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nrc
06-25-06, 02:26 AM
We were cleaning out the attic in our old house today and I came across some stuff from my Senior year in high school ('79/'80). On the cover of one my notebooks among the doodles, one of my friends had written "[The President] is as incompetent as an NBA official." I had scribbled out "NBA" and written "USAC" over it.

This kind of jogged my memory because I usually consider that I really didn't become an open wheel fan until later in the eighties. I was interested in open wheel in the late '70s early '80s but not nearly as much as sports cars and road racing. My interest started to grow when they started racing at MidOhio, but in 1984 we moved to Florida. There were no champ car races in Florida, and of course TV coverage was spotty, so my interest really didn't grow much until we moved back to Ohio in '89.

You kids today with your interwebs don't appreciate what it's like to wait almost two weeks for On Track to arrive with your racing news. Hell, USAC would change the rules three times before you even heard about the first one. I used to walk two miles to the mail box and four miles back through two feet of snow in August for my racing news!

And sorry, if you were hoping to add my high school papers to your library I've thrown them out. This move has taught us a thing or two about hanging on to stuff for no good reason.

theunions
06-25-06, 04:47 AM
I didn't even LEARN about On Track until halfway through high school in the mid-80's.

I still have the audio cassettes I made of the delayed TV broadcasts of the 1980 Can-Am season, including Mid-Ohio, as a third grader, my school manila folder marker drawing of the FULL field from the spring '81 CART race at Phoenix as a fourth grader, and the marker drawing I did that same spring of Riccardo Patrese's Beta/Ragno Arrows at Long Beach, which was selected as a finalist for a school art contest and matted/displayed at a local shopping mall (complete with Penthouse associate sponsorship).

Never got to visit Long Beach until 2001, Phoenix until 2002 or Mid-Ohio until last month...

Sean O'Gorman
06-25-06, 08:35 AM
I have a yearbook from 7th or 8th grade where one of my friends sarcastically signed it "Go Cheever in '97!" :saywhat:

Anteater
06-25-06, 12:17 PM
What a cool blast from the past! We racefans are truly spoiled nowadays, with the new technology that brings us the news almost instantly.