BROCK PAPKE
A Changed Man
BROCK PAPKE | Special to The Leader
It started as these things often do, with a bad idea and a full tank of gas.
A 3 a.m. phone call took place, with Matt Volz on the other end, rambling about Talladega, NASCAR and something about needing to “test the limits of man and machine.”
After two cups of black coffee from Starbucks and a Joey “CoCo” Diaz motivational compilation video, I was ready.
Talladega was calling, that great, screaming monument to American excess — a 2.66-mile cathedral of speed and destruction where fortunes are won and lost in the blink of an eye, where beer flows like the Mississippi and the unholy scent of burning rubber clings to your soul.
I had to see it for myself. I had no choice in the matter.
Some pilgrimages are written in blood. This was Volz’s way of saying we needed to drive south immediately and insert ourselves into the high-octane heart of America’s most unhinged racetrack.
I was half-asleep, but I knew there was no stopping it now.
So we loaded up the car — cooler full of beer, questionable snacks and a duffel bag of regretful, last-minute clothing choices — and pointed the headlights toward Alabama.
If we were going to do this, we were going to do it right.
We were going to throw ourselves into the chaos, the fumes and the madness of ‘Dega.
The drive down was a blur of truck stops, truck nuts and truck-sized men in Dale Earnhardt shirts, gripping their steering wheels like they were still in the Winston Cup days.
Somewhere around Birmingham, I realized I hadn’t slept in 36 hours and was running on a volatile mix of black coffee, gas station jerky and the kind of adrenaline that only comes when you know you’re willingly throwing yourself into the lion’s den.
The first sign that we had entered Talladega territory was not the track itself, but the people. ‘Dega people. You can spot them from a mile away — shirts with slogans like “I’d Rather Be at Talladega” or “This Ain’t My First Rodeo” (spoiler alert: it never is).
We stopped for gas just outside of town and immediately found ourselves in line behind a man with a tattoo of Dale Earnhardt’s mustache on his forearm.
We had arrived.
By the time I hit the outskirts of Talladega, civilization had already started to break down. The roads became clogged with campers, the bars were packed with sunburned men drinking breakfast beers and the Waffle House parking lot looked like a post-apocalyptic biker rally.
This was the edge of the world.
And I had come to witness the carnage.
The Talladega infield is a lawless frontier, a great, sprawling beast of beer, smoke and bare-chested lunatics screaming about restrictor plates.
RVs are stacked like mobile fortresses, flags waving in the hot Southern air — American flags and Dale Earnhardt flags. Men with beards as long as mine — beards that belong in history books — stomp around in jorts, shotgunning Budweisers at a pace that should be medically impossible.
We rolled in past tents, RVs and beer pyramids taller than any structure in town.
People grilled meat with no shirts on, tossed footballs with a drink in each hand and cranked Lynyrd Skynyrd from speakers that looked like they were stolen from a Metallica tour bus.
I swore I could hear 15 of them playing the same damn “Free Bird” guitar solo at the same time.
Then, as if summoned by the spirits of speed and recklessness, a man appeared from the crowd, a half-empty bottle of bourbon in one hand, a fistful of barbecue ribs in the other.
“Boys!” he bellowed. “I just won a bet on which pit crew member could shotgun a beer the fastest! We are in the Promised Land!”
I was an outsider there, but he welcomed me as one of their own. “First time at ‘Dega?” a man asked, handing me something cold and potent.
I think he told me his name was Boomer. He was an older gentleman who had seen more decades pass by than I could fathom.
He was wearing a shirt that simply said “RUBBIN’ IS RACING”.
“You ain’t never seen a race till you’ve seen one here,” Boomer exclaimed.
He was right.
Talladega is not for the weak. This racetrack doesn’t host races.
It hosts wars.
The sound alone is enough to make you question your life choices — a howling mechanical scream that shakes your ribcage and scrambles your brain like a fried egg.
The sheer violence of 40 stock cars hurtling around the track at 200 miles per hour is something that no television screen can prepare you for.
The noise is biblical, a deafening mechanical war cry that rattles your teeth and rewires your brain.
The cars don’t just pass by — they detonate past you, a blur of color and rage.
And then it happens.
“The Big One.” That infamous, catastrophic pile-up that Talladega births with terrifying regularity.
One wrong move and suddenly half the field is airborne, metal twisting into unnatural shapes, cars sliding across the asphalt like discarded beer cans.
The crowd lives for this.
They howl with bloodthirsty joy, high-fiving and chugging beer as the replay loops on the big screen.
“Hell yeah, brother!” a man screams in my ear, shaking me by the shoulders as if I had something to do with it.
Somewhere between my seventh beer and the 400th lap (or maybe it was the second stage — I had lost all sense of time), I had a revelation.
Talladega is America at its most distilled, its most unhinged, its most beautiful.
It is a place where men hurl themselves into chaos for the love of the sport, where fans live and die by the roar of an engine, where the beer is always cold and the grills are always hot.
There is no past, no future.
Only the present.
Only the speed.
As the winner crosses the line and the fireworks light up the sky, I find myself covered in beer and barbecue sauce, hoarse from screaming, dizzy from the raw, unfiltered lunacy of it all.
I have been baptized in the fires of Talladega, and I am reborn.
We were reborn in the wreckage, baptized in burnt rubber and low-grade ethanol.
As we staggered toward the parking lot, still reeling from the sensory overload, Volz clapped a hand on my shoulder and said, “We have to come back next year.”
I exhaled, staring back at the track, now eerily silent after hours of unhinged fury.
We have no clue where Boomer vanished off to. We theorize he’s disappeared into the same crowd we found him in, air-guitaring to “Hotel California” for the 100th time this weekend.
Volz and I leave going 90 miles per hour all the way back to Fredonia, only stopping to refuel the car and our stomachs. Somewhere on the track, the ghosts of Dale Earnhardt and Davey Allison are still racing.
And somewhere deep in my soul, I know this won’t be my last trip to ‘Dega.
No one leaves this place unchanged.