On the Outside
I found my love for three things in the most unusual of places when my father found a working PlayStation 2 in the dump; video games, a future passion for writing and a love for the sport of NASCAR. When I was young, my father came home one day with a fascinating discovery from the dump of my father’s work place. He placed the stained covered box on our kitchen table and I looked through the box to see its treasure.
Along with the PlayStation 2, there was a bonus item, it was the case of an old Xbox game called Elder Scrolls, Morrowind, but looks can be deceiving. For inside the case was a different game called NASCAR Thunder 2004 for the PlayStation 2,
What's NASCAR? I thought to myself and I held up the case like it’s some strange relic from an alien, redneck world.
That afternoon I started up the machine and placed the disc in the tray of the PlayStation, and I want meet with a blast of distorted guitars by the song Action by Powerman 500 blasted out of my tv set;
We're gonna need some action
We're gonna need some action soon
Trapped in a world of ordinary madness
It's all the same, there's nothing new
I was blinded by the flashes of dazzling images of colorful race cars that raced hard and crashed even harder. From that moment I started the game, I knew that I wanted to learn more about this sport.
After I played the game nonstop for a long time, my room slowly turned into mini-NASCAR museum as my dad would later call it, if I had to guess, most kids probably had posters of either their favorite football players in dynamic photo finishers of touchdowns or hip-pop singers performing at their concerts on their walls, I on the other hand had posters of the Big 3 Hendrick Motorsport drivers. Dale Earnhardt Jr[1], Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson, seven-time back-to-back Nascar champions looking like stoic superheroes, their corporate sponsors were their heroic symbols. I had no idea what the sponsors sold or did, but I didn’t care, I thought it was the coolest fucking shit in the world.
I did mention that Nascar kickstarted my love for writing, years before I would pick up the pen and later the keyboard to imagine strange new worlds and essays of my life. I started my writing career making a very detailed fanfiction where I was the star of my own NASCAR story. When I wasn’t playing NASCAR games or watching the sport on my parents tv, I would be writing on blank printer paper of this fictionalized version of myself. I had this beat-up tan folder that I kept in my desk with the letters MF on the front of it, it was what I called my Master File, written faded gafiate. The folder is full of different types of papers and is so over filled that it looks more like a overstuff taco full of imagination. I had many different ideas stuffed into that folder but I will be focusing on the NASCAR stuff for now.
I flip through the files containing random ideas for stories, pictures I had drawn of said ideas and other random things. At the bottom of the stack of papers, I pull out a small yet thick stack of papers. I had handwritten the official NASCAR standings from the year 2003 from the official NASCAR website, at first glance, they would seem accurate to the year but with one noticeable change.
Along with the big names of Dale Jr, Jimmie Johnson, and others, was my name, Chase Kalik near the top of the list.
2003 Standings for the Winston Cup Championship
1st place: Matt Kenseth
2st place: Jimmie Johnson
3rd Place: Dale Earnhardt, Jr.
4th Place: Chase Kalik
5th place: Jeff Gordon
I never wrote out this story on paper but I had it play out in my head and had these handwritten standings that I got either from Nascar History books or more commonly, the Nascar website. I had pages for every single year spanning from around 1995ish to 2011, there is a term in the writing world called world building and I did a lot of world building at a young age. I spent so much detail in the statistics of each year from those years that you could have made it into its own book to sell at books stores.
But story world building did not end there. On my dresser, I had a line of different 1/24 diecasts, 1/64 diecast, small NASCAR brand Hot Wheels cars in a line. They seem like a random assortment of different stock cars toys ranging from different sizes, but in fact they told a larger story that I had cooked up in my head and that story was of a fictionalized version of myself as a Nascar driver.
Chase Kalik was born in 1977 and started his career in NASCAR at the age of 21 in the Craftsman Truck Series driving the #15 Napa Chevy in 1995. He won his first championship in 1996 and moved up to the Bush series the next year. He would race in both series until 2003 when he would get his start in the Winston Cup Series driving Houston Racing 53 Chevy… and so on and so on.
My story got so deep in my own made up lore that my fanfic story was multimedia before I knew what the term was. I used history books, video games, diecast cars and toys to tell myself the story of Chase Kalik, the NASCAR driver. An idealized version of man that lived only in the mind of a lonely kid.
***
In my house we had two TVs with cable, one in the living room, which was always the biggest and one in my parent’s bedroom. Once I learned that I could watch the races live on TV, every Sunday I would race down stairs to try and watch the race on the living room TV because it was always the biggest, but I would either run into my mother or father with command of the TV, they often exiled me to their bedroom to watch the race by myself.
