[Jerry Shaw]

My friends at Mapquest, God bless their hearts, do their best to get you to your intended destination in the shortest possible time. Many times they do so by using the age old principle of "the shortest distance between two points is a straight line." This often, like today, leads you off the beaten path. I started out on the familiar main arteries of US-63 North and US-36 West. Mileage wise, these two main roads took the lion's share of my trip. From there, they sent me deep into the rural Illinois agricultural countryside. This time of year, the corn is ten feet high. And when it’s planted close to the road and it’s on both sides, you feel like you’re driving in a tunnel. You take that tunnel long enough, add in several 90 degree turns and that tunnel becomes a maze. A Maze of maize. And since the roads aren’t necessarily marked all that well in the country, I wasn’t exactly sure that I was on the the specific roads I was supposed to be on. But having grown up in rural Clay County, Indiana I knew the best way to navigate this type of terrain was to use the occasional bean field to scan the horizon. Every little village of 500 people or more in the agricultural world has it’s own clump of huge grain bins. Each one, like a fingerprint, is unique to that town. The first one I saw turned out to be the skyline of Dalton City. That meant that next up would be the little racing town of Macon. And as I approached the next one, I saw what looked like a sleepy little town on the front edge, but towards the back edge you could see parked cars bulging out into both sides of the street. I knew that meant they were either having a livestock auction, there was a Jonah Fish Fry up ahead or that I had found Macon Speedway. Luckily for me it was the latter.

After being pointed to my parking spot way out in the back forty, I declined the golf cart shuttle ride that they were providing, so I could get the circulation going again in my legs, after a long drive and also take in the sights of this little country track I had never seen before. I went to the gate and got a pit pass. The first thing obvious was that there were a ton of micro midgets in the house, tonight. And as I got around to the end of the track, it was just as obvious that the midget division pond was stocked, big time! I saw Tony Stewart, Dave Darland, Bryan Clauson, Brett Anderson, Brad Kuhn, Brad Loyet, Brent Beauchamp and Shane Hmiel to name a few. And big groups of people were gathered around Kenny Schrader and Kenny Wallace, who would be driving modifieds tonight. Not bad for a Wednesday night way out in farm land, huh? It’s an ample facility, too. Plenty of seating. A scoring tower in the middle of the track. There’s even a lounge, complete with neon signs, in turn 4. It’s a nice higher banked dark dirt oval, that even though they list it as a 1/5 mile track, it looks a little bigger than that and races quite a bit bigger than that. And the racing in all three divisions turned out to be excellent.

Kenny Wallace may act goofy when they put him on these NASCAR shows, but when you put him in a modified and show him a green flag, you see real quick how he earned the right to act goofy in front of the NASCAR cameras. He can flat out take one of those big sleds and throw it around a bullring fast, with amazing precision. And he had to as Tim Hancock and the aforementioned Schrader were on their game this night, as well.

The 600cc Micro feature was even better. The whole race was complete chaos, especially the furious first half battle for the lead. Guys like Joe Miller and Dereck King riding the fence. Others diving for the tires. Slide jobs, bicycling, jumping the cushion. You name it, you had it. And once Miller got the lead for good, it got even more interesting. It was almost Clayton-esque the way he was playing with fire, using the cushion the way he was. It had already drawn several drivers into that wall and it wasn’t done, yet.

The first thing worth mentioning was that we were starting a POWRI Midget feature without either Brad Kuhn or Brad Loyet. Loyet had been sent home for a very, very, very ill-advised slide job that smashed Joey Moughan into the wall. There was no way for Joey to evade it, as Loyet came all the way from the bottom of the track to run into him up near the top groove. It was such a bad deal that the many in the crowd were actually trying to egg Joey on, once climbed out of his car, to go to the opposite side of the track and get Brad. The officials were there to prevent that from happening and eventually they made the right call, IMO. And from what I was told, Brad Kuhn’s motor gave up the ghost and he was never a factor, all evening. Shane Hmiel took early command and led until Anderson slid him for the lead and never looked back. There was a lot of great racing throughout the field, as Brent Beauchamp recovered from an early race Tommy Tipover that sent he and Bryan Clauson to the back. Brent passed a bunch of cars, but was collected when Stewart was sucked into the wall, on lap 23. That was also minor roll over that the work area crew (they do a good job of this, at this track) were able to fix and send the guy back out on the track. Bryan Clauson bided his time, then punched the time clock and made a tear through the field starting on lap twenty or so. And all the while, there was Dave Darland sneaking up through the field in one of the coolest looking midgets out there. On one yellow, late in the race, there he was sitting in third and you just had the feeling Anderson’s moments as the leader might be numbered. But hey, the defending POWRI Champ has been counted out before and here he still is. And when the checker flew, there he still was.

I may have went through a maze to get there, but you know how those type of experiments work. If there is a nice piece of cheese at the end of the maze, then the mouse feels amply rewarded and finds his way through the maze more easily the next time. After my first Macon Speedway experience, this mouse can probably find his way back to this place, blindfolded.

Next stop, Angell Park.

Jerry

[Seadog]

That was a fun, well written piece. You're good at this stuff.

[Danny Burton]

Originally Posted by Seadog That was a fun, well written piece. You're good at this stuff.

If I had a drink now, I'd drink to that, Greg.:2:

Beer and ice cream don't mix, at least not for me.

[Seadog]

Originally Posted by Danny Burton If I had a drink now, I'd drink to that, Greg.:2: Beer and ice cream don't mix, at least not for me.

Only the word "root" stands in the way of a root beer float and a beer float. You may want to reconsider that "don't mix" part.

[dirtnonwingfan]

Jerry, I think you exceeded your usual high standard with this one. "A Maze of maize." I look forward to stories from Angel Park.

[SHORTBUS]

Jerry,
been there - done that - good story --- did you get to see any of the omish folks ?

[Kirk Spridgeon]

Thanks for the story, Jerry. Couldn't make it over there last night. See ya this weekend...

[Joey Woods]

Dereck King definately sports the right last name in the 600s' and Joe B Miller is one tough cat as well.

[Mud Packer]

Jerry,

Here is a tall cold one in honor of our newest "professional" auto racing writer.

[Pat O'Connor Fan]

Over the years since the mid '60s I've made quite a few to Macon, about 60 miles, one way. Used to follow US 51 all the way from Bloomington to Macon, but now I bypass Decatur on I-72 and then get back onto US 51. I never did the corn and bean field route such as you so eloquently described -- my loss. Yes, there are small towns along US 51 and many corn and bean fields, but not as you described. Good read, buddy! Thanks for taking the time to post your travels; looking forward to your next installment.