Rockingham, years ago, was big bellies, stars and bars, top-baring chickies in cutoff Levis, tattooed hippos boiling in their tanks. A lot of the guys in the concrete top-end seats looked like the old Allman Bros. road crew after a pub crawl with an unlimited expense account. What I had heard going into the 1991 Winston Invitational was "Expect anything" and that remark was embellished by some story or two that seemed so impossible, it likely was true.

Por ejemplo' ... I heard (and this actually may have occurred at Bristol, but the spirit is there) that the track maintenance crews were up early Monday morning and hosing down the concrete bleachers. Small mountains of trash were rolled down the steps to the chain-length fencing that prevented the wilder fans from diving onto the race cars. It seemed that this one worker was piling up the trash into the Hefty Bags when out of an adjacent pile, this beer-soaked, wild-eyed Rockingham denizen stands up and bellows, "Who won?"

Serious craziness.

Anyway, I went to the 1991 race with McKenna and he knew all the stops. I like to have a beer and get to know the locals when I'm on the job, and late Saturday afternoon I went to the cheap seats, bought a beer and milled around. My first thought was that here were a tad too many people. I noticed a couple of squatting gals behind a dumpster, the millions of empties, a couple of fights, and the slowness of the crowd. You couldn't get anywhere in a hurry there. Everyone was doing the Budweiser Shuffle or the Jack Daniels Waltz.

When the racing ended, McKenna and I met below the tower and in so many words, said, "Party time," which meant a jaunt into the pine mini-forest where the overnighters were hunkered down.

Hunkered down? No, I can't think of the right words. The fans weren't in full motion. In fact, we might've gotten to the picnic a little late. I did see a couple of guys rolling around in the sand, but they were quickly separated by other guys rolling around in the sand. What did catch my eye was the amount of injuries at the camp sites a mere half-hour to an hour after qualifying shut down. I remember one guy sitting on a pine parking log with a towel wrapped around his head, looking for all the world like SpongeBob. His head was twice its normal size because, according to one of his pals, he had blocked a 2x4 with it. Another guy was lying down in a tent with some medical people and an hysterical girlfriend screeching about his right ear, which was nowhere in sight. A few tents and trailers down there were a couple stabbing victims. Mixed in with all the mayhem was a huge variety in empties strewn about, much like shell casings in Baghdad.

Thank god, I was late for the party. The cops were smart. I walked by in my National DRAGSTER livery and commented to one guy, "It would take a lot more than what you're making now, no matter what that salary is, to go in into the jungle and make arrests." And while I'm cracking wise, I see visions of Martin Sheen and "Apocalypse Now" dancing through my head. Hell, if they had a southern rock band in the middle of this, it WOULD have looked like that Bob Hope USO Road Show that Sheen stumbles onto in the steamy murk of the Vietnamese outback.

The cop had a witty rejoinder, though. "Man, we don't go in there. We wait until the losers come stumbling out of there and arrest them." Humanity sacrifice, plain-wrap sexual activity at one camp, enough booze to float the U.S. Teddy Roosevelt to Subic Bay and back, probably a few guns (although I didn't hear any), blades, probably nuclear waste, a number of bloody noses and lumps. This bombarded my senses.

On Sunday, I was talking with Earwood and I made some casual comment about the folks not holding anything back. Steve, if I remember right, said, "Well son, they had better get it out of their system this time, because there won't be a next time in 1992."

Steve and Roy cleaned things up pretty good, because about the only injury in the camp ground in 1992 was some guy who cut himself shaving early Sunday morning. No doubt, getting ready for an RFC meeting.

I can't say I miss those old days. I'm not a fighter. My left hook couldn't knock your sister's hat off. Still, the one Rockingham experience I had the old way, has served me well in future bench race sessions. Wild and wooly as it was, I'll opt for what former "Blue Max" Funny Car owner Harry Schmidt said of his two years on tour with his fun-loving, freewheeling driver Richard Tharp -- "I wouldn't take a million dollars for all the memories, but I wouldn't give you a nickel for any more."

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