They’ve come to this rural tract of land just west of the Rappahannock River on a beautiful Saturday in April to witness a loud, exhaust-spewing truck-and-tractor pull. ”But from the crowd’s point of view, everything is just right. “We’re gonna need a tow vehicle out on the track,” says the announcer, John Nicol of Prince George County, who has been announcing for Dragon Motorsports for eight years. Then the truck’s engine dies, and the sled grinds to a halt at only 182 feet. Heart Attack, a blue Chevy truck emblazoned with a painted eagle and a man’s muscular arm, unleashes a deafening roar as it barrels down the track with the sled rolling behind like a toy. The tightened sled takes its toll on the next competitor. Full pulls should be tougher, more difficult, so they “tighten up” the sled so that its weights will move forward faster and competitors will bog down sooner.(For fairness’ sake, Hall will get to try again later.) Hall ends up lugging the sled more than 323 feet, and that’s too far for the organizers’ liking. The rumble of the truck’s engine climbs, part thunderclap and part dentist’s drill. Using 27 different gear selections, the sled’s operator will shift a variety of weights forward at the same rate during each competitor’s pull, slowly increasing friction by forcing the front of the sled into the dirt track. The sled (and physics) will be working against him. Hall, like all of the competitors this evening, hopes to pull the sled as far as possible down the track, ideally going all the way to achieve a full pull. Bearing the name Part Time Hooker, the truck reverses on the clay track and gets “hooked” via chains to a 42,000-pound metal sled, which is similar to a long, flat trailer, but with an operator sitting in an enclosed cockpit above its tail end, ready to hit an emergency cut-off switch if necessary. David Hall of Warsaw has edged his black, 4-wheel-drive Chevy truck to the starting line. Suddenly, the only thing audible is an engine-its roar fills the air. An excited grade-school boy comes tearing out of a portable toilet, whooping and letting the door slam shut behind him. His call elicits applause from the multi-generational crowd-families to 20-somethings. “Are you ready for some pulling?” the announcer bellows. Behind the bleachers, the breeze rustles a long string of Confederate and Gadsden flags, the latter’s familiar coiled rattlesnake warning, “Don’t Tread on Me.” Everyone grows silent as a prayer comes over the loudspeakers, followed by the national anthem. An enthusiastic crowd of several hundred people sits clustered on low metal bleachers and huddled against the quickly cooling night air in the beds of pickup trucks parked in an adjacent field. Twilight has descended over Dragon Motorsports Park in Dunnsville, and the center of attention-a clay track 30 feet wide by 320 feet long-is illuminated by a series of lighted telephone poles.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |