‘Night of Fire’ offers big slice of Americana

When I was young, when these associations are formed, the Fourth of July meant a parade down Main Street and a cookout and riding the Tilt-A-Whirl and playing carnival games for stuffed teddy bears and cheap transistor radios.

So I don’t know how stock car racing became the scoop of ice cream on my Fourth of July apple pie. When it comes to racecars, I long have been partial to the exotic, open-wheel brands – IndyCar and Formula One. And to the endurance sports car prototypes of the early 1970s.

Need proof? I own all three versions of "Le Mans" – VHS, DVD and Blu-ray. It is, without a doubt, the best movie ever made about auto racing because it is about only auto racing. For the first 35 minutes, there is no dialogue – no Tom Cruise playing footsie with Nicole Kidman in "Days of Thunder"; no Sylvester Stallone trying to pick up a dime with sticker tires in "Driven"; no whatever it was that Will Ferrell and Borat were doing in "Talladega Nights."

Just 106 minutes of Porsche 917s and Ferrari 512s screaming down the Mulsanne Straight like banshees, and the sound of Steve McQueen’s heart beating like thunder through his fireproof coveralls. Fantastic. Just fantastic.

But sports car racing is so European, and stock car racing is so American, and the Fourth of July is about us, about being one of us. So perhaps this is why I think of stock car racing on the Fourth of July – but not the kind at Daytona or Talladega or even Phoenix, which must make the good folks of Rockingham, N.C., choke on their fried chicken.

I’m talking about the kind of stock car racing they have at county fairs and at bullrings on the edge of town, out past the Texaco stations on the interstates, where ovals are scythed from tall grass and the urinals in the men’s room sometimes are horse troughs.

The kind they had Tuesday at the Bullring at Las Vegas Motor Speedway during "Night of Fire."

No, there aren’t any horse troughs in the men’s room since they redid the place. But there were midgets and dwarfs – types of racing machines, though dwarf cars now are called "Legends" – and a Big Foot, a really Big Foot, which ran amok in the infield crushing stuff like Godzilla did in the movies.

American V-8, supercharged, methanol injected, 1,600 ponies under the hood. Mothra would not stand a chance against Big Foot, the original monster truck. Space Godzilla and Monster Zero would have been flattened like empty cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon.

There were NASCAR Super Stocks and NASCAR Bombers and Hoosier Tire Late Models and USLCI Legends and USLCI Bandeleros and, for all I know, Gomer Pyle, USLCI.

And NASCAR Super Late Models, which raced for 76 laps, because 1776 laps would have been too many and probably would have pre-empted the waterless boat race. And nothing ever should pre-empt a waterless boat race.

My words could not possibly do the waterless boat race justice. Nor could Ernest Hemingway’s. Suffice it to say that when the waterless boat race bell tolls, Jeff Foxworthy and his Tater Salad friends come running.

There were hot dogs for $1 and Cokes for $1 and snow cones you had to stand in long lines for, and there was a little girl who dumped her entire reddish-pink snow cone right in front of me but did not cry. And at the end, there were fireworks that seemed to last a long time, though they were over by 11 p.m. as per county ordinance or something.

This was a slice of Americana. A really big slice, with chocolate sprinkles and whipped cream.

A jet dragster had turned its fire-breathing engines loose on an old Buick, and the track was littered with broken boat parts, and the sultry evening air smelled of sulphur for miles around, even after Ray Charles and Louis Armstrong sang of patriotism and a wonderful world and the track announcer reminded everybody to drive home safely.

And when it all was over, proud Americans who work in garages and in heating and air-conditioning shops held hands with their wives and their kids on the way to the parking lot.

Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ron Kantowski can be reached at rkantowski@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0352. Follow him on Twitter: @ronkantowski.