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This is a good intrerview of Kyle Petty by Dustin Long.
http://www.news-record.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080328/NRSTAFF/803280304/-1/SPORTS02
Kyle Petty: Of ponytails, big lawns and missing cats
By Dustin Long
Staff Writer
Friday, Mar. 28, 2008 3:00 am
What are the experiences, beliefs and dreams that shape the lives of some of NASCAR's drivers? Staff writer Dustin Long asked Kyle Petty about that two weeks ago at Bristol. Here is what Petty said: The story that people like, that I always tell, is wrecking at Indianapolis. Have I told you this story? Anyhow, I was running second to (Johnny) Benson, I remember that much. I blew a right front tire coming out of Turn 4. ... They cut me out of the car, but they can't get me to a stretcher. So they put me on a backboard with a neck brace ... so they have to lay me flat on the ground. So I'm flat on the ground. And Sterling (Marlin), I don't remember this, but Sterling tells this, that as the guys start to pick me up to put me back over the wall ... that as they reached to put me back over the wall that I screamed. Sterling said I screamed like a girl. They put me back down. They bend down and they pick me up and I screamed. They put me down. Finally, Sterling said the paramedic that was at the head ... realized that he was standing on my ponytail so when he would pick me up, it would pull my head back and I would scream like a girl.
Probably one of the wildest ones I was in was here three or four years ago (at Bristol). The one that really caught me off guard was coming down the front stretch and Ward (Burton) got hit and spun and he ricocheted off the inside wall. I thought I'd cleared him, and he clipped me in the left rear and the car spun around backwards and slapped the left side of the car into the wall, and it knocked me out. It's probably only the second time I've ever been knocked out. It cracked a vertebra, broke some ribs. It pulled a ton of Gs.
I play every day. All the time. I've got one on the bus. I'll pick up the guitar, and people that play the guitar will probably relate to this. I can pick up the guitar and watch a movie and play a guitar at the same time. You just play.
I still just write songs. I'm the only one that hears them, but I still write them. After I had spent time in Nashville doing music stuff in the '80s, to me it wasn't so much about the guys that sang the songs or the women who sang the songs, it was about the people that wrote them. There was just a craft to it. It's cool, people who can take three verses and a chorus and maybe a bridge and tell a whole story that you can visualize in your head. I've got tons of kids songs. Some day I'm going to be like Bozo the Clown and have my own TV show and sing my own kids songs.
Right now I'm reading "Jack Kerouac's American Journey." And I'm also reading, studying for my pilot's test. I've done my cross country and I've done my solo. I've got to take the written test.
After Adam's accident, I looked and I thought, I was 40 years old. I had been a part of life, but had you ever really lived life? There's a difference. We get caught up in doing what we do, but that's what we do. What do you do outside of what you do? Do you learn a new language? Do you try to do something? I want to learn a new language at some point in time. I want to sky-dive. I want to learn to fly. I want to experience things. I don't want to get to be 90 years old and say, life lived me, I didn't live life.
Are you ready? (Singing) "Flintstones, meet the Flintstones, they're a modern Stone Age family. From the town of Bedrock." You know the song. Then, it's "Someday, maybe Fred will win the fight, then that cat will stay out for the night.' Remember that? What happened to the cat, dude? Dino is Fred's pet. Where did the cat come from and what happened to the cat? That's a mystery. OK, it's not a Scooby-Doo mystery, but that's a freaking mystery. Is it not? Think about it. They had a cat. Fred sets him outside. The cat jumps back through the window and locks Fred out. That's the opening. Did somebody write a song and it had a cat in it, so they had to put a cat in the opening but a cat was not in an episode? What happened to the cat?
Never stop having fun. That's me. No matter what you do. What I mean by that is this: Don't put yourself in a position, whether it's a job, whether it's whatever it is, that life is not fun. There are too many things out there to do.
Always be kind. Try to anyhow. It's hard. Whether it's a fast-food restaurant and a girl or a guy makes your order, say thank you, just say a kind word. Always try to be kind.
Got married, told (wife) Pattie, "Here's the deal, for better for worse, and I'll never mow a yard." Here's what happened. When I lived ... down in Level Cross beside the race shop, our front yard was a three-acre yard, and every Tuesday I would start mowing and every Saturday I would mow all day because in the summertime you would have to mow twice a week, it was so big. You were constantly mowing, and you would have to mow, and then you would have to trim, and you would have to rake certain areas. I swore if I ever got out of that place I was never mowing another yard as long as I live, and I've been true to that.
I think to get back in a race car every week, I think Adam inspires me. What I mean by that, I've said it before, I still feel closer to Adam when I'm sitting in that car than I do any other time. No matter how bad things go or how rotten it looks from the outside, it's still OK from the inside. There's a peace there. It's like finding a place where you can sit under a tree and watch a waterfall and there's a peace there.
What scares me the most is losing another child. It does. With (son) Austin and (daughter) Montgomery Lee, I'll call them 100 times a day just to check on them, just to see where they're at, just to touch base.
Courage is what these kids have that go to Victory Junction (camp for children with various illnesses). That's all courage is, is just getting up every day and living the life that they've been given, whatever life that is. Whether it's spina bifida or hemophilia or juvenile rheumatoid arthritis. We see little girls with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis and they're in such pain and they just get up and go play like that's just part of life. That's courage because they're living a life that you and I and a lot of people will never experience, and I think it takes courage for them to continue on.
