Douglas Co Ga Seven Flags Infield 5/20/95. Photo by Roy Burke

Douglas Co Ga Seven Flags Pace Lap 5/20/95. Photo by Roy Burke

Douglas Co Ga Seven Flags Check In 5/20/95. Photo by Roy Burke

Douglas Co Ga Seven Flags Infield 5/20/95. Photo by Roy Burke

Douglas Co Ga Seven Flags Rob 5/20/95. Photo by Roy Burke

Douglas Co Ga Seven Flags Blur 5/20/95. Photo by Roy Burke

Douglas Co Ga Seven Flags Wreck 5/20/95. Photo by Roy Burke

Douglas Co Ga Seven Flags No 33 5/20/95. Photo by Roy Burke

Doc and I became enamored of NASCAR and small Southern race tracks in the early 1990s. By the time we had ridden that obsession out a decade or so later we had attended big time races at Bristol, Talladega and Rockingham.We also watched Saturday night specials at Tri-County Speedway in Brasstown, NC or the old paved track at Senoia Raceway, south of Atlanta. My media jobs in those years allowed me access far beyond the average ticket-buyer, and Doc often came along as my ‘producer’ and unofficial photographer.

Through an odd confluence of events, for most of a year split between the  1994 and 1995 Southern Dirt Track seasons, I served as  public address announcer for Seven Flags Speedway, a 3/8 mile red clay “bull ring” operating at the lowest reaches of grass-roots motorsports, a past it’s prime motorsports facility, playing out its final seasons before being overwhelmed by the tsumani of suburban Atlanta development. Good old boys who wrenched on old engines all week and then tried to lay it all out on Saturday nights, spinning wet packed red clay into fine orange mist that found every crack and crevice, aerosol clay I would still be washing out of my ears days later. Doc came out a few times, and recorded audio and took photos. He digitally archived the ones above, for which I am grateful. Seven Flags Speedway has long since been replaced by a subdivision, much to the relief of the encroaching suburbs of 1995. “There’s chaos in turn four,” I shouted into the mic. There certainly was. I miss my racing buddy.