I would tune in to either the Speed network or NBC just in time to see the end of the national anthem and someone give the famous words in the sport, “Gentlemen, start your engines!” The TV sound came alive with the roar of metal horses bucking, the unified screams and yells of the crowd and the static of the radio chatter as different drivers spoke with their teams, crew chiefs and spotters. I watched those races alone, a few times I tried to ask one of my parents to watch the race with me, but they would politely decline. Looking back, I miss that time when I didn’t care so much about my loneliness and how I was able to enjoy things without the company of others.
THE SURPRISE AT NAPA
My parents were supportive of my NASCAR addiction as much as parents with a teen that dressed in goth attire and aesthetics, I suppose they thought it’s a phase, he’ll grow out of it like all parents do. One morning, my dad woke me up from my deep sleep when I was young into my Nascar obsession.
“Dad, I’m still sleepy, why did you wake me up?” I said in a haze.
“Do you want to see a real race car from Nascar?” He asked, he didn’t need to ask twice.
My father drove me, my mother and my young baby sister to the local Napa Auto Parts in the part of town we call the Y shopping district. We drove up to an extraordinary sight, there was a simi-large trailer parked in the small parking lot off to the side of the Napa store, and right in front was a real life Nascar Stock car! The car itself was a late model Monte Carlo that sported the colors of the Napa brand. There was a large 20 on the sides of the car that just looked fast from where I was sitting in the car. We all got out and I ran up to the car like a moth into flame, it was like seeing a tiger up close. It looked so exotic and out of the norm for the sleepy tourist town of Lake Tahoe.
One thing caught my eye on the car, all Nascar stock cars that race in the sport carry the league it races in. There is the main league in Nascar and two lower divisions, if you are a fan of Baseball, it’s like how MLB has the Minor and Major leagues, Nascar has an extra minor league. The lowest league is the Truck series[2], there brand-new rookies to the sport of Nascar race in trucks to prove they can last in the sport, if they have some talent in their racing, they may get a chance to move up to the second division[3] where they race late model cars. From there, if a racer is really good or they manage to get lucky, they may get a ride in the Cup series[4], the Major leagues. However, this car bore no mark of either of the three,
“Hey, I’ve never heard of that version of Nascar before.” I said.
“That’s right,” an old man said walking over.
“My son races in the Camping World Series, it’s like a mini division in Nascar.”
Then my father and the old man started talking about specs, all I cared about was the real life Nascar stock car that stood before me, it was like the car jumped out of my video game and into the real world.
“Wanna get inside its son? Race it like a real driver?” the old man asked me.
My eyes went wide with stars, I turned to my father for permission and he nodded in approval. With the help of my father and the old man, they helped me climb into the car through the driver window, (real race cars don’t have doors). For a good 15 minutes, I stat in that car, pretending to be like my favorite drivers, making noises and turning the wheel
ZOOOM! ERRRT! The 88 is on the outside! He is about to take the checkered flag, but oh no! There is a crash, AHHHHHHHH!
I don’t remember the name of the driver of that 20 Napa car, but I hope he made it to the big leagues or at least had a good career as a Late Model racer.
THE JACKET
One day during my early years of middle school, my parents gave me a big bright red jacket. It wasn’t just any red jacket, but it was a Tony Stewart Old Spice NASCAR Jacket that was stylized after the racing uniforms the drivers wore. It had the words OLD SPICE in curvy cherry and white font on the front, little minor sponsors dotted the other areas of the jacket like Bass Pro Shops, Office Depot among others.
Every driver's uniform bore the logo of the series they found themselves driving in, over the chest, the round and warm yellow logo of the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series stood like a badge of honor. Just under the logo was the word Champion and the numbers 02’ and 05’. Tony won those championships in 2002 and 2005, but I felt like the real champ for getting to wear a cool looking jacket.
Proud of my Jacket, I walked into my middle school feeling like cream of the crop, the bad ass in red Old Spice. I wore the same stylized uniform as my favorite drivers would wear into their races. I thought I would walk into a scenario like out of a high school musical where everyone would start singing about how cool I looked for wearing something so out of the norm for little South Lake Tahoe. Wearing that NASCAR jacket, for a glorious moment that made me feel confident like I have never felt before. That feeling only lasted for a second and went away once I started walking the halls. Very quickly I learned that my badass jacket was not cool, no, it was outside the norm of the mountain town. My bright jacket brought me a lot of unintentional attention that my introverted young self was not used to getting.