Words to live by: Truth and honesty.
http://www.news-record.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080328/NRSTAFF/803280304/-1/SPORTS02
Kyle Petty: Of ponytails, big lawns and missing cats
By Dustin Long
Staff Writer
Friday, Mar. 28, 2008 3:00 am
What are the experiences, beliefs and dreams that shape the lives of some of NASCAR's drivers? Staff writer Dustin Long asked Kyle Petty about that two weeks ago at Bristol. Here is what Petty said: The story that people like, that I always tell, is wrecking at Indianapolis. Have I told you this story? Anyhow, I was running second to (Johnny) Benson, I remember that much. I blew a right front tire coming out of Turn 4. ... They cut me out of the car, but they can't get me to a stretcher. So they put me on a backboard with a neck brace ... so they have to lay me flat on the ground. So I'm flat on the ground. And Sterling (Marlin), I don't remember this, but Sterling tells this, that as the guys start to pick me up to put me back over the wall ... that as they reached to put me back over the wall that I screamed. Sterling said I screamed like a girl. They put me back down. They bend down and they pick me up and I screamed. They put me down. Finally, Sterling said the paramedic that was at the head ... realized that he was standing on my ponytail so when he would pick me up, it would pull my head back and I would scream like a girl.
Probably one of the wildest ones I was in was here three or four years ago (at Bristol). The one that really caught me off guard was coming down the front stretch and Ward (Burton) got hit and spun and he ricocheted off the inside wall. I thought I'd cleared him, and he clipped me in the left rear and the car spun around backwards and slapped the left side of the car into the wall, and it knocked me out. It's probably only the second time I've ever been knocked out. It cracked a vertebra, broke some ribs. It pulled a ton of Gs.
I play every day. All the time. I've got one on the bus. I'll pick up the guitar, and people that play the guitar will probably relate to this. I can pick up the guitar and watch a movie and play a guitar at the same time. You just play.
I still just write songs. I'm the only one that hears them, but I still write them. After I had spent time in Nashville doing music stuff in the '80s, to me it wasn't so much about the guys that sang the songs or the women who sang the songs, it was about the people that wrote them. There was just a craft to it. It's cool, people who can take three verses and a chorus and maybe a bridge and tell a whole story that you can visualize in your head. I've got tons of kids songs. Some day I'm going to be like Bozo the Clown and have my own TV show and sing my own kids songs.
Right now I'm reading "Jack Kerouac's American Journey." And I'm also reading, studying for my pilot's test. I've done my cross country and I've done my solo. I've got to take the written test.
After Adam's accident, I looked and I thought, I was 40 years old. I had been a part of life, but had you ever really lived life? There's a difference. We get caught up in doing what we do, but that's what we do. What do you do outside of what you do? Do you learn a new language? Do you try to do something? I want to learn a new language at some point in time. I want to sky-dive. I want to learn to fly. I want to experience things. I don't want to get to be 90 years old and say, life lived me, I didn't live life.
Are you ready? (Singing) "Flintstones, meet the Flintstones, they're a modern Stone Age family. From the town of Bedrock." You know the song. Then, it's "Someday, maybe Fred will win the fight, then that cat will stay out for the night.' Remember that? What happened to the cat, dude? Dino is Fred's pet. Where did the cat come from and what happened to the cat? That's a mystery. OK, it's not a Scooby-Doo mystery, but that's a freaking mystery. Is it not? Think about it. They had a cat. Fred sets him outside. The cat jumps back through the window and locks Fred out. That's the opening. Did somebody write a song and it had a cat in it, so they had to put a cat in the opening but a cat was not in an episode? What happened to the cat?
Never stop having fun. That's me. No matter what you do. What I mean by that is this: Don't put yourself in a position, whether it's a job, whether it's whatever it is, that life is not fun. There are too many things out there to do.
Always be kind. Try to anyhow. It's hard. Whether it's a fast-food restaurant and a girl or a guy makes your order, say thank you, just say a kind word. Always try to be kind.
Got married, told (wife) Pattie, "Here's the deal, for better for worse, and I'll never mow a yard." Here's what happened. When I lived ... down in Level Cross beside the race shop, our front yard was a three-acre yard, and every Tuesday I would start mowing and every Saturday I would mow all day because in the summertime you would have to mow twice a week, it was so big. You were constantly mowing, and you would have to mow, and then you would have to trim, and you would have to rake certain areas. I swore if I ever got out of that place I was never mowing another yard as long as I live, and I've been true to that.
I think to get back in a race car every week, I think Adam inspires me. What I mean by that, I've said it before, I still feel closer to Adam when I'm sitting in that car than I do any other time. No matter how bad things go or how rotten it looks from the outside, it's still OK from the inside. There's a peace there. It's like finding a place where you can sit under a tree and watch a waterfall and there's a peace there.
What scares me the most is losing another child. It does. With (son) Austin and (daughter) Montgomery Lee, I'll call them 100 times a day just to check on them, just to see where they're at, just to touch base.
Courage is what these kids have that go to Victory Junction (camp for children with various illnesses). That's all courage is, is just getting up every day and living the life that they've been given, whatever life that is. Whether it's spina bifida or hemophilia or juvenile rheumatoid arthritis. We see little girls with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis and they're in such pain and they just get up and go play like that's just part of life. That's courage because they're living a life that you and I and a lot of people will never experience, and I think it takes courage for them to continue on.
Words to live by: Truth and honesty.