The Best American Sports Writing 2014 (32 page)

Roberts knew Trickle could drive. But he also knew Trickle didn't have that much pressure on him. Opportunity just came to him. Trickle was just the fill-in guy and knew it.

Off the track, he hedged. For the first month, Trickle lived in a motel off of Interstate 85 in a rough area of Charlotte, just to be ready to go back home to Wisconsin Rapids with some cash in his pocket if NASCAR didn't pan out. But at the track, he was still the same guy he'd been up north, smoking and drinking coffee and talking to everybody. His family came to every race. He didn't want people to line up for his autograph—he wanted to buy fans beers and talk with them and work the crowd. Sometimes, after two-hour meet and greets, he'd ask if he could stay longer.

He didn't always qualify well, but he knew how to pass. He never tired out. He said he didn't need to work out. Got his workout in the race car, he said, and since he'd been driving so much in so many features on so many short tracks, he was in pretty good shape. At the gas pumps after the race, Roberts would see the other drivers worn out and sucking down oxygen. Trickle would just be standing there, cigarette in hand. I could go another hundred laps, he'd say.

He smoked outside of the car. He smoked in the car. When the yellow flag came out, so did the lighter. Trickle was a Marlboro man, but had the sense to put them into an empty pack of Winstons whenever he was at a Winston Cup race. He'd show up at races with a briefcase, just like the one Alan Kulwicki, another short track racer from Wisconsin who was named NASCAR Rookie of the Year, in 1986, made popular. Kulwicki would keep shock charts, setups, and notes from the last race in his. Trickle's carried a schedule, a ball cap or two, cheap Miller High Life sunglasses, and a carton of cigarettes.

By the time he was named Rookie of the Year, Trickle had already lined up a full-time ride for 1990, driving for Cale Yarborough's Phillips 66 team. Two months after his trip to New York, Dick and Darlene bought a modest, 11-year-old Cape Cod house in Iron Station, North Carolina, along with the eight acres of land that came with it, leaving Wisconsin behind. Their new home was less than an hour away from Charlotte, near where most all the other drivers kept their race shops.

One of the stories that is not quite right is this: Dick Trickle never won while he was racing in NASCAR's Winston Cup. That is wrong. In May 1990, he qualified for the Winston Open, a 201-mile precursor to the Winston, NASCAR's All-Star race. But neither one was a points race, so it doesn't show up in most recaps. Still, the Open was big. Winning it gave you the 20th and final spot in the Winston, and the winner of that race got $200,000.

Ernie Irvan led a third of the race before Trickle took the lead with a dozen laps to go. Then Rob Moroso, the 1989 Busch Series champion, all of 21 years old, crept up behind Trickle. When the white flag flew, Moroso and Trickle traded spots, one and two, with Trickle taking the high side. When they hit the final straightaway and crossed the finish line, Trickle beat him by eight inches.

He got out of the car, grabbed a cup of water, and thanked his sponsors. He thanked Cale Yarborough, who hadn't had a win as a car owner. The reporter asked him what he needed to do to be ready for the Winston, which started in 20 minutes. “I'll be ready,” he said, sweaty, his hair mussed. “Just get the car ready.” Then he hugged Darlene and answered another question about his car and Darlene buried her face in his shoulder. And then Dick Trickle went out and finished sixth in the Winston. Once again, he came from behind.

 

The Short Track

 

Dick Trickle had a crown on his head. He'd just won the 1983 World Crown 300 in Georgia and the $50,000 that came with it. Dick looked over at the guy who'd just presided over his coronation in the victory lane. “I'm not a king,” he said. “I'm a race car driver.”

This was, at the time, the largest prize Dick Trickle had ever raced for. He spent a month preparing the car. If anyone else did any work on it, he went back and did it over. “I never look at the purse,” Trickle told Father Dale Grubba, a Catholic priest and chronicler of Wisconsin racing who'd known him since 1966. “My wife does. I come to race.”

