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A good talk spoiled Lamenting a lost conversation with The Intimidator
I had an hour of Dale Earnhardt's life. Maybe an hour and a half. It doesn't sound like a lot, but sit with a stranger sometime for 60, 90 minutes and ask all the questions you want. There's a pretty good chance you'll have some time left over at the end. Earnhardt was in the shotgun seat of a Chevy Monte Carlo. I was in the back. A PR guy was driving. The trip was from Ann Arbor, where Earnhardt had charmed a ballroom full of Goodwrench dealers, to the Michigan International Speedway, where he would race two days later. This was two years ago.
I remember that he had shaved his trademark moustache because he'd been scuba diving on vacation and the moustache interfered with the seal between his goggles and face. Advertising people were in a dither because photo shoots were scheduled and he had tinkered with his image. Earnhardt laughed. I remember that he was a terrible back-seat driver. He was constantly telling the PR guy at the wheel to slow down or to watch out for the green car up ahead or for the traffic light that was going to change. That was a hoot. The toughest guy on the race track, The Intimidator, was a pussycat on the highway. I remember that I liked him, liked him a lot. He was a guy around my age, talking about grown kids and blown marriages and lessons learned, mid-life stuff, and yet he was this athlete, not only competitive but still kicking major-league ass. I remember thinking that somewhere down the line we were going to meet again in a social circumstance and talk again, easy and nice, friendly. This isn't going to happen. Sports Illustrated senior writer Leigh Montville appears regularly on CNN/Sports Illustrated. The opinions expressed here are solely those of the writer.
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