By Tim Pafford
My love for Stock Car racing came from a long trip of library hallways and family trouble. I used the sport to help me through tough times as a child, so I could just keep going.
This is not to say we had problems as a family. But I speak of problems that came as obstacles for us to overcome and to find ways to stay sane during these patches of hardship.
My mom always encouraged me to read. I needn't read the most complex or extensive of topics. But, "Just so much as I did read something" was all that she asked of me. What I unusually read was sports fiction. As I grew older that fiction changed from soccer and baseball stories of little leagues to auto racing.
I'd read fictionalized accounts of great battles between great rivals. They would battle till the very end and the antagonist nearly always died from a racing accident that was the result of battling too hard and not using their head.
Into Jr. High school I found that races, just like I had been reading, were televised every week end. These started my love of watching the action unfold before my eyes instead of just inside my imagination.
As time went on these races helped me escape. My dad was fighting through cancer treatments. Every few weeks he'd spend weeks in the hospital hooked up to an ïv drip hoping that the chemicals would kill all the cancer without killing my dad. Watching those cars speed around circular tracks for personal glory kept me from thinking of a world with out my dad. It helped me to divert my fears to what "could happen" on the race track. Seeing races unfold at such high speeds was much easier for me than watching my dad go through more and more treatments; slowly hoping for positive effects on the inside while his body grew sickly and bald on the outside.
Thankfully, my dad faired better overall, and throughout ,than my favorite drivers. My dad fully recovered, and never has had a recurrence of cancer to this day. (I only hope it stays this way.) I went off to school and did all that I could to find a real me. I still look for this "real me" in the words I type and the stories I tell. Never really sure who's really there. But I do know I owe it to my dad to be the best I can be.
He never gave up. He worked full time while going through treatments. I don't know how he did it, but he did. If he can go through that, be a great dad, provide for his family, and kick cancer's ass the whole time, I can get through my issues and do the same things in my life.
I do thank NASCAR, and the up and down joys, of being a Wallace Clan Fan for helping me through the tough times when I was young. I still watch to see Rusty and Kenny give first person accounts of what it was like to race those cars back before the sport was as popular as it is today. NASCAR isn't what it was back then, but it is still a reminder of my favorite youthful crutch. Thank you, NASCAR and the thousands of miles of racing I have enjoyed throughout by life. It has been a joy.
