A Profile Of Courage
The Rest of the Dirt blog post I did on talented young IMCA modified driver Chase Hanson from Utah had an unexpected result. Several of Chase’s fans read the post and one wrote me about another Utah driver with quite a story, Harvey Howard. Harvey’s family owns Desert Thunder Raceway in Price, Utah. He used to drive a late model, but now races an IMCA modified. In addition to racing for weekly points, Harvey runs in the Wild West Northern Series as well. The series consists of seven two days shows in New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, Idaho, and Nevada, then finishes with the 4 day Las Vegas event in November. Harvey is currently 13th in tour points, and finished 6th in the tour in 2007.
Until he was 16 Harvey raced motocross. At that very young age a motocross accident left him paralyzed from the waist down. His story is quite a story, and one I never knew about. Neither did the publishers of Dirt Modified Magazine, but he wants me to do Harvey’s story for the magazine.
Harvey Howard is a perfect example of why I have practically begged people to let me know about drivers I can write of on my blog. Every driver is worthy of having his story told. I don’t care if the driver has never won a race and never will. There is something about everyone that will make the story a good one. I can’t tell you how many “Holy Shit, that is really good,” moments I have had interviewing drivers since 2003. A bunch is as close as I can figure. I thank Angela Cooper for letting me know of the Harvey Howard story, and hope others will write me about drivers, promoters, officials and yes, even fans.
As I was writing the above for today’s Rest of the Dirt blog it hit me that I just like writing about people. There used to be a segment on one of the TV weekend news shows where the host turned his back to a map of the United States and tossed a dart at the map. Whatever town the dart stuck in he went to. The next scene showed him holding a local phone book, closing his eyes, opening the book, and pointing to a name. He did a story on that person, and invariably it was a good one.
I would love to do a cheaper version of that on my Ron Speaks Out blog. I get tired of writing about politics, big oil, big insurance, and big drug companies. Most days writing about the economy is as much fun as having a root canal. I haven’t flown anywhere in a few months, so none of the airlines has irritated me. I am even getting tired of ridiculing Sarah Palin. OK, the last sentence was a lie, but the rest are facts. I need to write about something that feels good.
Why not do some profiles? I keep saying everyone has a story that deserves to be told. Most people wouldn’t have thought that Tim Russert’s father would make much of a story, but Russert’s “Big Russ” memoir became a best seller. There are 250,000,000 stories in America that are just as good as the story of Big Russ. I would love to tell a few of them on my blog. So email me (brutonnb@yahoo.com) and tell me about your mom or dad, brother or sister, aunt or uncle, neighbor, coach, preacher, yes, your garbage collector. I would love to tell their story. And, I am not against guest bloggers either. If you want to tell a story about someone I would gladly provide you the opportunity.
I didn’t write much from April-July. I had my shoulder surgery in April, my Dad went to the hospital in mid-May and that was a 40 day ordeal. His passing left me not wanting to do much of anything, including writing. Now I am finding writing is good and relatively cheap therapy, and there are many more stories I want to tell. So send me some names.
Thanks for stopping by.
Ron Speaks Out 