Trickles finding solace at track

Friday, March 14, 1997 | 11:59 a.m.

He is a small man, but looks as stout as a '65 Buick. Where many of his racing rivals on the NASCAR Winston Cup and Busch Grand National circuits wear brightly colored, full-face crash helmets adorned with sponsor decals, he prefers a plain white one, open-faced. The kind legends Ned Jarrett and Junior Johnson used to wear; the kind that ornery old coot Dale Earnhardt still wears.

Forget the lyrical name that makes the weekend anchors on SportsCenter snicker. With his bare knuckles choking the steering wheel, Dick Trickle looks tougher than a roadhouse roundsteak.

But tough guys get sad, too. Ask Trickle about his racing nephew Chris, who lies in a coma at University Medical Center, and see for yourself.

"My only comment is there is no reason for it. That's the bad thing about it," said the veteran racer Thursday, trying in vain to comprehend the unsolved highway shooting of Feb. 9 that nipped Chris Trickle's promising career in the bud.

Dick Trickle concedes he wasn't as close to his 24-year-old nephew as he would have liked -- the hectic NASCAR schedule doesn't leave much time for socializing, even among family members.

But this was to be the weekend where the Trickle family made up for lost time. Where Dick and his brother Chuck recalled their formative years, barnstorming the Wisconsin short tracks. And where Dick would impart what he learned on those bullrings upon his nephew, an up-and-comer on the NASCAR Southwest Tour.

Hell, if everything went just right, they might even have won a couple of races, what with Chris scheduled to run in Saturday night's Southwest Tour race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway and Dick looking strong for the Busch Series main event on Sunday afternoon.

Instead, Dick spent Thursday night signing autographs at a benefit concert at Texas Station, held on Chris' behalf.

"He's a mild-mannered kid," Dick Trickle was saying at the track, sipping an iced tea during a short respite from practice. "Other than driving a race car, he was pretty much laid back. He wasn't a troublemaker, he didn't go out a lot and he wasn't mischievious. He's not the kind of kid this happens to."

Trickle said he was more the kind of kid -- and young man -- who winds up getting shot, not his nephew.

"I lived in the fast lane during my younger years and went into places I shouldn't have been going into and made it out," he said. "He (Chris) was the opposite. He was a homebody.

"He liked sports and stuff and he was really coming along on that driving. Real smooth ... the kid had a knack for it. It's too bad, because I think he had a super career in front of him."

The first thing Dick Trickle did upon arriving in town was call the hospital, where Chuck Trickle continues to maintain a vigil outside his son's room. Chris' condition has been upgraded to serious, although he has yet to regain consciousness.

It has been more than a month since the bullet did its damage, and Dick Trickle said his brother and sister-in-law, Barbara, are coping -- and hoping -- as well as they can.

"He's getting along," Dick Trickle said of his brother. "He's had to come to live with it. He's got high hopes, although it's out of his control somewhat now. But he's going to control what he can."

With that, Trickle excused himself, walking through his empty trailer -- a trailer that might have been filled with family members, were they not with Chris -- on his way back to the paddock.

Tonight, though, the Trickle family will meet at the track.

"My family's here," Dick Trickle said with pride. "My mother, my two sisters, my two brothers. We're going to take a family picture."

But without Chris, it will be hard for any of them to smile.