Memoir Monday: Well, Hello Cha-Cha!

It’s time to tell stories from yesteryear, in hopes of revealing the root causes our mental psychosis, as commanded by Dr. T and the women.

And by Dr. T and his women, I don’t mean Richard Gere the movie GYN and his female patients.

I mean Doctor Travis and his Blackberry Bitches.

Those of you who were lured in by my clever post title ,with the hopes of learning about South American Ballroom dancing, or maybe even catching site of some female nether-regions, may be slightly disappointed.

The year was I don’t remember.

I was probably 4 or 8. Or some other number.

The setting was the “The Drags”.

Every year around Labor Day weekend, as far back as I can remember, I was subjected to “the drags”.

Let me explain nearther.

The Drags were not drag queens.

I was still too young to fully appreciate the sight of a man in heels and a dress, doing his best to tuck his man bits up in proper tranny fashion.

Oh no, the Drags were DRAG RACING!

The U.S. Nationals in Indianapolis, to be precise.

A ¼ mile of smokey burnouts and ear-piercing noises and nitromethane fumes and rowdy drunks and topless women.

The perfect childhood environment.

Fully endorsed by Mr. Rogers as a “safe neighborhood”.

Anyway, this was an annual Father & Son bonding weekend.

We would go to the drags almost every labor day weekend.

Dad and I would walk around and look at all the cars, then he would make me go collect stickers for him at the merchant booths, before we went into the stands to watch the races.

We would return to the merchant tents several more times, for more stickers.

Dad loved his racing stickers.

The whole front of our pickup truck, from the cab forward, was decorated with racing stickers.

The one that we drove on the street.

Or to the grocery.

But that’s a whole other post.

Back to my original remembery…..

So normally, we stayed over on the Grandstands side of the track, since that’s where most of the merchants' tents were.

However, this time, Dad took pity on my begging him to go over to the Pit side of the tracks, so I could see the Top Fuel Dragsters, and over the skywalk we went.

Well, I don’t remember exactly what happened, but I ended up separated from Dad.

I may have run from him.

Regardless, I was lost and starting to freakout.

This really nice pretty lady found me and brought me over to where she and a guy were sitting.

They were sitting by a TOP FUEL DRAGSTER!

How my luck had improved! Oh boy, oh boy!

Turns out, this nice pretty lady was Shirley “Cha-Cha” Muldowney.

She was THEE lady of racing.

She was Danica Patrick before Danica Patrick was Danica Patrick.

Anyway, she had me sit with her under the awning of her RaceCar Hauler and next to her Pink Dragster.

Turns out the guy that was sitting and talking with us was “Big Daddy” Don Garlitts, a.k.a. The Swamp Rat. (He was like the Father of Drag racing.)

Anyway, they flagged down the event staff and had them page my dad over the loud speaker.

I was just sure my dad would kill me, and told them as much.

We he came to get me, I could tell that he was a mix of pissed and embarrassed.

They made him promise he would not punish me, before letting me go with him.

Then they gave us a bunch of free stuff and autographs.

As we were leaving, I realized that there were hundreds of people standing around their Car Haulers, which were roped off.

They were all in line to get an autograph, or a picture, or something from Cha-Cha and Big Daddy.

So basically, I totally cut in line. And, I made everybody else wait.

I WIN!