Hawaiian punch. - joneworlds@mailbox.org Somehow I still have with me this old coffee-table book about the history of stock car racing. And it's full of old pictures of cars and drivers and races from long ago, and a lot of text to read. There is this one picture that I have always loved the most for some reason. It is a picture of a red car taking a pit-stop, with the crew gassing it up and changing tires. The caption says it's from 1979, Donnie Allison at the Daytona 500. And of course the race car like most from those days looks like a barely modified big 'ol Pontiac or something. But it's the crew that gets my attention. When I used to watch pro-level racing, crews all wore full helmets and padded fireproof safety suits. They probably work out 5 days a week to keep in peak shape. They looked astronauts out there, running around the car. But in this old picture it's like just a bunch of guys wearing short-sleeve shirts, and if you look close you see one's wearing cowboy boots and the other moccasins. And then there's the safety guy in the back hanging around with what looks like an unbuttoned raincoat and leather dress shoes. There's something about that picture that's different from most others in the book. There's this energy in how it's not entirely centered on car or driver, but rather it captures the whole crew candidly, caught in a focused moment of urgency, and yet in the way of danger still so casual-looking compared to modern safety standards. And I just marvel at that for some reason.