps on a track’s surface. Bear grease can also be used as a sealer on the track.
“Can I please race? Come on, Dad... I’ve been racing quarter midgets for years and now midgets. I’ve already raced in about a hundred USAC races,” I whined. “I just—I think I’m ready.”
I didn’t just think I was ready, I knew I was ready.
I’d been racing midgets in the USAC (United States Auto Club), a sanctioning body for midgets, sprint cars, and silver crown cars, for far too long and I couldn’t wait to race full-sized sprint cars.
From the time I was little, they were the cars that caught my attention. They were loud and the fastest cars on dirt with their high power-to-weight ratio.
The sound produced by twenty sprint cars lined up on a track, revving their engines is definitely something you will never forget, especially when you’re a kid. It shook the ground and filled the air with the sweet aroma of methanol. Sprint cars broad sliding their way around dirt tracks was enough to catch the eye of any kid but when you see one doing wheel stands inches away from concrete walls, again, it’s something you’ll never forget.
Briefly, his eyes focused on me.
“You’re not ready,” my dad said and walked into the race shop that housed his sprint cars.
I smiled following closely stepping over the tires and tools scattered around the concrete floor.
“Are you scared I’ll smoke you?”
His head whipped around, his blue eyes narrowed. “You’re an arrogant little shit. But, no, I’m afraid of your mother.”
“I can handle that,” I told him and confidently headed for the house. My mom was a push over for me and I knew it, as did she.
You hear people talk about when their career started for them or when they saw their first race but I honestly can’t remember when that was. Racing has always been there, ingrained into my life in every way. My dad was racing before I was born so it’s all I’d ever known. I’d been playing in the dirt of the pits since before I could walk.
I do remember when I got my first set of wheels.
I believe I was three, or just turned four. Sure, I had a badass big wheel that I’d perfected slide jobs on but I remember my first beast with an engine.
For my birthday that year, my parents gave me a cherry red 150cc Honda go-kart. That, combined with the perfect paved circle driveway, made my four-year-old world.
I had one rule: keep it on the pavement of our driveway.
Growing up with a dad who raced on dirt and that being all you had been subjected to was tall orders for a four-year-old wanting to be like his dad.
I had the quickest route around the circle panned out within the first day I got it and soon began broad sliding through the corners when I pitched it hard enough.
That red beast became my prized possession and, if you didn’t hear the humming from the engine, you knew something was up. Soon after they bought mine, my older brother Spencer got one and, before long, we were holding races in our driveway and tearing up my mom’s flowers while our little sister Emma acted as the flagger. We must have torn up every plant, every tree and every blade of grass in that yard before the summer was out.
The following year, once the weather had turned warm enough, we were back to doing the same thing.
That was when I decided some adjustments needed to be made to the kart.
Like adjusting the rev limiter to enable it to exceed its standard speed that clearly wasn’t fast enough and ending up cutting the brake line instead. Yeah, at four I thought I was some kind of mechanic. It was evident by the gaping hole in the side of our house where my kart flew threw it that I was no mechanic.
After a while, the “keep it on the pavement” rule was out the window and I pretty much raced on any surface.
The following spring, just before I turned five, my dad took me with him to his race in Knoxville, Ohio, where he was racing on the World of Outlaw Tour; the premier division for winged sprint car racing.
That same weekend, Bucky Miers, my dad’s long-time friend, let me tear it up in his son’s quarter midget.
Two weeks later, we had one sitting in our driveway when we returned. Before long, we had outgrown the driveway and my mom had no landscaping left, so Dad hauled in a few truckloads of clay and made a quarter-mile dirt track in our backyard.
Naturally, I never got out of the car or off the track. Some nights I even fell asleep out there.
Originally, I was supposed to share the car with Spencer but once Spencer found girls and football he didn’t care about racing like I did.
You could say my career started right there in my back yard in that quarter midget.