But for the World Crown 300, Trickle broke his rule. He did look at the purse. The race itself had been nearly rained out, and instead of thousands of fans at the Georgia International Speedway in late November, there were only a couple of hundred. It was a problem for Ron Neal, the engine maker who owned the speedway. He promised a huge purse for the short track race, one that now, because of the weather, he might not be able to pay for in cash. It's okay, Trickle said. I'll barter with you. So instead of getting the entire purse, Trickle also got new engines, and engine service, for his cars. He did things like that.

There are tons of stories about Dick Trickle from the short track days. He once told a
Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel
reporter about the time when he blew a water pump in a race, got on the PA, and asked if anyone in the crowd had a Ford. A guy drove his car down to the pits. Trickle pulled the water pump off, put it on his car, won the race, and gave it back. Another time he blew an engine, pulled one out of a tow truck, dropped it in his car, and won that race also.

Trickle won a lot on the short tracks. Maybe more than any other driver. The number of wins that Trickle is supposed to have is 1,200, legitimized by a
Sports Illustrated
article in 1989. But unlike NASCAR, which has precise records, Wisconsin's short track racing record book isn't a book at all, but a patchwork of newspaper clippings and memories and word of mouth. One man, who has tried to piece together records of every race Trickle entered, says he's found evidence of 644 wins up through 1979. He's not sure of the '80s. Trickle would have needed 556 more victories before heading off to the Winston Cup in 1989 to hit 1,200.

Might have happened.

He was good at the little things. He knew how to power through the corners. He always kept his car in control, even in traffic. Pit stops were critically important, because when a race was long enough to require one, one was all you got. At the 200-lap races at Wisconsin International Speedway in Kaukauna, he would pit on around lap 70 or 80 when everybody else thought about heading in around 120. After his stop, he'd drive conservatively, waiting for a yellow flag. When everybody else went in to change tires, Trickle would stay out, take the lead, and a lot of times take the checkered flag. He won at least 34 races at Kaukauna. At least.

In central Wisconsin, the same drivers went to the same circuit of tracks, which all ran races on different nights of the week. Drivers didn't bump and grind because they couldn't afford to, and you didn't have a week between races to fix your car. You only had a matter of hours. If Dick Trickle couldn't get around you cleanly to win, he'd settle for second. It wasn't worth the risk.

Almost all of the other drivers had day jobs. They had to go home after the races. Trickle could hang out at the track all night. He could hit the bar. He could hang out with fans. “Just because the races were over didn't mean pulling up the shades and going to bed,” he told Father Grubba for his book
The Golden Age of Wisconsin Auto Racing.
“You are still pumped up. What are you going to do, stop at a corner church?” When Trickle left the track, people would follow him. They knew he'd stop somewhere for a drink.

The things that made Dick Trickle old-school later were quite ordinary then. He drank canned beer because that's what most bars served. He smoked because people smoked. He wore cowboy boots in his stock car because they were thick and durable, and that's what people wore to race.

He started to get a reputation. One time, at an ASA race, the fans booed him when he was introduced. Doesn't that bother you? another driver asked. “When you get introduced there may be 500 or a thousand people that cheer,” Trickle told him. “But when I get introduced, 100 percent of the crowd reacts, one way or the other.”

He was always racing, stock cars, snowmobiles—anything. In the beer garden after a race at the Milwaukee Mile in 1969, Trickle got to talking with another short track racer, Dave Watson, and they decided they needed to race again. The two drivers and three crew members grabbed mats and walked to the top of a nearby giant blue carnival slide. They sat, counted down, and pushed off. Dick Trickle won.

In 1972, he entered 107 races, and won 68. He got his 49th on August 4 in his 1970 Mustang, starting at the back of the field, taking the lead on lap 9, and taking the checkered flag on lap 30. By this time, he was starting to make the number 99 car legendary. He was called the White Knight, named for the mascot of Super America, his sponsor. He won seven ARTGO short track championships in 11 years, from 1977 to 1987. He was the ASA champion in 1984 and 1985.

There was a point, in 1979, when Humpy Wheeler tried to bring Trickle down to NASCAR full-time. Trickle had driven in 11 Winston Cup races up to that point, starting at Daytona in 1970. He ran four Cup races between 1973 and 1974 and won at least eighth place every time. The big question about a short track guy like Trickle was focus. The longer the race, the longer you're required to maintain that intense concentration. That was never a problem for Dick Trickle. Focus ran in his family. “They could focus so hard,” said his brother Chuck, “and forget there was another world and get things done.”

