Athens

"I SPUN HIM OUT!" - Dale Earnhardt, Bristol/1999

2010-07-20T11:28:00.000-07:00

Watch the first video, then tell me if you see any comparison to what's happening with Carl and Brad today.

"I got him loose and I spun him out."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uy8c1Jq6pWU
At least he was man enough to say he did it!

Carl Edwards and Brad Keselowski - final lap at Gateway.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vz9OXptTwVQ

Carl Edwards was put on a 3-race probation for this incident.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DikO2r3zHI

Carl Edwards' Flip into the Fence
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8oIqkaZU8sY

Yahoo Sports already has a similar question going on but here's their question: "Is Dale Earnhardt's dumping of Terry Labonte for the win at Bristol not nearly as iconic to legions of NASCAR fans if Labonte had collected other cars as spectacularly as Keselowski did?"

http://sports.yahoo.com/nascar/blog/from_the_marbles/post/Nasty-Edwards-Keselowski-feud-flares-up-once-aga;_ylt=An0IeUOdNf0orhK8mAxjt7WEzph4?urn=nascar,256605

1995 GOODY'S 500 FINISH

The one Han is talking about! Terry won, sideways!lol
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tH9sLnJL8NE

THE ATHENS SPEEDWAY REUNION & ROADHAWG

2010-03-07T11:07:00.000-08:00

Tommy Logan (ROADHAWG on FOX) sent me an email this week telling me there was going to be an ATHENS SPEEDWAY REUNION! I was there, yesterday, so excited to see the people and cars but so emotional when I looked at the old photos and race programs, missing my Daddy and Tommy Roberts who passed away a couple of years ago.

CHARLIE BURKHALTER WAS THE HOST.

HIS FAMILY RESTORED HIS CAR, #75 below, FOR HIM!

Diane Burkhalter Conway's Photos - Athens Speedway Reunion

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?ref=profile&id=1231863226#!/album.php?aid=2034758&id=1120365427&ref=mf

Remember ROADHAWG finding me on FOX? Here's the post from last June. He's Tommy but not the same Tommy who battled cancer.

June, 2009 the Fox blog....

ROADHAWG (Tommy Logan)

www.decal-man.com/Speedway.htm

Last week, I opened my foxmail to find mail from someone with a Blue Fox Avatar whose screenname is Roadhawg! WHO was I about to meet? A blast from the past! Roadhawg (Tommy Logan) went to the same high school as me but he was a few years older. His cousin, Gary Logan, was my age and I remembered Gary but I didn't remember Tommy.

Tommy had googled "Athens Speedway" and found me on FOX. He had to create an account to talk to me and these past few days have been spent reminisicing about the Athens Speedway race track. I attached photos of the dirt track and sent them to him and he sent back photos of his race car in the 70s to me. My first date ever was at the Athens Speedway and my first date with my ex-husband was at the Athens Speedway so the way to my heart back then was through a race track! So, probably while he was racing, I was watching.

Tommy told me about his Dad dieing this past February and my Dad had died February a year before. His cousin, Gary, drove a rollback for a living and he was killed hauling a car in an accident. The funeral procession drove by the Athens Speedway. He is thinking about doing a "Remembering the Athens Speedway" site. He and some of the other drivers were all involved when they made the movie Greased Lightning with Richard Pryor at the Athens Speedway. He said they made more money for that than they would winning a race! lol

Another email and Tommy tells me about all the drivers he was trying to find photos of and - Guess what! My Dad had photos of some of the drivers from back in the 60s, so I sent a package of 6 drivers' photos to him and in all the excitement, I sent him the last 2 copies of each photo I had. He scanned the photos and sent it back to me in an email. During the course of all the information exchanged, Tommy said he specifically remembered Tommy Roberts. Then a couple of weeks later, Tommy Roberts died.

Now Tommy is also on Facebook and he's as funny as Joker, Wizard and Blue all rolled into one! Check him out:
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?ref=profile&id=1231863226#!/profile.php?id=100000070636064&ref=nf

REMEMBERING MY DADDY THIS CHRISTMAS!

2009-12-23T20:09:00.000-08:00

All 15 of us used to gather in my grandmother's living room every Sunday to watch and fuss and yell over the races! Grammama was the first one to get cable. Because she was so close to the highway, they gave her free installation! Bill Elliott, Earnhardt, and Rusty Wallace were the top picks. That was before Dale Jarrett came along!lol

When we were little, every summer we were at the Athens Speedway every Saturday night. Daddy worked at a body shop. He did the body work on his boss's race car. The car was #88. Daddy said it was so when it turned over, it would still be #88. I got a call from his boss the other day. He is 85 years old but paralyzed from a bail of hay rolling off a truck, crushing his legs. His body is shot but his mind is sharp as a tack! My very first date was at the Athens Speedway and my first date with my ex-husband was at the Athens Speedway so he didn't have to worry too much about me partying (at the beginning)lol. The only dating advice he gave me was after my divorce (LOL) when he told me to lose weight! His exact words were I had gained weight like ELVIS!lol Then after he got sick and I was trying to lift him out of his chair, he looked at my brown hair and shouted, "What have you done to your hair!!!" He told me to keep it blonde!lol I'm starting to see a pattern in the men I have checked out - They're a lot like my Dad!lol

These photos are from friends of mine, not Daddy's, but they all looked alike to me back then, kind of like the Car of Tomorrow looks today!LOL

Daddy's father died a couple of years before I was born, HAULING LIQUOR! OOH! There's a book in the making my cousin is writing about my grandfather and his brother being murdered by the competition, driving a 1940 Ford. Back then it was either haul liquor or work in a cotton mill so he let my grandmother do the cotton mill and he hauled the liquor. He was just 46. She lived to be 88!

I've put this land up for sale but no bites! You should see it. Daddy was the Jeff Foxworthy Redneck Joke! When Hwy. 441 went 4 lanes, he wouldn't sell out to the D.O.T. and build a brand new house like everyone else. He put a single wide down in the woods! I went through photos last week and found pictures of him clearing off the land. When he retired, he took a 1965 mobile home and built a makeshift body shop on the back of it. The shop became mine when he deeded me this land. It looks like a museum in there! He had a collection of cars but started selling them when he got sick. (Our Brady Bunch station wagon, the last vacation to Amelia Island, that we all went together in 1985). His favorite saying was "It's not what you've got, it's what you take care of."

I don't think I watched a race after Daddy died until June (2008) when I started using Fox's leaderboard because I couldn't see the drivers' names scrolling across the top of the screen from where I was sitting.lol Then I saw a "community" heading and went there. THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY & WHO GETS THROWN UNDER THE BUS and RIGHT SIDES ONLY were the only ones I read at first. The guy that wrote "Right Sides Only" sounded like some old geezer from out of the hills (a DELIVERANCE-type), which was exactly the way my hillbilly Daddy sounded!lol

The Bud Shootout and the Daytona 500 were really hard this year because it was coming up on Daddy's 1-year anniversary of leaving us. Now it's the second Christmas without him.

Reading everyone's posts on FOX was the substitute for picking up the phone after the Daytona 500 and saying "Daddy, did you see what Junior did yesterday!" and "Daddy, what about Reed Sorenson coming in 9th and David Ragan coming in 6th and BILL ELLIOTT, even being there, period." Daddy would be pulling for the Georgia homeboys!

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!