I grew up mostly around Eldora Speedway. When I was a youngster, my Dad worked at Eldora and would take me along where I would play with hot wheels cars in the dirt hillside that used to be in urns 3 and 4. One of the kids there became a great friend named Chad. This was Earls grandson. We raced Hot wheels cars together and then progressed to BMX bikes on makeshift tracks in our yards to 3 wheelers. We always talked about someday racing sprint cars against each other like our childhood heroes Rick Ferkel, Doug Wolfgang, Steve Kinser, and Sammy Swindell.
As I reached high school age, I began working at Millstream Speedway with Chad in the 8x8 concession stand at Millstream. There, I got to met a lot of local and touring drivers. I hung out with Chad at Eldora when he was working there as a pit Steward and at one Kings Royal. I fight broke out on the front stretch after a crash between Johnny Herrah and maybe Larry Helms was the other? Anyways crew guys and others were involved and I saw Chad trying break it up and he got knocked to the ground. I immediately jumped in and pulled Johnny off Chad and restrained him with a head lock to help break up the fight.. Later on, Earl came up to me and asked if would like a job helping Chad out so I worked weekends and some days in the summer at Eldora too. So I got to meet a lot of cool people during that tenure and started hanging out with a local 305 sprint car team.
After several years of helping out there and learning, I found an opportunity to purchase my own 360 sprint car that I raced regionally for 5 years or so. As with many things, it became more expensive to be competitive each year so I switched to UMP modifieds for a couple of years mainly running Eldora. I became very involved in my kids events and sport and really didn't have the time or resources to racing. Then other life events happened and I got out all together.
During this stint, I still hung around at Eldora and with different teams. I even dabbled with racing photography for a while and did some work for some late model publications.
I became good friends at work with a non-wing racer Jim Dues whom I raced 360's against a few times back in the day. When his son Paul started racing which was probably his Jr or Sr year of high school, Jim asked if I would want to help out which I was glad to do. So that started my return to racing as a crew member with some success and a of good times. After a few years of helping Paul, I met his cousin Bryce who raced mini-sprints and was stepping up to D2 midgets. I found the midgets very intriguing and got to know many of the other race teams fairly well so I began helping Bryce as well when I could and more so as time went on.
So in 2024, the bug to try to drive bit me and I bought my own midget chassis and put together a car to run with the USAC D2 series. Probably don't have the resources to win on a consistent basis, but at least be competitive and have fun.