(photo courtesy Leon Hammmack)

Well, I am back at work after about three weeks of some extraordinary racing!  Speedweek at Daytona and the Daytona 500 was an excellent time.  The only drawback was that the temperature was uncommonly cold for February.  That made for some really unorthodox clothes combinations for Jim and myself!  We were dressing a lot like our father!!!  ( Inside joke, sorry Dad!)  Ol Arch was not a fashion statement by any stretch of the imagination!

The drive back from Daytona was quite an adventure (read Jimmy and Leon’s Great Adventure) to say the least!

The few days over at Tuscon’s USA Raceway for the USAC midgets, sprint cars, and silver crown races were cool!  No it was down right cold!  The weather didn’t cooperate much.  However, the racing was really great.

Then the trip to and at Las Vegas Motor Speedway was equally cold.

But the one thing about RVing with friends and family, the company is ALWAYS good!  Karen and I had a wonderful time camping at Tuscon and Las Vegas with Jim, Edie, Jerry, as well as Dan and Bernie Clapp. I would like to thank everyone who help ed to prepare the meals we ate at both Tuscon and Las Vegas, those people would be Karen, Edie, Jerry, Berni, Dan, and Jim “the short order fry cook”!!

Can’t wait till next year to do it all over again!

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Happy Birthday Dad. I was reflecting on all the times we had in my life and thought I would post some of those here. Thanks dad for all you have done and all the good times we have had. Who can forget all the roller coasters that we have done!! The X at Six Flags being the best ever.

Me and Dad riding the Best Roller coaster ever!!

hangin in Hawaii

Minature Golf

Camping and Racing

NASCAR in Las Vegas

NASCAR Cafe

Dirt Track Racing at Las Vegas

(photo courtesy Leon Hammack)

Over the last few months I have been wrestling with many things in my mind.  One thought in particular is the the aging process and dealing with my own mortality.

For most of my 59 years I have always been thought of as the youngest child of Archie and Ola Mae Hammack, Ted’s little brother, Jim’s little brother, Jerry’s little brother, or Zeeva’s little brother.  That has always been my lot in life, and quite honestly, it  has been very great ride!  I have always thought of myself as young person, yet the mirror doesn’t lie!  In less than a month I will celebrate my last birthday of my 50’s, what a rude awakening!

It doesn’t seem that long ago that myself and all four of my siblings were living at home in my parent’s very small two bedroom house on Griffith Way in Fresno, CA.  We were a very tight family growing up there.  Like all kids, I am sure that we were all anxious to “leave the nest”, become our own person, be self sufficient, and be on our own.  Little did we really know what would lie ahead in our future.

Up until 1995 we all were still Archie and Ola Mae’s five kids.  But in December of 1995, Dad passed away.  From that day, December 30, 1995, the five of us were thrust into the position of the patriarchs of this brood of the Hammack family.  From that point the harsh reality of the aging process became a part of my pysche.  No longer did I feel “bullet proof”, no longer did I feel the security that I had experienced up to that point of my life.  The reality that life is finite, that there is an end to this thing, really slapped me in the face!

As I sit in my hotel room in Honolulu and reflect on my past, I have great memories of my youth and the relationship that I have had with my brothers and sister.  They always took care of me as a youngster.

It is time that I let them know just how much I appreciated them!   Thank you Ted, Jim, Jerry, and Zee for being there for me.  I know that you may not realize it, but you all have been, in some shape or form, responsible for me growing up to be who I am!  I owe you all a debt of gratitude that I probably never can repay!  You’ve been the best brothers and sister I could ever ask for!

As I have mentioned at the beginning of this article, I am approaching the age of 59.  However my siblings are now in their mid to late 60’s, and my oldest brother is rapidly approaching 73 years.  Through the ups and downs of life, raising our own families, the five siblings have now come full circle to that tight family concept that our parents created oh so long ago!

Your legacy is still alive and strong, rest easy Dad!

You may be wondering who is in the picture at the beginning of this article?  The picture is of my grandson Cole Jeremiah Hammack, Jeremy’s son.  He is now 7 years old and in second grade.

Let your loved ones know that you love and appreciate them, don’t wait too long, because……

LIFE CAN DISAPPEAR IN THE TWINKLING OF AN EYE!

The “Holiday Season” is upon us and the first of those holidays is Thanksgiving.  It is a time for families to gather for a meal and to have “family” time.  Also as the name suggests, it is a time to give thanks.

I feel compelled to use this venue to publish and express my thanks.  I have a list of things that I am thankful for, and I will enumerate them at this time!

1.  I am very thankful for the parents that I was most fortunate to have, Archie Wilson Hammack and Ola Mae Hammack. They came from very poor and humble beginnings in Oklahoma.  Because of those poor and humble beginnings, they provided a very grounded and loving upbringing to their five children.

2.  I am very thankful that my best friend and wife, Karen came back into my life after a 16 year haitus!  Or as she says, a long 16 year trip!  You are and will be forever the love of my life!

3.  I am very thankful for all of my children and grandchildren, they are a joy.  They are, after all, a precious gift and my legacy for all to see!

4.  The one thing that I have learned in my almost 59 years is that, again, life is a journey not a guided tour!  Your life is just what you make of it.  Live it to its fullest!   I have learned to give forgiveness and to love deeper.   Better yet, live every day like you are dying!

May you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving!  Take time this Thanksgiving Day to tell your loved ones just what they mean to you, how much you love and care for them! You will make their day!

(Photo by Jim Hammack)

I have returned from six days of hard charging, dirt slinging, alcohol burning, sprint car racing!  For anyone who has been to the Knoxville Nationals, you can fully understand my feelings after returning!  Not only did I get to watch five days of the Knoxville Nationals (normally four days but we had a partial rain out), but I also went to Oskaloosa Tuesday evening for the 410 Wingless sprint car races.  What a great night of wingless sprint car races we witnessed!  That track is really conducive that style of racing.  You know what I am talking about, don’t you?  That’s the kinda of racing where they toss it into the turn, what I call backing it in and standing on the GAS!!!  COOL STUFF!

This was my sixth time to make the Knoxville Nationals.  For a sprint car race fan, these four nights at Knoxville are undoubtedly the absolute best sprint car races in the USA!  From the sprint car drivers and teams point of view, this is the single biggest payday in the entire year!  The winner of the Saturday night A Main won, are you ready—– a cool $150,000.00!!!!!!!!!  I don’t car how you cut it, that is a nice chunk of change to cart back home with the race car and the hauler!

The Knoxville weather was the typical summertime mid-western, humid, sticky, hot atmosphere.  On the first night of the Nat’ls, just as the cars to start their hot laps at 7:15 pm in preparation for the evenings racing, the heavens opened up and really poured!  The program of racing finally got started at 12:15am and ended at 3:00am!  That turned out to be a long night at the race track, but if you are a REDNECK at heart ( AND I WAS WORKING ON MY REDNECK!) it wasn’t bad!!!  After all, it was my first dose of dirt for this racing season!

The Knoxville race normally attracts “the best of the best” sprint car drivers and their teams.  It is the premiere sprint car race of the summer. Cars from all four corners of the USA, as well as some from Canada, Australia, and New Zealand participate in this event.  It is truly an international event for sprint cars!  The event is run as a four day event and drivers gather points each night.  Saturday’s event is a series of races culminating in the huge A Main event payday.

This year I think that the Sprint Car world witnessed a changing of the Guard.  Steve Kinser has long been “The King” of the Sprint Car world.  However, Donny Schotz claimed his 4th Knoxville Nationals in a row Sunday night!  Schotz has been a dominating force in that series now for the last four years.  Last year that domination just got a whole lot stronger!  In 2008 Tony Stewart bought Schotz’s race team and brought it  into his racing empire.  Now more than ever, Donny Schotz has been showing the rest of the boys the “fast way around the dirt”!

Once again I was very fortunate to have a brother and sister-in-law (Jim and Edie) bring their motorhome to Knoxville, and invite me to join them for the week. They made it possible for me to hit  Knoxville and enjoy two things that are an integral part of my life, family and good, good racing!!

TIL NEXT TIME, I AM STILL WORKING ON MY REDNECK!

Tuesday I decided to stop in and pay a visit to a couple of relatives. I had not been to see them in a very long time, so I decided it was time to take a detour on my way home from the airport and visit them.  After all it had been 42 years since the last time that I had stopped by for a visit, it was the least that I could do!

After consulting a map I sat out to drive to where they are.  It only took about 12 minutes to reach their place from the airport in El Centro, CA.  As I pulled into their residence in Brawley, CA, I did have to stop at the office to verify both locations.  After I left the office, I drove very carefully to the first location.  I found it very easily, it was right next to the road.

As I got out of my car and walked carefully up to the location, I verified the residence……John A. Smith 1883-1957!  This is the final resting place for my maternal grandfather, John Addison Smith, my Mom’s dad.  From my recollection as a very little boy, Grandpa Smith was a very ornery, tough old man.  He was a victim of childhood spinal meningitis which left him with a bum leg.  I remember the leg brace that he fashioned for himself to help in his walking.  I was 6 years old when he passed away and I still remember the trip to, and  his funeral proceedings in 1957.

After spending some time there reflecting on some old faded memories, I said my goodbyes and walked back to my car.

I  proceeded to the second residence.  It was only about 75 yards on past my grandfather’s headstone.  Donald Ray Hammack January 19,1935-December 15, 1935.

This is the headstone on my oldest brother’s grave.  This is the brother that I never got the chance to know or see personally, he died 16 years before I was born!  But you see, I do know what he looked like.   My parents ALWAYS kept the one and only picture that I am aware of,  Donald sitting in a chair, hanging in their bedroom!   Donald was my parent’s first born son, their pride and joy, the beginning of  their legacy, that legacy was to be  a total of five boys and one girl!

But before Christmas came in that first joyous year in 1935, Donald became sick and passed away from apparently the results of pneumonia..  Donald Ray Hammack lived to be four days shy of 11 months old, and passed away just 10 days before Christmas!  So I am reasonably sure the  Christmas season of 1935, in the Hammack household, was extremely heart-breaking!

And so as I got back in to my car and proceeded to drive home, a ghostly emotional feeling hung over my head.  It was very hard to explain!  Something that I can’t describe!

For the 1:15 minute drive back to Yuma, I was putting the pieces of my heritage into perspective.  My parents got married in 1934 in Buckeye, AZ.  Three of my brothers were born in the Brawley-El Centro, CA area.  My grandfather and oldest brother are buried in Brawley, CA.  My oldest son was born in Phoenix, AZ.  Now I am living in Yuma, AZ.

Very interesting!

Coincidence???

(photo by Leon Hammack)

After writing the article about NUMBERS and honoring my Dad on, what would have been his 97th birthday, my mind continued to think about many things.

I thought about all the things that Archie Wilson Hammack saw during his 83 years on this Earth!  In his youth he drove a horse and wagon to town, in Shawnee, OK for his parents.  He told me that he was about 12 years old when his parents got their first car, about 1924.

During his youth, Dad witnessed Charles Lindberg’s solo flight across the Atlantic Ocean.  He watched the Jet Age usher itself into mass transportation and into our main stream lifestyle.

One day before Dad’s 57th birthday (July 20,1969), Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the face of the Moon!  What a leap in technology!!  I am not so sure that my generation, or for that fact, any other generation will ever witness that kind huge growth in technology in less than one lifetime!

The dreams and accomplishments of the 20th century were a time in history that most likely will never be surpassed again in one’s lifetime!

Having said all that, and quite honestly looking through rose-colored glasses, what  does the future hold for all of us?

I have enclosed a link that, quite possibly sums up some of the changes that I have witnessed in my 58 years!  It is a link to a new Brad Paisley song.  It is written by Brad Paisley and Chris DuBois.  If you listen to the words you might understand what it is that I am talking about!

Click here!

WELCOME TO THE FUTURE!

I LOOKED IT UP SO THAT YOU WOULDN’T HAVE TO!

Have you ever had to have an MRI?  If you have ever experienced this claustrophobic ordeal you might relate!

Yesterday I had a neurology appointment that resulted in several tests being required over the next few weeks.  The first medical test to be accomplished was my MRI.  The MRI was to check out the median nerve which originates in the neck, travels down the arms, wrists, and terminates in the thumbs.

I called Atlanta to try to talk the captors of the “Amber Alert Blonde Lady”, better know as Karen, into letting  me ask her a question or two.  They obliged my request!  Since she has been known to hang out around hospitals in her “senior years”, who best to explain to me what an MRI entails!  She was only allowed a few minutes on the phone, so the explanation was brief.

I will try to give you a better idea of what the patient goes through!  When I first walked into the room where the machine was located, I spied the microscopic hole that they were going to stuff me into!  The sliding shelf that I was to lie down on looked to be as wide a tongue depressor!  How am I going to be comfortable on this narrow sliding “tongue depressor” for the 30-40 minutes that the tests takes to accomplished!  I was about to find out.

I was instructed to lie down and put my head into the contraption that was to keep my head and neck in position and completely immobile.  I was about to find out if I am, in fact, claustrophobic!  As I was about to be inserted in to this keyhole of an opening, the technician put into my hand a sphere that, if I squeezed it, would alert the technician that I was about to become “POSTAL”!  That would trigger the technician to immediately stop this procedure.

Just prior to my final rights, I was told that, because the MRI was to observe the median nerve in my neck,  I could not be given a headset to block out all the noise and have some soothing music in my ears…just ear plugs!!

The technician started up the machine and away I went into the dark hole of “claustrophobia”!  As soon as my head was sucked inside the tube, I saw the roof of the tube just above my nose, I realized that the only way to keep my sanity was to close my eyes, and don’t open them!!

So here I am, no headset with music to calm my nerves, only ear plugs to try to drown out the horrendous noise that the machine is noted for reverberating in the tube!  “How long is this going last”, kept running through my brain?  Why couldn’t I have a little light and easy listening music of maybe ZZ Top, The Eagles, Electric Light Orchestra, Bob Seger, or Bon Jovi?  How about some Alan Jackson, Brad Paisley, Kenny Chesney, or “The Boss”, Bruce Springsteen?  Oh no, I had to listen the pounding of the MRI machine!

I was just about at my wits end when the technician started me out of the dark whole of claustrophobia!  After 35 minutes the test was over!  Hallalujah!!

Well I didn’t go POSTAL and I didn’t get fitted with a straight-jacket, either!  That can only be viewed as a success story!!