My racing teeth were eventually cut at our home track in Elma, Washington, at Grays Harbor Raceway on June 18, 1985, a few days shy of my fifth birthday, as I made my first start in a quarter midget race.
Elma is a 3/10 mile, semi-banked, clay oval track located off Highway 8 and it was fast — incredibly fast.
I still remember shaking from the adrenaline I experienced racing with kids twice my age as well as the sick but energized feeling in the pit of my stomach when I took the green flag.
By the time I was eight, I was running competitively and had won two USAC Regional Quarter Midget Championships, three track championships at Grays Harbor Raceway, and had won the Deming Speedway Clay Cup Nationals.
At the time, racing quarter midgets contained me and I soon became extremely comfortable in them but that also meant, in my mind, that I was ready for more.
I moved to full-size midgets at nine and now, at eleven, I was ready for something more which meant full-sized winged sprint cars.
The problem was convincing the parental units.
Most tracks were beginning to enforce age restrictions on full-sized sprint cars so I knew that parental consent was necessary. That left me trying to convince my parents of my plan.
It was time for the art of persuasion that I adroitly mastered.
“Mom...” I cooed in my best compelling voice when I entered the kitchen. I had perfected it over the years for moments like this. “Dad said to ask you but I was wondering if it’d be okay if I raced tonight... dad will be there,” I offered.
She ran her hands through my mess of rusty colored hair, tilting my head to look up at her. Her fingers looped around the curls at the ends. “Honey... I don’t know about that,” she said, continuing to do dishes while leaving me with soapy hair. “You know you have to be sixteen to race full-sized sprints.”
“But, mom...” I whined brushing the bubbles from my hair. “I’ve been racing since I was five. I’m eleven now, almost twelve, it’s time I broadened my horizons.” I grinned when she arched an eyebrow at me. “Besides, Charlie knows us and he said if Dad signed a waiver he’d let me race.”
“Jameson, sweetie, I don’t want you to get hurt. Sprints are a lot different from the quarter midgets or even those mini sprints and full-size midgets.”
She was right.
Sprint cars pushed 120 mph at Elma some nights but I didn’t care about that.
“I know that but I’ve been racing them out back for months now. My lap times are faster than dad’s.”
“Don’t flatter yourself — you’re smaller than him.” She smiled. “Basic laws of gravity, son.”
I had nothing left. I broke down into childish whining to prove my point which was somewhat revolting from a bystander’s perspective, and I may or may not have resorted to the eye blinking that she loved so much.
Racing was my life and I knew that if I wanted to make a future in it, it was time to race with the big boys; at least that was my eleven-year-old logic.
After a good ten minutes of sucking up, Spencer, my older brother, walked in when I plopped down in a chair at the table.
“Just let the little shit race, Mom... he’s annoying when he doesn’t get his way.” He chuckled and shoved a cookie in his mouth. “Besides... I’d like to see him get his ass handed to him out there.”
Mom slapped the back of his head as he walked by. “Spencer, watch your language.”
Spencer, now fourteen, thought he was God’s gift to girls and football.
I had other ideas.
I threw a cookie from the plate in front of me at him, smacking him in the forehead. Although somewhat satisfying, it did result in a gladiator-style wrestling match between the two of us that mom had to break up with the hose from the sink.
“Stop it—both of you get up!” she yelled slipping sideways in the water. “Spencer, clean up this mess. Jameson, go talk to your Dad about racing tonight,” She held up her hand to stop me from running into the race shop. “If you wreck, you’re done.”
“Uh-huh,” I yelled over my shoulder as I ran to the race shop.
I told my Dad that Mom had said it was okay. He wasn’t convinced and had an hour-long talk with her about it.
In the end, I was allowed with a few stipulations.
I was only allowed to race two races a month and I worked in the shop when I wasn’t in school. I didn’t care. I probably would have agreed to just about anything to get them to say yes. I wouldn’t be allowed to race sprint cars at other tracks until I turned sixteen but only being allowed to race at Elma would be sufficient.
