Fast cars and roaring fans highlight Jackson 100 weekend in Brownstown

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BROWNSTOWN

The dirt makes everyone feel part of it. Talk about down-to-earth.

If the cars steer close enough for a little side-door nudge, the dirt may fly and waft over the track, the grandstand, landing on everyone everywhere.

Dirt track racing, the specialty of the house at Brownstown Speedway, is one of the few spectator sports that might demand a shower after the cheering stops.

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Even as the water rushes down the drain, enough residue remains as a reminder of where you have been.

“You can pretty much still plant potatoes in your bathtub,” said Dana Lewis of Scottsburg.

Of course, Lewis was in the house last weekend when Brownstown featured the Bowman 50 Friday night and the Jackson 100 Saturday night, nights when Josh Richards in the first night feature and Tim McCreadie the second night took home five-figure championship purses.

Lewis said he probably saw his first Brownstown Speedway race in 1963, and no matter what else is going on in his life, he marks his calendar for the showcase events of the season at the quarter-mile track.

Brownstown is all about fast cars, how to maneuver growling engines around the dirt, and hardy fans watching intently for hours while imbibing a few beers. And yelling to support favorite drivers, or simply yelling in order to hold a conversation because when the cars talk, they shout down voices.

All auto racing, it seems, from IndyCar to NASCAR, 500-milers to 100-milers, is about true-blue allegiance, too. Fans are passionate. Fans are loyal to their driver brand. Alongside the grandstand, T-shirts touting different racers blew in the breeze for sale to Hudson O’Neal fans, Jonathan Davenport backers, Jimmy Owens rooters.

Since they are pretty much all short-sleeve tops, the acolytes don’t wear their feelings on their sleeves, but their emotions in writing on their chests.

For some reason, that is ingrained in the sport, Lewis said. The auto racing populace at all levels seems to have stronger ties and more close-to-the-surface intense sentiments than other sports fans.

“You either love them or hate them,” Lewis said of drivers who go head to head regularly.

Wardrobe links are advertising on mini-billboards. No secret about who fans want to win in what race. The duel is really about which example of T-shirt is more colorful than the next. But just as flamboyant are selected T-shirts representing specific years of the Jackson 100.

Jeff Rouse of Columbus is a dirt man with little interest in asphalt racing. Never bothered to go to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Memorial Day weekend.

“It’s totally different,” Rouse said of the two types of auto racing.

He sported a snazzy Jackson 100 T-shirt from 2006. If anyone else had one on, they made themselves scarce.

The new blue 2020 this year’s T-shirt was spiffy, too, and plenty of fans wore those. Freshly bought off the racks, no doubt.

One visitor from Kentucky showed off a Billy Moyer T-shirt. The veteran star driver from Arkansas was being honored as an inductee into the Brownstown Speedway Hall of Fame, a track where he has won 16 times. This was definitely a Moyer man.

“I’m a fan,” Troy Travis said. “He’s the only reason I’m here, buddy.”

Throughout the two nights of racing, there was a rumble and a roar in the background at all times, families with adults carrying coolers but also accompanied by kids scurrying around.

Lewis is hardly the only longtime fan who couldn’t even remember exactly how long he has been turning up at Brownstown racing.

Jeff Beverly, another Scottsburg guy, said, “I’ve been coming for more than 35 years.”

A group of friends who call themselves “The Turn Four Gang” have been Jackson 100 regulars for several years, but aren’t nearly old enough to have that kind of longevity. Levi Hinderlider of Brownstown, one member of the group, thought the gathering might go back as far as 15 years, but that wasn’t written in ink.

These guys had an excellent perch, standing atop an overturned dairy wagon that provided a vantage point looking over the protective chain-link fence to the dirt. Cars entering the track from the pits rolled right past them.

“It has been this way for at least 10 years,” Seymour’s Derrick Arthur said.

No one kept up with the liquid refreshment arithmetic consumed by the can, either, or how many cars whizzed by.

There was some talk about football, too. Just a bunch of guys out for a good time on a Saturday night, almost a throwback. It could have been the 1950s, any decade in between, any Saturday night at any dirt track. This was one rare place where the very different story of 2020 was pretty much the same as it has always been.

“Look around,” said Forrest Turner of Medora, one of the longtime pals. “It’s middle America.”

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