Dale Earnhardt
April 29, 1951 – February 18, 2001
The night of February 18, 2001, I finished up my fast-food job and walked into a Rainbow Foods store in Saint Paul, Minnesota. I was confronted by a life-size cardboard display of a smiling man with a cookie. That cookie was an Oreo, and that man was NASCAR driver Dale Earnhardt, who had died only hours before in a crash at that afternoon's Daytona 500. I thought it odd, that the display was still standing...and I wondered how long it would continue to do so.
If I had been in a grocery store in Alabama, the Oreo cookie display might have been covered by flowers and cards, or it might have been removed completely by weeping fans. As it was, I was in a midwest state that cared not for racing...and yet, my crazy assistant manager had made a note in the daily sales log that went (and I'm paraphrasing, but she was just nutty enough to say this word-for-word):
"Sales slow today because of crash of Dale Earnhardt. We are saddened by this, and we'll miss you, #3."
I never understood auto racing. I mean, good on you all for finding something you love and making a living at it, but I never thought that putting your foot on the accelerator and moving the steering wheel one direction or another was a sport. It never rang true, and it still doesn't.
Want to know if what you're doing is a sport? If a 90-year-old man can do it, it's not a sport. Get in car, turn key, push gas, turn wheel. Not a sport.
I'm just sayin'.
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