LATER THAT NIGHT, I found myself at the track. As you can imagine, I was nervous. But I wasn’t about to let them know that.
“All right kid, get in.” I slid easily into the narrow cockpit. His head bent down near mine, his hands reaching inside to adjust my belts. “Remember, don’t drive too deep into the corners. It’ll flip ya’ in a heartbeat. Find your lift point and feather the throttle accelerating through the turn. You’ll have more control that way since the track is tacky.”
Once I was on the track during qualifying and hot laps, I realized how different sprints were from midgets. With being heavier, the wheelspin and changes throughout the race, I was amazed at the differences.
Having spent every afternoon on our quarter-mile track practicing, I knew I was ready and I showed them.
I appeared confident on the outside but, on the inside, I was scared shitless as my dad explained the rules to me after the drivers’ meeting.
“Pay attention, Jameson. This is different from racing midgets.” He told me after time trials were finished.
I only nodded. I was overwhelmed but I wasn’t letting on.
I didn’t want to hear the words I told you so, which, by the smirk on his hard face, he was ready to say at the first sign of weakness.
Here we stood in the pits getting ready for the heat races. Pulling my racing suit over my shoulders, I looked up at him.
“All right,” he began. “The top eighteen qualifiers will be split into heat one and heat two. You made fast time so you’re in heat two. The top two in heat one, will move to the rear of heat two.” He nudged my shoulder. “You following me, kid?”
Again, I only nodded. Dad had made it clear early on when I began racing that in order to race, I needed to understand everything; not just how to race. At times, it was overwhelming for a kid.
I had to know set-ups. I had to know handling, engines, and how to drive the car. He wouldn’t let me slide with climbing in the car and driving. I had to know what to do if I broke it and how to fix it myself.
“The top eight cars from heat two will run the feature.” He told me as I fastened my arm straps. I then pulled my helmet on and engaged the coupler.
It was show time.
When it came time for the feature event, the nervousness hit me like a ton of bricks.
Remaining moderately calm throughout the heat races, I presumed the rest of the night would be the same, but when twenty other cars pulled onto the track with me, I briefly contemplated backing out. That being said, there’s also nothing like merging onto the track with the rumbling parade of twenty sprint cars. Right then my anxiety instantly vanished.
I did the only thing I knew when I got on the track with the other cars … I raced. There was a stillness that washed over me and I blocked out everything like I always did inside the car. I wasn’t sure if I was ready to run the top with the fast guys but when it came time to make a pass, I had no choice but to run the top as the groove on the bottom wasn’t working.
With my heart pounding rapidly, I pulled a “Jimi move” as I called it and slid past three or four cars in each turn using the high side where the grip was.
Much to my surprise and probably everyone else at the track, I won. If you’re surprised that an eleven-year-old kid could beat men who’d been racing for years and had ten and twenty years on me, imagine my amazement.
After the feature race and the trophies had been awarded, my dad caught up with me.
“Nice job, kid.”
Hearing words of commendation from a World of Outlaw Champion was something any kid would want to hear despite him being my father.
“Thanks, Dad,” I replied with a huge grin once we were back inside his car hauler loading. “Does this mean I can continue racing?”
“Yeah... but school comes first.” I started to walk away when he reached for the back of my suit and turning me back around to face him. “When you’re not in school, you’re helping out in the shop, understood?”
“Sure, whatever,” I tried to play it cool. “I can do that.”
“Go help Spencer load the cars. I’m going to go see Charlie.” Without another word he walked off to meet Charlie who was standing outside the hauler.
When I thought about what I had just been allowed to do, it dawned on me that Spencer had never been allowed to do this. I always thought Spencer would show some interest and want to race, but outside of messing around on the track at home, he never wanted to race competitively. He’d rather work on the cars than race them, which was fine by me and good luck getting the football out of his hands.