He made the calculations. There wasn't big money in NASCAR. Not yet. He could make more money in short track. So he told Wheeler, I can't afford to come down there. Promoters are paying me to show up at the tracks up here.

He had all the ingredients to be a great Cup driver. He just didn't need to be one. All he needed to do was win.

 

The Start

 

Rudolph, Wisconsin, where Dick Trickle was born in 1941, was race-crazy in the 1950s. At one time, Father Grubba says, there were 26 race cars in a town of just a few hundred people. Nearly every driveway had a race car in it.

When Dick Trickle was nine, a neighbor took him to a race at Crown Speedway in Wisconsin Rapids, and he thought that was the greatest thing he'd ever seen. For the next seven years, he focused on how to get behind the wheel of his race car. Problem was, the Trickles were on welfare. Dick's father, Lee, came down with an ear infection that led to medical problems and was hospitalized for years. There was no money for racing. Dick had to work for his money, on farms and in his father's blacksmith shop. He swept the floors, but he also learned how to use the arc welder.

In 1958, at age 16, when he'd welded together enough parts and came up with enough money to buy a 1950 Ford, he dropped the engine from a 1949 Ford in it and started racing. It was slow, and during his first race, in Stratford, Wisconsin, he finished way back in the end.

When the nearest racetrack, Griffith Park in Wisconsin Rapids, found out he was too young to race, he was kicked out for a year. After that, Dick never took racing for granted. Whenever he raced, he raced hard, and smart, as if he might not have another chance.

But he still had a day job, working 66 hours a week at a service station in Rudolph while racing four nights a week. With his free time, he worked on his cars at night, using what he'd learned about fixing cars during the day.

He married Darlene in 1961, paid $8 for a motel room the night of the wedding, and then ran two races the next day at Wausau and Griffith Park. Dick started working for a telephone company, and hated it, being up high on the poles. So he started doing the math: Gas was cheap. Parts were cheap if he scoured through the junkyard and did the work himself. If he owned his own car, he wouldn't have to split up his winnings. Dick could bring in the money, and Darlene could stretch it as far as it would go, but the racing season in Wisconsin ran from only May to September, so he didn't have all year to make money, and the payouts for winning races were maybe $100 one week, maybe $300 another. He would have to be on the road constantly, going from track to track, from LaCrosse to Wausau, from Madison to Wisconsin Dells. He couldn't afford to lose. Wherever there was a race, Dick Trickle would have to go there and win.

I think I can make it, Dick told Darlene. And he did.

 

The End

 

Chuck Trickle doesn't want to talk much more about the suicide. He's on the phone from a water park.

“It's not the right thing to do, and I'm upset the way he did it, but you know, I wasn't in his shoes,” Chuck says.

“Now they're turning on the music,” he says, changing the subject.

“That's my story anyway.” The music gets louder.

“The park is closing in 15 minutes,” he says.

“Anyway, that's about it. Is there anything else you want to know here?”

Tom Roberts says he struggles with Dick Trickle's suicide. So does Father Grubba. John Close, who partied with Dick Trickle in Stoughton, is saddened by it. Humpy is too. Kenny Wallace put a Dick Trickle sticker in the cockpit of his dirt car in memory of Trickle. But he had to take it off. It bothered him too much. He had a hard time driving.

Kenny Wallace tries to justify it like the others. He doesn't agree with suicide, but he's not going to question it. Dick had been through a lot over the last couple of years, he said.

Kenny has been talking about Dick Trickle for about two hours when he stops for a second. “You know, this has been like therapy for me,” he says. His voice sounds tired. “I want to make sure you understand that he was a good man,” he says. “I want to make sure you know the full story.

“Don't you fuck it up,” he says.

So he tells me what was in the envelope.

There were medical records inside. Computerized forms. Test results. Findings from doctors. Charts. They detailed a day-by-day, doctor-by-doctor struggle with pain.

Dick Trickle chain-smoked for his entire life. But he didn't have cancer. Aside from some stents, his heart was healthy.