Continuing in the racing vein, since today is the Atlanta 500 at AMS, allow me to wax nostalgic. I grew up racing go-carts against my cousin Herb, in his back yard in Forest Park, Ga. The sleek machines above resemble ours, his on the left, mine on the right. Only Herb’s didn’t sport whitewalls, and that’s definitely not me in the one on the right.
Every Sunday we would load up my go-cart in my father’s 1960 Chevrolet Apache pickup and head to Forest Park. The little house on Alice Street where my aunt and uncle raised five wonderful kids had a huge back yard. That became our dirt track.
As pictured above, it was in effect a tri-oval. The pits and start/finish line were at the top of the yard. Our fathers were our pit crews, and we actually raced. They would count a pre-determined amount of laps each heat. We raced backward, left to right. Out of the pits there was turn one, the straightaway, a slight turn two, the straight into turn three. the back straight, a tight, tight turn four, the straightway along the fence which miraculously, to my recollection, neither one of us ever got into. Lastly was turn five to the start/finish line.
We would race all afternoon and my thanks go out to the neighbors because to my knowledge, they never complained. In the summer the pit crews would water down the track while we were running. If my car happened to sling the chain on the backstretch, as it was wont to do, I would jump out, roll it back on, jump back in, buckle up, adjust my goggles and take off, hell bent on catching and passing my cousin. Yes, we had lap belts and goggles. No helmets. I wanted one, but they cost too much. Somehow, no one ever got hurt.
One of my cousins got on the mini-bike and went around and around the track until she ran out of gas because she couldn’t figure out how to stop. The track wasn’t big enough for another cousin, Sheryl, who inherited the go-cart after Herb and would take it to the streets, only to be chased home by the Forest Park Police.
These are some of the fondest memories of my childhood. And today, anytime I climb into one of the fancy five dollar a lap racing karts, I am taken back to the old dirt oval at 761 Alice Street. In my mind, no track anywhere, from Daytona to Dixie, could ever compare. Keep cruisin’! –J.
OMG This brought tears and laughter and so many found memories….. I also remember on the Go Cart days we would also put many miles on the old car your Dad had. We were so blessed and I cherish these memories….