Spencer and I spent more time checking out Charlie’s daughter than loading cars, which was no surprise these days. I may only be eleven, but girls were definitely something I was responsive to. I was beginning to understand why Spencer liked the opposite sex so much.
Being eleven, almost twelve, I was launching into the teenage hormones and with that came strange... urges or feelings, I guess you could say.
Girls, well they spurred these urges or feelings which, in turn, resulted in some fairly embarrassing reactions to my body, much like right now.
This was not something I enjoyed. Even at eleven, I wanted to be in control of everything and times like this I wasn’t.
“Check her out,” Spencer swooned. “She’s growing up,”
“Dude, how have I not seen her before?” I asked peeking at her once again. I was never shy. I’m not sure that I even knew the meaning of the word but, for once, I was starting to understand the emotion that could be classified as shy. I think.
“You’ve gone to school with her since like the second grade.” Spencer smacked my chest. “What’s the matter with you?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never seen her before.”
If it didn’t involve an engine, I hardly paid attention. I couldn’t tell you half the kids who went to my school.
“I think she likes older men anyway,” Spencer replied cockily with a nod.
I was about to respond when Dad called for us, “Jameson, Spencer—get over here!”
“Coming,” we yelled as we jumped from the back of the car hauler. He reached for me by my race suit before I made it too far.
“Sway, this is my son, Jameson. I think you two are the same age.” He shook my shoulders rocking me back and forth. “And this is my other son, Spencer. He’s fourteen.” He ruffled Spencer’s hair. “I’ve got a daughter, Emma, who’s almost ten but who knows where she disappeared to.”
“She’s selling T-shirts,” Spencer told him smiling at Sway.
I rolled my eyes at him.
“It’s nice to meet you both.” Sway shook hands with us to which I smiled at her and, for good measure, I added a wink.
I couldn’t have her thinking that Spencer was the better pick. Clearly, I was.
She was beautiful with her full lips, staggering emerald green eyes and lustrous flowing dark mahogany hair with hints of auburn that shone under the lights of the pits. I’d never seen such an innocent looking, but memorable, girl before. But I’d also never paid any attention to any girls until now.
“You did good out there tonight,” she said, making eye contact with me, her cheeks flushed.
“Looks like you follow in your Dad’s footsteps.” Charlie slung his arm around Sway’s shoulder. “You did good.”
I laughed. “Yes, but I’m better than him.”
Charlie and my dad both started laughing at my eleven-year-old confidence. I hardly thought it was funny. It was the truth.
Most everyone in the racing communities compared my talent to Jimi’s. In the beginning, I welcomed it, as he was a legend in sprint car racing, but it soon became something I felt I needed to live up to and eventually surpass.
Something more than just my sprint car career started that night. A lifelong friendship was formed. After that night, Sway Reins and I were inseparable.
I had friends. Well, that was a lie. I knew other kids but to call them friends, I wouldn’t go that far because we never talked outside of school or outside of the track. School friends were separate from track friends—it was just the way it was.
There was one kid, Justin West. We had started together in the USAC quarter midget and midgets. We hung out but outside of the track, we didn’t see each other. He lived in Hillsboro, Indiana, so it was rare that we saw each other but being the same age, we shared the same interests, racing.
With Sway, it was easy to be around her. She didn’t care if I wasn’t at school, had a bad day or didn’t want to see anyone.
I was incredibly moody and she understood that.
Sway was there on Saturday nights when I raced and helped me scrape mud from the car and made sure that I had tear-offs on my helmet. She was there on Sundays if I had a bad night racing the night before but, the best thing was, with Sway, we didn’t have to maintain the relationship we had or even try because we were friends.
I thought for a while that it would be cool if I could call her my girlfriend but I saw what happened to all the girls my brother was friends with and then dated. It ended horribly and, worst of all, he lost the friend.
I couldn’t lose Sway. Just her presence relaxed me in a way I’d never had before. And, best of all, she believed in me. I came to depend on her in a vital way.
BEFORE THAT SPRINT race at Elma, I was usually only allowed to race twice a month. This was supposed to keep me focused on my schoolwork and not as much on racing.
During the summers I was allowed to race every weekend if I wanted that was when I began to shine.
The summer of ‘92, I again won the Clay Cup Nationals in Deming, the Northwest Regional Midget Championship and the Midget Championship at Grays Harbor Raceway.
By competing in a number of Western District Qualifiers, I was able to attend the Quarter Midget Nationals: The Battle at the Brickyard.
We went and my first time there, we won.
Right then, standing there being awarded the trophy, I realized this dream might be reality some day and became my only focus.
The deal with my dad worked well until being a teenager became a factor. I found myself partaking in the occasional acts of mischief at school and around town but racing was always number one to me.
As twelve turned to thirteen and thirteen turned to fourteen, my life became complicated and suddenly I had other interests knocking at the door.
Hormones were a factor but the drive to become a professional racer was still present and ruled over everything. I wanted more than anything to race and nothing else mattered. Not school, not friends, nothing. I wasn’t living the normal childhood that was for sure.
While Spencer and Emma did, I didn’t and had no desire to. I raced whenever possible. If I wasn’t racing, I was learning everything I could from my dad and working on his cars in the shop. At times, I guess I wanted to have a normal childhood life but I also knew this dream of mine wasn’t something I could put aside. If I wanted to be the best, it would take dedication and hard work.
I remember when reality hit and dad forced me to decide, or at least he made the decision for me when he threatened to sell my car.
Sometime around fourteen, he left for Grand Rapids, Michigan, one Tuesday evening. My only chores were taking out the garbage and mowing the lawn. The rest of the time I was allowed to race on the track and do whatever I wanted.
Naturally, I didn’t mow the lawn and the garbage made it to right outside the door.
I spent every night racing out there from dawn to dust. The only reason I stopped was from the lack of light. Don’t get me wrong, I tried to convince my dad to install lights but he knew that would only result in me never leaving the track.
When the flashlights that Sway and I taped to the wings of my sprint car fell off, we called it a night and watched movies.
My parents returned Sunday afternoon to find me lying in bed eating Captain Crunch with a pile of garbage outside the door and a field of grass.
Let’s just say my dad turned our house into something similar to what you’d see in the Civil War after he threatened to sell my car. I was not okay with that. I had a hard time drawing the line between racing and working. I knew I had to work around the shop but it was difficult to get out of the car and having unlimited access like I did, made it tough.
After a while, I understood that in order to race, I needed to show my dad I was responsible enough to handle a demanding schedule and put everything I had into it. What I wanted didn’t come easy. To be the best you had to battle the best and to battle the best, you had to work for it.
I couldn’t show up and race expecting to win. To win races everything had to line up, track conditions, set-ups, positions, and then the wheelman needed to be on his game. That was where my roughshod attitude to be the best came into play.
Eventually everything else began to slip away—the only things that mattered were working at the shop and racing on Saturday nights. I lost friends, gained some and then lost them once they saw I never made time for anything but racing.
One friend remained the same though: Sway. She was always there and if I decided to go racing instead of to the movies, she was there. If I decided to change my shocks out on Friday night instead of partying with the rest of our classmates, she was there handing me tools.
I never understood why she did it, but I was thankful she did. Every time I thought about giving up and living the normal teenage life, she was there to remind me why I was doing this in the first place. I began to realize that what I was lacking she had … Sway believed in me. I wouldn’t say that I didn’t believe in myself because I did, but for the first time other than my parents, someone else believed I could do it and that was the push I needed.
She saw the potential and never let me forget it. She was my rock. She was dependable, supportive, not judgmental… everything I wasn’t for her.
I tried to be, but there was also that line again. I had a hard time drawing a line between racing and everything else.
The older I got, the harder it got.