Luckily, the kids in my middle school weren’t the kind that would beat you up and toss you in the trash can, but man did they make me feel like an outsider. The Tourist town of South Lake Tahoe lives in a bubble, and there was a type of standard in my class group, a don’t break the norm kind of rule, it was an unspoken rule that was rarely broken that when some kid walked in with a jacket that represented a sport were cars drove in ovals, it was a sight to behold, like I was one of those oddity people that traveled in those old traveling circuses that would come into town, being put on display for their freakish appearance.
I could feel their jugging eyes staring at me for showing my pride in something I genuinely liked. I was unsure but I believed I could hear their whispers about the kid that was wearing the redneck jacket while I was sitting in my classes or walking the halls. I managed to ignore the judgment, but I started to feel uncomfortable in my jacket.
Then, when the lunch bell rang, we all made the mad dash to the large lunch building. I have never been bullied and I am very grateful that I managed to escape middle school and high school without any horror stories. But man, did I feel like I did narrowly avoid getting bullied some days and this day was one of those times. I entered the Lunch Hall through the doors near where the lunch line formed. I got my food and scanned the room to see if I could see any of my friends.
I saw a sea of kids with similar clothes that all seemed to blend into each other and there was me, in a big bright Jacket from a redneck sport that stood out like a pimple. I slowly made my way to the other set of doors that lead to the courtyard, still scanning for my friends like a spotter looking for his car in a tight racing pack. I walked through the teal steel doors to exit out of the noise of the lunch hall, it wasn’t the same as the roar of engines. I walked by a couple of older students and one of them turned to me.
“Hey! Where did you get that jacket?” A tall student asked.
I was too scared to look at him, I was unsure if he was genuinely asking that question because they thought it was cool, or it was a challenge where anything I said would give them justification to make fun of me and/or jump me for sticking outside the norm, the tone sounded sarcastic but again I was scared out of my wits to remember.
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” I said with a tone of fear masked by confidence as I walked away.
I never made eye contact and kept walking. I felt good, I stood my ground and managed not to get chased by upperclassmen, but the pressure was getting to me. I couldn’t tell if it was in my head or the school was secretly laughing at me. My class group was a quiet one, or at least that’s how I saw it, the class of 2016 never really bullied anyone or I wasn't around to see it happen, I didn’t pay attention to things like that. I still wonder if there were any plans to bully me for my jacket if I wore it again. If they did have plans, they were made in vain because that was the first and last time I wore that jacket out in public. I wanted to wear it out more, but my parents advised me not to.
“But mom! I like the Jacket!” I protested the next morning.
“Sweety, didn’t you say that you felt like everyone was judging you?”
She was right, I came and told how uncomfortable I felt from that day, but I still wanted to wear it. But I could see it on my mom’s face, she was worried I was blind to the mockery I was getting for wearing something so ridiculous. I don’t blame my parents for not wanting me to wear it to school, they most likely thought I would just wear it around the house like Pjs, not be dumb enough to take it to school.
In a way, I was hoping by wearing that jacket that I would find people like myself, like all introverts. I had a hard time making friends, and in some ways still have and it was made worse by the things that I liked. I like niche stuff, while everyone likes to talk about the latest trends or pop stars like Taylor Swift and the like. I liked NASCAR and hard rock music, way outside the norm of the sleepy tourist town. You wouldn’t hear any west coast kids say, oh man I want to be like Jeff Gordon when I grow up or man o’ man did you see Dale Jr win that race?
“Ok…” I said in defeat and I took my jacket off for the last time.
It felt like the kids and the world finally stopped laughing and my parents gave a big sigh of relief when I retired that jacket to collect dust in my closet, before it was unceremoniously donated to a charity or tossed in the trash. I cannot remember what happened to the jacket but I hope it was the latter at least.
Just a few months before I graduated middle school, Tony Stewart won his 3rd and last NASCAR championship in November of 2011, and I thought that was a good time to stop being a fan. I was tired of feeling alone for liking something no one else did. So, over the next few months, I either gave away or put away anything related to NASCAR up in the attic to be forgotten. I wanted to forget I was a fan when I entered High School, I wanted to stop feeling like I was on the outside of things.
