NASCAR: New season, old jacket

By Ron Kantowski

Thursday, Feb. 26, 2009 | 3 a.m.

NOW

SALT LAKE CITY -- Today's NASCAR moment originates from Flight 1557 bound from Salt Lake City to Las Vegas, with continuing service to San Jose, Oklahoma City, Shreveport, Texarkana and Frostbite Falls.

Not only was the Rebel basketball team on the media flight (even though the crew kept referring to it as Flight 1557) but so, too, were about two dozen NASCAR fans. I think they were the loud ones, because Rene Rougeau was seated two rows in front of me, and, unlike the screaming infant two rows behind, he slept the entire way home -- even when the captain said if you looked out the window, you could get a real nice look at Zion National Park.

Anyway, every one of these NASCAR fans was wearing a jacket modeled after the car driven by his or her favorite NASCAR guy. When a woman sporting the Home Depot colors rumbled past on the low side, nearly taking out my armrest and relegating two tray backs to a position that wasn't fully upright or locked, a colleague said the woman's jacket reminded him he needed to get down to Palace Station to put a wager on Tony Stewart.

"Tony Stewart doesn't drive the Home Depot car anymore," I said.

"He doesn't?" said the colleague, obviously not named "Jack" or "Arute."

"Nope. He drives the Old Spice car."

Then the woman called back over her shoulder as she wrestled with an oversized bag that apparently must have contained fresh right side rubber, because it wouldn't fit in the overhead compartment.

"I can't afford $200 for a new jacket."

THEN

NASCAR wasn't that big when I was a kid. The only time they showed it on TV was during "'Wide World of Sports."

When I was nine years old, I thought David Pearson was a guy who did a swan dive off a cliff in Acapulco.