Weekends at Evergreen Speedway a family affair

By Tyrone Beason
Seattle Times staff reporter

ROD MAR / THE SEATTLE TIMES Rusty Mulanax and daughter Baylee, wearing ear protection, watch a race at Evergreen Speedway.

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The 24-year-old homebuilder boasts that he has been a race fan since he was Baylee's age, and he spends his free time working on the pit crew of a friend who races late-model "super stocks" on the local circuit.

"It's a rush when you can see your car go up front, battling, bumping and banging!" Mulanax said proudly. Baylee, meanwhile, seemed oblivious to what sounded like 1,000 lions roaring into megaphones on the track below.

Evergreen Speedway, a 0.646-mile oval track that holds only about 7,500 spectators, lacks the grandeur of cousins like Talladega, the 2.66-mile Alabama course that can hold more than 140,000 people, or Daytona, where all the legends of stock-car racing have made their mark.

But the speedway has been a popular home to minor-league racing of all types for the past 50 years and NASCAR-sanctioned races for 19 years.

And the excitement about racing in these parts has been fueled by talk that NASCAR — the acronym for National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing — is searching for a spot to build a major new speedway on the West Coast.

NASCAR is second only to the NFL as the nation's biggest spectator sport, with tens of millions of fans who watch races on an increasing number of TV networks, and annual revenues topping $3 billion.

Evergreen Speedway Evergreen Speedway in Monroe hosts various racing events throughout the summer. The track is located at the Evergreen State Fairgrounds at Highways 2 and 522. For more information: 360-805-6100 or www.evergreenspeedway.com

No longer pigeon-holed as a sport for working-class, Southeast and Midwest audiences, NASCAR has expanded its reach to the entire country, and its fans are equally blue-collar and affluent.

Fans like those come from around the Puget Sound area to the regular summertime races at Evergreen Speedway — a small-town haven where race fanatics can connect with their inner Kyle Petty among like minds.

NASCAR dads — and moms

On some Fridays and most Saturday nights, the grandstands at Evergreen are filled with guys like Mulanax — hard-working, mostly white, politically moderate Average Joes who grew up with the sport because their parents or friends were into racing.

Many of these race fans pass along their love of racing by bringing their kids — little boys toting Matchbox car collections and little girls waving miniature checkered flags. In addition to his daughter, Mulanax also brought his wife, Beth, and their 2-year-old son, Payton.

Political-campaign strategists have coined a buzzword for men like Mulanax: NASCAR dads.

Some Republican campaign planners believe they are as important to the re-election of President Bush this year as "soccer moms" supposedly were in the 1996 contest between President Clinton and Bob Dole.

	ROD MAR / THE SEATTLE TIMES Eight-month-old Kadin Ruddell, his ears protected from the noise, sleeps peacefully as the cars speed past at Evergreen Speedway in Monroe. His mother, Jessica, says the noise relaxes him. "He just watches and watches, and drools and drools," she said. "It's the cutest thing."

It was not out of mere interest in the sport that Bush presided over opening ceremonies at the Daytona 500 in March.

But at the races, politics always comes a distant second to what's happening on the pavement.

"I vote, but I won't argue with you about politics all day long," Mulanax said, adding that he swings Democratic in most elections.

What's more, representative of nationwide trends, the crowds at Evergreen Speedway include nearly as many NASCAR moms as dads. And they are some of the loudest and most passionate fans of the sport.Fans such as Tara Conley of Renton and Jessica Ruddell of Everett, both in their early 20s and both married to men who often compete at Evergreen, are in a class all their own. On Saturdays, they hold court like speedway queens in the top row of bleachers at Evergreen.

A burst of acrid car exhaust mingled with the smell of screeching tires wafts up through the stands. Conley's in heaven.

"There's nothing like the smell of burnt rubber!" she says with a laugh, cradling her friend's baby, 8-month-old Kadin Ruddell.

