Rants from the Hollow

Instead of watching the fireworks in Millersburg, Elizabeth and I spent last Saturday watching 118 future Jeff Gordon’s compete on the oval dirt track at Killbuck’s Hilltop Speedway.

Including the Mini Wedges, a go-cart sized vehicle driven by 14 and unders, the 3 hours of racing included 6 different classes, first running in heats of 6 cars or less, and culminating in lengthier main races with almost 2 dozen participants.

Each class has its own personality. The Super Late Models are my favorite. Custom built brutes with 800 HP V8s, they smoothly drift around the turns and then roar down the straights (although we are several miles away from Hilltop as the crow flies, you can easily hear the Supers when we’re at the Hollow).

Like the name says, the Street Stocks are modified versions of production cars.

The Tri-State Modified has open front wheels, which makes them more likely to be taken out by minor bumps that wouldn’t slow down the other classes. Although they are based on production models, you couldn’t prove it by me.

You can gain some insight into this fiercely competitive class by taking a quick visit to the rule book. The first sentence of Rule A:1) reads “There will be no Fighting or going to anyone else’s Pit Area to cause trouble. There will be no causing trouble, arguing Calls, Rules E.T.C. with any of The Track Officials, or any of The T.S.M.A. Officials.”

The Mini Stocks were the biggest contrast to the honking big super lates. With narrow stock tires and relatively small engines, they sound like hornets. Buzzing unsteadily around the corners, they don’t make the dusty powerslides that the bigger classes do.

An article on dirt track racing can be found on Wikipedia.

The valley in front of Heiser Hollow has always been farmed, but in our time, the family across the valley has always planted corn or soybeans. Whatever the relative economic merits of the different crops, from an aesthetic point of view, a scraggly looking field of hairy little soy plants can’t compare with a golden field of ripe golden wheat.

The field, which hasn’t been planted with wheat since the 60s, was harvested over a period of several days, mostly with a late model Deere combine. It trundled up and down the field, raising huge clouds of dust, leaving behind neat rows of golden straw, more than filling up a semi-trailer.

The Moore family has farmed this valley for generations, and they’ve still got some of their original farming equipment. Sporting a new coat of orange paint and Allis-Chalmers decals, this pre-war AC tractor took a nostalgia tour across the wheat field, pulling an equally old, and equally authentic AC combine.