Checkered Past

Welcome to NASCAR county

By Bob Henry

What’s become of the NASCAR Nation? Has it slipped to simple state status or, worse, is it now but a territory? A decent-sized county even?

Reason I ask is that I’ve been following the television ratings for NASCAR’s playoff races and, like other racing fans, am a little concerned. The ratings numbers don’t look to me as if they’re trending the right way, for one thing. And, for another, the overall viewer numbers are way low.

There’s no reason to think that Moe’s Garage will be replacing any of the Fortune 500 companies on the hoods and quarter panels of the front-runners anytime soon, and that kind of retro look isn’t what any of us wants to see, whether we’re working in a boardroom, newsroom or back room.

The brainstorming behind The Chase for Whatever Brand the Cup Bears This Season was touted by the big thinkers in Daytona Beach as pure ratings genius when it was announced. Sure, we all expect a lull in the numbers during the dog days of Pocono in midsummer. But it’s playoff time now and the numbers are supposed to be among the best of the season.

Ain’t happening.

Blame it on the darned old National Football League, I guess. It’s early in that season and every team still has a chance. Maybe even the New Orleans Saints. College football, too, might be partly responsible.

I’ve got some buds who are big TV sports fans and they’ll watch pretty much whatever sport/match/game is on. They’ll click around the dial until they hit on something that holds their interest for a little while, then hang with it.

And during that aforementioned stretch of summer when the races aren’t that great but are still much better than some of the baseball games and tennis on cable, they become race fans. At least part-time race fans.

I’m thinking the marketing arm of the France family business must have been counting those guys – and million and millions more just like them – a few years back when they started claiming NASCAR had 75 million devotees. You remember, when “NASCAR dads” replaced “soccer moms” as political buzzwords and objects of the pollsters’ affections.

NASCAR was busily touting itself as the No. 2 spectator sport behind the NFL, a claim that was pretty hard to swallow when you figured there was but one Cup race a week vs. all those pro football games.

And so far this season, the Chase races are getting lapped in the ratings numbers – even if you and I are right there, the remote not firmly in hand but lost somewhere between the cushions, doing our part for the cause.

And the overall viewer numbers?  To be kind, there have been between 5 million and 7 million people watching the race on any given Sunday over the course of the lengthy NASCAR season, except for the season-opening Daytona 500.

Those would be good number if we were talking about some of the quainter nations in Europe, where 5 or 6 million people can be a crowd. But that’s not what we’ve come to expect on our side of the pond and it’s certainly well below the 75 million inhabitants of the NASCAR Nation we’ve been told about.

Hiatus Interruptus - Cheers and Jeers is back

By Bob Henry

ThatsRacin.com Editor

Color me amazed. No, make that Amazed Silver Metalflake with 16 primer coats of flat brown.

The headline, we hope, will ease many of the irrational-sounding fears about the future of the Cheers and Jeers contributions at ThatsRacin.com. But maybe not.

I’m amazed at how many of you have made the transition - and how easily you seem to have done so - from “hiatus” to “termination.” Maybe it’s just as part of how the Internet has changed our lives. People who don’t particularly care to wait no longer have to wait. The very second the urge to yell “Fire!” in a crowded theater or blog comes to mind, you can go right ahead and yell it.

And I’m amazed at how routinely some of you can fire off an angry e-mail, demanding to know the rationale – nay, every nuance – of the decision-making process at a company that does not employ you. How does that approach succeed for you where you work?

When you were passed over for a promotion, were you able to send an outraged e-mail to the CEO or general manager, demanding to know what the hell he or she was thinking? Or the last time you got a divorce, were you successful in getting all of the information you demanded from your Ex’s attorney?

Didn’t think so.

So why do some people seem to think e-mails or blog comments – even nasty ones that have already made the headlong leap off the summit of Mount Conclusion – will be any different?

I’m amazed by some of the invective directed my way. Doesn’t hurt my feelings, but the irrational nature of some of it is totally beyond weird. Be sure and say hello for us when you next communicate with those alien spacecraft three galaxies away, will you?

Turning away briefly from amazement, I suppose I should be content that, at least, you didn’t ridicule the myriad flaws in my golf game or say anything negative about my dogs. I know they love me in spite of everything I might do or you might say. And when you start bad-mouthing my puppies the way you have me over the last couple of days, that’s when I get will mad.

Like I said, right now I’m still just amazed.

Face it: Your outrage makes it difficult for any of us to take your concerns as seriously as you might like.

And even if we aren’t going to invite each and every one of you into the office to help us chart our course – and what business would? – might I suggest that some of you just calm down a little bit?

It would be neat to try and turn this into a story of an outraged writer and her fans working themselves into a frenzy and winning out over evil, but it’s hardly that.