"From the beginning of the season to the end of the season, we're pretty much here every weekend."

Kadin has been attending races since leaving the hospital, the women quip. Like most children in the stands, Kadin wears headphones to protect his ears from the bone-rattling din. His mom and "aunt" have even set up his playpen in a corner next to their seats.

	ROD MAR / THE SEATTLE TIMES Kaytlynn Hager, 7, shows off some autographs she's collected on a recent race night at Evergreen Speedway.

Conley said she owns tons of NASCAR paraphernalia, including a couple of die-cast model cars, photographs, magazine clippings and books. Her favorite driver is Tony Stewart, who races nationally on the Home Depot team.

"He's not as good as Junior," Ruddell breaks in, referring to Dale Earnhardt Jr., one of the sport's biggest stars. "My son's already got a (Earnhardt) jacket" to wear when he gets big enough to fit it.

Ruddell swears that Kadin loves the races. The insane roar of the cars as they sweep down the stretch in front of the stands at nearly 150 mph relaxes him, she said.

"He just watches and watches, and drools and drools," Ruddell said. "It's the cutest thing."

Small-town flavor

Evergreen Speedway provides for Monroe what Mariners baseball spring training offers in Peoria, Ariz. — a sports lovefest where fans gather to experience their pastime on an intimate, more human scale.

Saturday-night crowds also consist of teen boys with spiky hair and Carhartt jackets, couples out on a very noisy date and families wrapped in jackets and blankets to ward off the chill that often sets in so close to the Cascade Mountains.

Derek Bell, 33, of Issaquah said he makes the 45-minute drive to Evergreen Speedway about six times a year with his 3-year-old son, Lake.

A Bill Elliott fan, Bell wore a baseball cap with the driver's signature stenciled on it. He described himself as a union iron worker and — perhaps unusual for a NASCAR dad — a hard-core Democrat who, when he was growing up, liked "messing around" with cars alongside his own dad.

The NASCAR events at Evergreen may not be the major league of racing, but they're fun, and the spectators are ordinary folks like himself, Bell explained.

"They're all regulars — you see the same people at these events," he said. "At local tracks like this, they're all working people. It's not 'Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.' "

	ROBERT LABERGE / GETTY IMAGES Martinsville Speedway attracts thousands in Virginia.

Before the races, spectators are allowed to visit the pit area, where they can poke their heads into the cars, ask the drivers questions and plead for autographs.

On nights when the stocks aren't racing, fans fill the stands for offbeat contests such as "extreme contact" races and demolition derbies involving school buses, motorboats, anything that can produce a dazzling bang-up.

In between races, Racey Raccoon, the speedway mascot, stirs up the younger fans, while candidates for Ms. Evergreen Speedway, dressed in flowing gowns, hand out trophies and kisses to event winners poised on a wooden podium.

The atmosphere is more county fair than big-time sporting event.

That's one of the reasons people turn out weekend after weekend, said Terry Buell, the speedway's Ray-Ban-wearing marketing chief and one of the race emcees.

Buell, who hosts "Northwest Race Talk" on radio station KYCW-AM (1090), from 6:30-7:30 p.m. Mondays, sounded amused when he noted one of the quirkier characteristics of race fans. While many don't align themselves politically, they are fiercely loyal to businesses that sponsor their favorite drivers — and vice versa.

NASCAR is famous for the corporate logos that cover its cars, transforming them into high-speed billboards for laundry detergents, auto-parts stores, even impotence drugs.

"Some people will avoid going to a restaurant or buying a tire because it's associated with a driver they don't like," Buell said. "The drivers can be the best of friends and their fans will hate each other."

At Evergreen, fans jump into the lifestyle of racing, if not the driver's seat, speeding away into a smoky alternate universe for one night, at least.

With racing, "people just follow their own ignorant bliss — it's escapism," Buell said. "It's a beautiful thing."

Tyrone Beason: 206-464-2251 or tbeason@seattletimes.com

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company

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