He was from Baltimore originally and hit tracks as far north as Massachusetts and as far south as North Carolina. He was very advanced when it came to the Funny Cars and stock cars. He’d seen Tommy Grove run what may have been the East Coast’s first 200-mph Funny Car run when he hit a 201 at Virginia Beach. He’d checked out other greats like Jenkins, Sox, Phil Bonner, Pee Wee Wallace, “Bud” Faubel, Bob Harrop, Billy McDuell, Al Joniec etc. and was fluent with Top Fuel cars ranging from the Fred Forkners of the world to the late “Tex” Randall aboard the “Kemo Sabay” dragster, which ran an unprecedented 7.47 at Aquasco, Maryland in 1964… a run he claimed to have seen.
For two days, this guy supplied a safe haven from the outside craziness and we spent the better part of two days bouncing stories off of each other. He could stay Friday and Saturday, but had to be in a dry out center Sunday. It turned out that this 59-year-old former construction worker, whose spectator career ranged roughly from 1963 up ‘til the Winston years (1975) was sicker than I was and was going to be checked out to see how serious.
Meanwhile I hid in the shower Sunday and was released that night.
I thought I had it bad on the weekend, but there was one son-of-a-bitch I hadn’t counted on. Back at St. Joseph’s, I had a routine meeting with the company social worker to, you know, make sure the whole experience had not traumatized me. Unfortunately, in that meeting my defenses dropped and I let slip that I had a couple of handguns and that if I ever really got depressed I could put one of them to real good use. (Like I said, I really had my head up my ass at that moment.)
Well, the State was on its game Sunday. They descended on my 85-year-old mom and our house with a warrant to confiscate the guns. They took the place apart ala Lennie Briscoe and in the midst of their search found a hand grenade in a dresser drawer. This prompted a call to the Alcohol-Tobacco-Firearms agency and the crew cut lads in the windbreakers detonated the offending device in the street where we lived with about a half dozen patrol cars and an ATF van in observance.
This did not sit well with Mother who is a person with a real sense of order… not as in Law and Order either. She was born in Beverly Hills and I always had this sense about her that she was very socially conscious and that a small army of law enforcement types detonating grenades in her front yard would not go swell with her or her neighbors, whose opinion she valued.
When I got home Sunday night…
“A HAND GRENADE IN OUR HOME?????!!!! GUNS???!!! You stupid little c*cks*cker. Why I oughta … " And for the next three days I slept in the tool shed adjoining our garage.
Comparatively speaking I got off cheap. At the nut house, I had given them my phone number and later the next day I got a call from, I assume, a staffer who had noted that I had been friendly with “Norm.”
I was informed that en route to the hospital he had suffered a heart attack and died. Apparently, just before he was loaded in the tram he had mentioned me and how I had revitalized his interest in drag racing, how he hadn’t been to a race in over 20 years, but was planning on going again.
Silence for a second and then, momentarily stunned I muttered thanks.
And then before I responded I thought about his enthusiasm and how infectious it was and how it stirred feelings that quite frankly were dormant for me of late. The conversations with a definite drag druggie had made an unbearable situation quite bearable and cleared the clouds.
Having gotten my balance, I told the unidentifiable voice on the other end, “You know, he did the same for me."