For the Love of the Crash
Explaining the allure of motorsports

BY RUTH ROWLAND

Navigate:
Monster Meltdown
The Need for Speed
Some Things You Need to Know

A weekend in January, 1998. Every snowshoe in metropolitan Portland is rented out. If the pristine white silence of the North Cascades is out of reach, where else to end up on a wintry Sunday afternoon but inside the Tacoma Dome, watching trucks with 6-foot tires crush hapless '70s sedans while a cloud of particulate-laden carbon gases drifts up like pot smoke over a Dead crowd? Where else, in other words, but at a monster-truck show?

This was my introduction to the world of motorsports.

 Yes, they do call them "sports," with Hot Rod magazine quick to point out that motor sports are "very physically demanding"--though, in the same issue, winning driver Mike Moran says he owes part of his success to drinking a pint of Mountain Dew before each race.

 If you're still not convinced, think of fox hunting or steeple-chasing, which have long been considered sports, even though their practitioners were muscling around on one horsepower instead of the 1,400 plus of a Jersey Outlaw or a Carolina Crusher.

Back to the Tacoma Dome: If I had any doubts that I was in the right place, they were laid to rest when the lights dimmed and the crowd turned toward the spotlit American flag, all six truck drivers poised solemnly on the huge front left tires of their steeds for a canned PA rendition of "The Star-Spangled Banner."

 Next, the six trucks started their mighty engines, emitting a roar that drowned out the kids' cries of "Bigfoot" and had me quickly stuffing shredded napkin in my ears (rule #1 at motorsports events: bring ear plugs). They made a few posturing runs over some junker cars ("crush cars," in monster lexicon) and pulled regally to the side.

 This first crushing was actually the most interesting thing the big trucks did. They later made some head-to-head race runs, but it was hard to take seriously--monster-truck racing is the professional wrestling of motor sports. There were no flames, no wrecks, no trucks flying out of control into the spectator stands.

I walked into the Tacoma Dome that day primed for some Gen-X cultural slumming, big hair and all. Afterwards, while I was filling Kleenexes with black snot, I couldn't shake the feeling that something more was going on here. Most monster-truck analysts conclude that it's the crashing and smashing that make the events engrossing. But there was something more deeply affecting about seeing the Dodge Darts and Buick station wagons of my childhood smushed flat by the heir apparent to automotive superiority--some lurking metaphorical statement about the "progress" of the industrial era, where the new towers above and obliterates the old, in this case literally.

 In fact, it was probably semiconscious reservations about this progress that kept me away from motorsports for so long. After all, the fruits of the industrial age, or at least of its combustion-powered segment, are getting a hard second look at the end of the 20th century. Global warming is no longer theory but fact. It's estimated the United States' appetite for fossil fuels will have to drop a whopping 30 percent from current projections to meet the targets set at the global-warming summit last December in Kyoto.

 At the same time, Americans are increasingly opting to drive gas-guzzling light trucks and sport-utility vehicles, which produce as much carbon dioxide as the nation's cars even though there are half as many of them. Why celebrate something that's threatening to fry us?

Ed Woods, vehicles inspections program chief for the state Department of Environmental Quality, helped put it in perspective. Though the competition vehicles may fare poorly on an emissions-per-mile basis, the thousands of spectators' vehicles actually do a lot more damage. "A million vehicles driving to work produces more impact than a few vehicles driving around in circles," he says. The moral of the story: Leave the sport-ute at the dealer's lot and get your 4WD thrills vicariously at the monster mash.

Though the Northwest has one of the lower monster population densities in the country (about 20 of the nation's monster corps reside here), two locally grown monsters live up the road in Forest Grove. Chuck Jordan started out hauling timber up and down the region, until the spotted-owl came along. His friend Dennis Anderson, owner of Gravedigger, "conned" him into building his own monster, Survivor.

 Now Jordan's on the road about 35 weeks a year, crushing cars as far away as Mexico City and trying to fly home every couple of weeks to hang out with his wife Cathy and their two kids. He had to go all the way to Tennessee to find a sponsor, country singer Martina McBride. "Motorsports is so unpopular here," Jordan laments. "Everything's ball sports."

 Local events coordinator Jerry Strode agrees. Logging towns like Grants Pass are great. "They're a chili-eating, beer-drinking crowd," he says. "And they like their trucks. But more up-and-coming towns like Eugene lack the motorsports spirit. They like to think of themselves, anyway, as more white-collar."

 Strode, who used to make monster trucks and has built just about everything at some point, also designed the Megasaurus, which drives in looking like a space shuttle and unfolds into a fearsome 30-foot mechanical dinosaur. Its cousin Tranzilla followed, both of them built on a Sherman tank base. They ate up cars, chewed up cars, shot out flames, blew smoke...the basic stuff, says Strode. After running the monsters a few years, he sold them to a guy from Florida who has taken them as far afield as Brazil.

The big trucks are scheduled for several stops at local county fairs this summer. If you show up for the monster action, you're likely to see several side-events as well:

The demolition derby: The classic. Bumper cars for grown-ups. Junker cars equipped with driver-side reinforcement and special kill switches (in case of meltdown) smash it out for the crash-thirsty crowd. Not content to sit and watch? Each year the DARE Foundation raffles off a vehicle so that one lucky Yamhill County fairgoer can jump into the fray.

The roll-over: You hear an approaching whine from outside your visual field. Suddenly, in hurtles a battered early-'80s hatchback. It throws itself up a waiting ramp, two wheels off the side, and--crunch, crunch--starts turning cartwheels like a gymnast. The car with the most rolls wins; 41?2 took the prize in the Tacoma Dome this January. At first I was concerned about xenophobic overtones to this event, since the first few contestants were Japanese imports: Is this a way for the "buy American" crowd to take out its aggressions on a bunch of defenseless old Honda Civics? The appearance of a healthy proportion of Pacers and Gremlins dismissed this fear. The event usually runs three rounds, and in between you get to watch the pit crews straightening wheels and pounding out frames to keep their charges rolling. Attrition is high.

Circle Racing (a.k.a. "bump and pass"): Drivers make 10 laps of a quarter-mile dirt track in their reinforced junker vehicles, approaching 40 mph on a dry day. The catch is, before you can pass another car, you have to "tap" them, according to McMinnville Racing Association secretary Carolyn Lauber. Driver Jeff Grove puts it more gustily: "You have to smash 'em to pass 'em." Yamhill County's event runs separate heats for women and men, and Lauber says lots of first-time women drivers are joining the field, including, last year, receptionist Sue Ammiro, who works with Grove at J&W Car Star (a shop specializing in--you guessed it--collision repair). "I had just recently gotten divorced, and was breaking out and exploring new terrain, I guess," explains Ammiro. Lauber adds: "The women are always a lot more slower, but they're funner to watch. They take bump and pass seriously."

Tough trucks: Here, various makes of 4WD compete for time around an obstacle course that might include hay bales, dirt bumps and water traps. The Clark County Fair has run its tough-truck races for six or seven years, drawing 50-75 trucks each time, and local participation is the norm. "We even have people who, at times, bring their cars in out of the parking lot to compete," says Mark Ail, marketing manager for the fair. The amateur status of drivers and vehicles adds to the allure, especially when axles break and wheels fall off during the race. "A couple of years ago we had a jeep who came across the finish line, slammed on his brakes, and ended up on his top," Ail chuckles.

Monster Meltdown
Snakebite and Bigfoot will perform car-crushing to accompany the Hillsboro Airshow.

Hillsboro Airport, 11 am and 4 pm Saturday and Sunday, June 13-14. $10-$18, $5 kids.

A four-hour show at the Yamhill County Fair will feature a demolition derby, circle-track racing and a roll-over contest, with a halftime car-jumping exhibition by homegrown monster Survivor.

 Yamhill County Fairgrounds, McMinnville. 7 pm Friday, July 31, 5 pm Saturday, Aug. 1. $8, $5 kids, free under age 5.

 Eight monster trucks are expected at the Clark County Fair.

Clark County Fairgrounds, Ridgefield, Wash. Demolition derbies 2 and 7:30 pm Saturday, tough-truck and monster racing 2 and 7:30 pm Sunday, Aug. 15-16.

The Need for Speed
Find a more traditional auto-thrill at the Woodburn Drag Strip

BY RUTH ROWLAND

Woodburn Drag Strip, 1.5 miles east of Woodburn off I-5, exit 271.
Events are held most weekends throughout the summer. Ticket prices vary with event. For schedule, call 625-1511.

If the circus-like nature of some motor events puts you off, hop in your own fuel-efficient 2WD and carpool 30 miles down the highway to the Woodburn Drag Strip to check out a more serious-minded automotive sport...assuming it's not the day of the world-championship golf cart drag.

As the rain streams down outside on a Friday morning, Jay Livingston picks up the phone that's ringing in the drag strip office. It's some poor soul calling to see if the weekend's race events are going to be rained out. "You need to call God," Livingston tells the questioner. "1-800-G-O-D-HELP."

 No, it's not the Woodburn chapter of Dial-a-Prayer. It's the drag strip's advice to anyone who wants to know ahead of time whether weekend race events are going to get rained out. "They think that we know," Livingston laughs.

The track may be wet now, but it'll be smoking on weekends through the summer as the drag strip, located amid grain fields outside of Woodburn, celebrates its 25th season. In fact, Livingston and his father, Jim, who started the track in 1973, periodically have to scrape off excess rubber that builds up behind the starting line.

 Though TV serves well for viewing longer circle-track races, nothing beats the sensation of being near the action for the flat-out speed of a quarter-mile drag. "You get these 250 mph runs," says Livingston. "That's smokin'!" The drag strip also offers spectators the chance to get down in the pits elbow-to-elbow with drivers and crews as they chill out between runs.

A chronic concern for drag race operators is how to explain their sport to the public. The timing system is more than a little complex, and the range of events is bewildering: pro-stock, funny cars, dragsters, Federal-Mogul, Mopar. Don't worry about understanding it all at once, Livingston advises.

 On the calendar this summer are VW bug races, jet cars, Harley-Davidson drags and 18-wheelers, along with the more predictable cars and dragsters. Maybe there'll even be a repeat of last year's impromptu Golf Cart Nationals.

The drag strip orients itself toward family-friendly entertainment. In addition to the bleachers, which seat up to 7,000 spectators, the Livingstons have created a picnic area and now are putting in a basketball court and arcade to give bored kids an alternative to throwing rocks under the bleachers.

Some things you need to know about monster trucks:
 * Bigfoot, the first monster, was born in
 St. Louis in 1974.

 * The first monster-truck show was held
 in 1984.

* Monsters run on alcohol-based fuel instead of gasoline. They burn several
 gallons in a four-second run.

* The tires monsters wear are actually intended for fertilizer spreaders. They cost about $3,300 each and crews spend 40 hours per tire filing off 300 pounds of extra tread.

* The monster population of the United States now hovers around 200.

 * If a truck seems to be making groovy moves around the curves, it's not your imagination. They have four-wheel steering.