They should still be shining The King’s boots

By Ron Kantowski

Monday, June 22, 2009 | 12:04 p.m.

NOW

I was walking around the Neon Garage at Las Vegas Motor Speedway on the last day of February when the Harrah's car, which the legendary Richard Petty supposedly co-owns, pulled in for service. King Richard thought he'd have a look under the hood.

He was peering at the engine the way I do when my car quits running on the Interstate. You know, hoping against hope that whatever was making the Harrah's car run slow would just jump right up and fix itself.

Then a crewman came over and lightly nudged him out of the way.

How sad, I thought. A generation ago, crewmen didn't nudge the great Richard Petty out of the way. They offered to shine his cowboy boots.

On Sunday, when another car supposedly co-owned by Petty won the race at the old track at Sears Point in California and they brought Richard up there to the podium, he was brutally honest about the role he played in the victory.

"All they want me to do is bring in money so they can go racing, OK?" he said.

I thought that was kinda sad, too.

THEN

I think it would be cool if Buick returned to the Sprint Cup Series.

(Mike Smith, who writes the Sun's "Bloggity, Bloggity, Bloggity" NASCAR blog, paid me a dollar to say that.)