Sunday, September 18, 2016

Human, left; greyhound, right

JIM WAS THE WHITE-HAIRED GENTLEMAN IN BACK

About 30 years ago, we were in the infield media center at Charlotte Motor Speedway. A greyhound rescue group brought a couple of dogs into the media center, and we listened to their talk and met the dogs.

 My friend Jim McLaurin squatted down to pet and engage one of the dogs, and suddenly a bunch of photographers started snapping photos.

 Jim, a long-time journalist, immediately thought of the photos in daily newspapers. Jim would be on one side, with the greyhound on the other.

 "They'll probably write, 'Jim McLaurin, left,' " Jim said in wry humor. He was referring to the cutline (you'd call it a caption) under the photo.

People can tell a man from a dog, of course, but Jim was alluding to the fact that some copy editors like to make absolutely sure you know who's who.  I wouldn't be surprised if some copy editor somewhere has felt the need to identify a dog and a man that way.

 I wish I had a copy of one of those photos.
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Sunday, September 11, 2016

A GIGANTIC venue

I just found this interesting, almost ironic, headline online:

 Why Tennessee and Virginia Tech played football at a gigantic NASCAR track

Why is this interesting? Bristol Motor Speedway, the site of Saturday night's Tennessee-Virginia Tech college football game, has a huge number of seats (more than 150,000). But it is the SMALLEST NASCAR Cup track in the country.

They did set the record for the largest crowd (156,900) at a college-football game.

Contact me at tgilli52@gmail.com or nc3022@yahoo.com. Also, my Twitter handle is EDITORatWORK.
 
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Saturday, September 3, 2016

Ludwig and Merle


YEARS AGO, I WAS driving my truck up to the entrance at Daytona International Speedway, and a guard was going to check my credentials.

 I was feeling in a playful mood, so I decided to put a Ludwig van Beethoven CD into the machine. Ludwig's Fifth Symphony came out of the speakers as the guard peered inside the driver's side door. He looked at the dash, then peered at me.

 Apparently I didn't look like a Beethoven kinda guy.

 Anyway, later when I was leaving, I pulled the Beethoven CD out and slapped Merle Haggard in there. "Mama Tried" was probably more like what he'd expect of me, but he looked at me weirdly again. He looked at the dash, then looked at me. Maybe he missed Beethoven.

 Or maybe he didn't expect to hear Ludwig and Merle from the same wine-red pickup truck during the same day.

 If you're wondering, I'm a big fan of both musicians. "Moonlight Sonata" and "Ode to Joy" are two of my favorite pieces. And "Mama Tried" is as good as it gets in country music.

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EMAIL: tgilli52@gmail.com  TWITTER: EDITORatWORK

More entries from TARJ
(a book of great stories about the Intimidator)
(the book of great NASCAR stories)

EDITOR@WORK blog entries 

Entries from The Dog Blog

More blog entries by Tom Gillispie

Anecdotes by Tom Gillispie
at No comments: