I wanted to do a book on the canonization of a secular figure-a Canterbury Tales with a modern saint-but I lacked the proper inspiration to do justice to the idea.
Then on February 18, 2001 a new saint entered the pantheon.
Dale Earnhardt, who was from my home state and my generation, was deeply mourned, even by people who had not been his supporters in life. When the memorial number 3s began appearing everywhere I looked (even in Christmas lights on a neighbor’s roof), I thought I could understand the substance and the underlying sorrow of his loss, and that I could at last write about this theme. Perhaps because my dad was a football coach, I had not grown up as a fan of motor sports, but I knew the time and place of Dale’s story. So I began to study racing, and now I get it.
Since this is a novel, I have taken small liberties with chronology, most notably: the Earnhardt Tower was completed at the Bristol Motor Speedway a few days after the 2002 Sharpie 500; the Richard Petty Museum moved to its present quarters on Academy Street a few months after the Number Three Pilgrims’s visit in the fall of 2002; and Route 136 in Iredell County became Route 3 six months after Cayle’s car trouble. In each case, since the time discrepancy involved was only a matter of days or months, I have described the place as you will find it now if you visit.
My friend Jane Hicks, a published poet with two master’s degrees, has been a lifelong fan of stock car racing, so in the early days of my research-back when I thought that Kurt Busch was the governor of Florida-she took me in hand and introduced me to the world of NASCAR. I could not have done it without her. Now she has to put up with e-mails from me raging over the points standings or the outcome of the last race.
Michaela Hamilton, my wise and fearless editor, took on this project when more timid souls at other publishing houses assured us that no one would buy a novel about stock car racing. Her encouragement and willingness to back this book has been a miracle in itself.
My thanks to Junior Johnson and to Leonard Wood of Wood Brothers Racing for their wisdom and patience; to East Tennessee State University and Bristol Motor Speedway for offering the NASCAR Experience course, which I took, and to Mark Martin, whose book NASCAR for Dummies was my starting point; step one of a long journey.
I’m grateful to the Junior League of Bristol for their help and encouragement. Mike Smith of the Martinsville Speedway let me observe two races from the press box, and he very kindly shared his reminiscences with me on the Earnhardt Era of racing. Thanks, too, to Dean and Teresa Mayer, Henry Knight, Kyle McCurry, JoAnn Reeves, Cal Royall, Amelia Townsend, Tresha Lafon, Chrissie Anderson Peters, Linda Wilson, Gale Whigam, Kathy Calaway, and Laree Hinshelwood for their help and enthusiasm on various facets of this project.
Jerry Bledsoe, the greatest expert on stock car racing that I knew, heard me out at the very beginning (“You’re doing what?”) and was an inspiration and a great critic. Jerry’s Down Home Press also published an early biography of Dale Earnhardt by Frank Vehorn that was most helpful in documenting races that happened decades ago.
Tom Deitz, who knows more about cars than a medievalist and fantasy novelist has any right to, kept me straight on mechanical details and the fine points of drag racing.
And thanks to you who are reading this, for being willing to read a novel set in the world of NASCAR-that makes you part of the miracle.
Sharyn McCrumb
How I Came to Write St. Dale
An Interview with Sharyn McCrumb
1. Why did you write a novel about a pilgrimage in honor of a NASCAR driver? Where did you get that idea?
When I studied The Canterbury Tales in grad school, I was struck with the idea of grassroots canonization, and I thought that lately saints were being popularly elected. Like Elvis and Princess Diana. I toyed with that idea for years, but never really felt moved to write the book, until Dale Earnhardt died. He was from my state and my generation, and even though I wasn’t a NASCAR fan, I thought I could understand his world and the reasons for his secular sainthood.
Ultimately this is a story about people’s search for something to believe in. Living in a secular age has not made that yearning go away. It has simply produced a collection of unusual saints. Like Dale.
2. Wasn’t Dale Earnhardt “The Intimidator,” known for knocking people out of his way in a race? A saint? Him?
Dale Earnhardt? A saint?…Well, no more so than Elvis or Princess Diana, I guess, but like them, he has mourners who continue to grieve long after the date of his death. Cars to this day bear memorial stickers on the rear window-a number 3 with wings.
Although Dale Earnhardt dropped out of the ninth grade, when he died he was ranked #40 on the Forbes List of 100 Richest Americans. Despite his wealth and fame, he continued to live a few miles from his birthplace, and to act as unpretentiously as ever. He is a twenty-first century St. Thomas a Becket: a poor boy who made good in a system stacked against him, and who retained his humility to the last.
3. But doesn’t there have to be some sort of miracle connected to a saint?
Oddly enough, there really are mystical elements to the tale of Dale Earnhardt.
Although Dale Earnhardt won the NASCAR championship seven times, the Daytona 500-the crown jewel of the sport-was always his nemesis, almost to a supernatural level. Out of twenty-three tries, Earnhardt won only once. The thing was, he didn’t lose because people outraced him. Some years he’d win every race they ran at that track, except the one that mattered.
He’d hit debris that wasn’t supposed to be there and wreck. He’d run out of gas. His engine failed. Once he hit a seagull. (A seagull?) Many of these accidents happened only a few yards from the finish line in the final lap of a 3½ hour race-as if he were fated always to lose it.
His one Daytona 500 victory came when a little girl in a wheelchair visited him before the race and insisted on giving him a lucky penny to help him win. Earnhardt glued that penny to the dashboard of his number 3 car-and that day he won the Daytona 500. He lived for exactly three years and three days after that victory, and died in the 2001 Daytona 500-eleven seconds from the finish line on the last lap.
There are other miracles in the book, and I wish I could tell you the ones that happened to me while I was writing it!
4. In what sense is ST. DALE a departure from your previous books? In what ways is it consistent with them?
St. Dale is certainly a departure from the Ballad novels. But remember that I also have a smartaleck side. In tone St. Dale is reminiscent of some of my other books, most notably If I’d Killed Him When I Met Him, so I think that my readers will like it. The ones who have read it so far certainly do. This is also an opportunity to reach many new readers, who will be interested in the motor sports setting of this book without caring who I am.
The common factor between St. Dale and the Ballad novels is that I am still exploring traditions of the Appalachian mountain culture-after all, stock car racing started on Thunder Road in western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee. I have always battled the casual bigotry of mainstream culture against Appalachian traditions, the hillbilly stereotyping, etc. It seems to me that there is no sport more maligned by the self-appointed cultural elite than NASCAR. In this book, I treat the sport and its fans with respect and understanding-fighting the stereotypes as usual. I hope I make a difference in the general perception of motor sorts. Stock car racing is a great sport.