The Nascar posters came down, the Spider-Man, Batman came up, my little car museum on my dresser transformed into an extra space to toss my junk. I wiped my room clean of any hints I was a Nascar fan, HEAR YE, HEAR YE… THE NASCAR PHASE IS OVER! Even though my room was transformed from a little museum into a normal kid’s room, there were hints of my past that still remained, but I didn’t look fondly at these hints, I saw them more as stains.
REDNECK PICTURE DAY
I may have retired my jacket to its grave, I still managed to show off my pride in a different way. That day I wore my jacket, I also had a hat on, it was a blue and white hat with the words National Guard on the front in red and white colors. There was the Number 88 on the bill of the hat, on the side there was the signature of Dale Jr and on the other side was the abbreviated logo of Mountain Dew, on the back of the hat was the team logo of Hendrick Motorsports. This was my signature hat during my middle school years. I wore that hat so much that it gained a permanent layer of dirt, the kind of dirt that showed you loved something so much and I loved that hat so much. No one really cared about my hat that much, at least not as much as the jacket.
One day, I had forgotten that it was picture day during our gym period, and I did not have a clean set of clothes to change into that would make a good photo. I only had my stained gym uniform that needed to be washed, also my Dale Jr hat too. Caught flat footed that I had forgotten it was picture day, I had my 7th grade class picture with my Dale Jr Hat on with my stained shirt on and my bright smile. I thought it was the funniest thing in the world, and on some level, I felt some pride in showing off my liking for an out of the norm sport, my parents didn’t share my sense of humor.
Later, when I left my love for the sport in the past, I grew to hate that picture. I hated that Dale Jr Hat, I hated that stained shirt, I hated that I liked something outside the norm and I hated that I was alone. All of my following picture days made sure to scrub away that image. I always knew the general idea when picture day was, I wore clean dress shirts, made sure my hair was clean, and my bright smile showed big and wider than ever, with no hints of any NASCAR hats anywhere. Like washing away a stain on a white shirt, my hat too would soon be forgotten like the rest of my NASCAR past by being placed in a box and lost somewhere either under my bed, or up in the attic or worse. But I know that there are some stains that can never be fully removed, but for 11 years, I made damn sure to wipe clean the stain of NASCAR off myself.
THE APPLE DOESN’T FALL FAR FROM THE FANDOM
For 11 years, I had forgotten all about Nascar but the way I absorbed the lore and history of the sport stayed with me but evolved into different areas. I wasn’t just a Nascar fan, even when I was neck deep in the sport, I had other interests like Star Wars, Jurassic Park, Spider-Man and Batman to name a few. I have a tendency when I discover something new, I go into a mode where I have to learn/acquire everything I can possibly get from the new thing I find fascination with. With the few fandoms I mentioned, I would go through phases like with Nascar were it became my world, with spider-man I knew so much niche shit that I could drive a hard-core web head fan up a wall or like with my Godzilla obsession where I had to be talked out buying an 80 plus dollar oversized Godzilla action figure. I had seen the Star Wars movies so many times that I could quote each movie by memory and that’s saying a lot because I sometimes can’t remember what I had for dinner last night. But like with my time with Nascar, these phases where I obsessed over one fandom or another came and went like the paint schemes on a stock car.
I often wonder if this obsession that came in phases is a byproduct of the way my mind works with my learning disability. My father believes that I may have a condition called Aspergers syndrome. It’s a form of high functioning autism where people have a stronger affinity for things like for example, data sets from train arrival and departures and can remember these data sets extremely well, but have a harder time remembering that does not peak their curiosity. I am unsure if I have this condition, but would explain a great deal many things and little quirks that have frustrated me throughout my life. However, having been tested multiple times throughout my life, they all came back with the same thing, I have just a generalized learning disability and nothing more.
Regardless, the influence of my time as a Nascar fan stayed long after I had stopped watching the sport, but like a quote from Star Wars goes, “No one is really gone forever.” I would become a Nascar fan one last time and like last time when I learned about the sport through an unlikely source, I would be reintroduced to Nascar by a poster.
Many years after that day when my dad took me to see the Napa car, I found myself working in the hardware store that was next to the Napa Auto Parts store in 2021. For the first few months, I would park a little way from both shops in the dirt, (I couldn’t park my car in the parking lot because the parking lot was extremely small and the owner wanted all the spaces for the customers) and I would walk by the auto parts store every morning and every afternoon when I left. The store had different kinds of advertisements that they would change from time to time, but I never paid any mind to them because I was either moaning that I had to start my work day or I was speed walking to my car because I was finally done working.
One day I was coming back from getting lunch across the street when I happened to walk by the same old tired window of the auto parts store with its mix of yellowing aged ads and brand-new ones. I just happened to look up and I saw a faded poster of a guy holding up a racing trophy of some kind over a strange looking race car that I mistook for a funny car[5] with the message in faded bold yellow and blue, Congrats to Chase Elliott, the 2020 Champion winner! I studied the poster a little bit closer and I saw that the dark-haired driver had that Nascar logo on him. Nascar had always run with the idea that the cars they raced were “stock cars”, as in they were modified versions of every man kind of car that you could buy at your local dealer. Surprisingly the car that this Elliott guy was standing over was a Chevy Camaro version of a Stock Car, a sports car model.
“Holy shit, a Nascar driver, I haven’t thought of that sport in a long time.” I said out loud. But then I had a different thought entered by mind. All I could think to my self was, Who the fuck was Chase Elliott?
LEGACY AND THE LAST LAP
I was standing in line to get my bike serviced at the bike barn while I studied at UC Davis. The weather was bipolar that day, unsure if it wanted to be a bright sunny day or if it wanted to rain. It reached a compromise where the sun shined but it rained with a cloudless sky, it was nice to see Tahoe Rain down here in cow land. I waited my turn, my mind filled with things I learned in class and what I was going to have for lunch that day. I noticed a man standing behind me with his bike. He looked like any other student at UC Davis waiting to get his bike checked, however, it was his shirt that got my attention the most, I knew it was a NASCAR Shirt just by a quick glance. The shirt was blue and white, with the big yellow logo of NAPA Auto Parts right in the center, just like my old jacket. The Cup series logo was different however, it was a black square and not the kind yellow round circle of years past and it read, NASCAR MONSTER CUP Series, with the Monster Energy Logo next to the brand name. There were smaller sponsors that dotted the shirt, just like my old jacket. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, I didn’t want to creep the guy out by looking at him, so I did my best to catch quick glances to verify what I was seeing.
The night before that day, I was watching a YouTube video that made the bold claim that social media influencers were starting to wear old NASCAR apparel, not because they liked the sport, but because it was a new trend, like how one of the Kardashians wore a Slayer shirt for the style yet never listened to a single song by the band. Then before that there was the time, I was scrolling through Tik Tok and I saw a video of two guys talking in New York’s time square, one of the guys was wearing an old Jeff Gordon Jacket. It was surreal to me I saw that, and it boggles my mind to see someone at UC Davis brave enough to wear Nascar apparel.
There is no fucking way any West Coast, Gen-Z social media influencers or any UC Davis Students for that matter would be caught dead wearing anything from a sport where they’re making another left turn! I thought to myself, doing my best to not let my jaw drop at the strange sight.
Yet, there he was, the guy wore a Chase Elliott NAPA T-Shirt that was stylized after the racing uniforms the drivers wore, he even looked like he tried to be an influencer on Tik Tok or something like that. The dude got impatient from waiting in line, moved his bike over to the free air pump station on the side of the barn, haphazardly filled his tires and biked off.
He carried himself with that NASCAR t-shirt like the world had never once laughed at someone wearing anything related to NASCAR before, I didn’t know if I felt betrayed, angry, or impressed… I think I was all three.
While I was quite shocked by the sight of seeing the image of Nascar in the unlikeliest of places, I never got back into the sport. I tried to watch a race or two while I studied or worked on my college work on Sundays but it never stuck like how it did back then. But regardless, it was nice to see that the sport was getting more love than it used to in the places where the sport was not as liked as baseball or football. Yet, I don’t think I’ll ever wear anything related to Nascar in public anytime soon.
[1] Son of NASCAR legend Dale Earnhardt Sir, also known as the Intimidator.
[2] I would include the names of the divisions of the different Nascar leagues, but Nascar names its leagues after the sponsors they tag with. For example, the truck series was called the Craftsman Truck Series in the 90s, then in the 2010s was called the Camping World Truck series and so on. To make things easy, I’m just going to name the series by the type of car/truck used.
[3] Like with the Truck series, this series went by different names like the Bush series in the 90s, The Nationwide series in the 10s and so on.
[4] Like the other lower divisions, the main league gets its name from sponsors, but unlike the other two minor leagues. The top league has always had the title of Cup Series. For example, The Winston Cup Series in the 90s, Sprint Cup Series in the 10s and so on.
[5] A term for drag racing cars