We have had some things come up. Nothing more or less. People will, from time to time, disagree. That will happen at work. Happens with lovers and families all the time. And, sure, it’s annoying to see one view of our family business spread about in such a casual and cavalier way.

But everyone has his or her own ethical barometer. And with the Internet, sometimes people don’t allow themselves time to reflect on their actions. They mash the button and there it is.

But, here are a couple of things that have been sadly missing amid all of the the wailings, some facts. The writer remains under contract with our company. The people who run the site have done precisely what they said they would do in the editor’s note posted on Monday: They have interrupted the writer’s musings long enough to carefully consider where to best display them.

As the note also suggested, blog comments have been a concern. Oh, and thanks again to so many of you for driving those concerns home so articulately since the hiatus note went up. Special thanks, of course, would be due to Veronica, Eric and others who – for whatever reasons – don’t use their real names and e-mail addresses in their correspondence.

Is it easier to yell “Fire” if you think you’re doing it anonymously?

We can not spend any more time than we already do in policing the comments on this writer’s contributions. It just isn’t possible.

So we have moved this much-ballyhooed contribution into a space where we have moderators in place and where the comment function is far better than on the existing blog platform. Many of you have said that the interactivity is important to you and we hear you over the din.

You will need to register to access the contributions and to join in the discussions. It will take about the same amount of time as signing up to post on the old platform.

We hope for your continued participation.

It was great until the 'event' started

For me, the best part of Saturday's NASCAR Nextel Cup event at Lowe's Motor Speedway had little to do with the track surface. It involved some good people.

No, not Larry Hagman, although "J.R" did just fine as honorary race director, even if always liked him better in "I Dream of Jeanie."

The grand prize winners of ThatsRacin.com's Race Date contest were in town, hoping to see a race, of course, and we're sorry that didn't work out so well. It was kind of like inviting friends over to grill some steaks and finding nothing but ground beef in the fridge. Or having bragged about your football team for weeks, getting tickets and taking those friends, then watching the offense just mail it in and get shut out.

Brooke Pinkston and Ramona Thomas were here with their guests and we got to spend a little time together visiting the Sam Bass Gallery and getting them over to the Speedway Club for the evening's main event.

Sam Bass, Susan Russo and the rest of 'em were super and we've got some images of that visit to share with you soon. Scott Cooper and Susan Pare', among others at Lowe's Motor Speedway, likewise,  were the most gracious of hosts.

R.J. Perry, Michelle Putnam, Brian Wilder and the rest of the Premiere Sports Travel team also pitched in to help get our winners to town and put them up for a couple of nights. We couldn't have done it without them.

And, again, thanks to everyone who entered, 'cuz we dang sure couldn't have done it without you.

We'll keep you posted on promotions for next spring's event here in Charlotte and hope when it's all over but the shouting that we'll be able to call it a race instead of having to use one of those other words.

Maybe then we'll even have some positives to talk about after the green flag waves.

The racing and other games need to go on

I share blogger David Green's concern, and yes, some anguish, over the situation along the U.S. Gulf of Mexico. I admire, too, Lori Munro's ability to capture so many of the week's emotions and display them so eloquently.

David lived for a little while in Bay St. Louis, Miss., and it was my good fortune to have spent some time in nearby Long Beach while I worked at one of the newspapers that eventually got blended into The Sun Herald in Biloxi and Gulfport.

New Orleans was, of course, pretty close. And the trouble there hurts, too, but a lot of it just makes me mad. And anger, while no picnic and certainly less than an enviable emotion, doesn't feel quite as bad as hurt.

I'd lived a short way off U.S. 90 in Long Beach for several months (most everyone does along that part of the coast because after you get a little farther inland, it's mostly pine thickets) before I took a closer look at a field on the opposite side of the street from the driveway. The field had a bunch of scrub pines, briar patches and other underbrush kinds of things. I had never really given it much thought.

Then one day I looked a little closer. The place was rife with concrete slabs. They looked to have roughly the same square footage as most of the houses in our part of town, with maybe just enough extra concrete to count as a carport. There must've been several dozen of them in that one area.

That made me think of other areas just like it all over the Mississippi coast then, in the mid-1980s. And it dawned on me that those must've been areas never rebuilt after Hurricane Camille in 1969. Each represented a family's loss, no doubt their great suffering at the time and in the aftermath of that storm, which until this week was the benchmark for most coastians.

I've swapped a few yarns with some of the folks in ThatsRacin.com's forums this week, too, and I share a lot of their disgust with the looters, the chaos, corruption and utter lack of preparedness in New Orleans. I agree to a point, too, with a poster who faults the media for the focus on looters while missing so many of the stories about all of the good folks doing all they can to help.

The looters are every bit as real, though, as the putrid and potentially poisonous waters engulfing the Big Easy, where life will be anything but until some serious help arrives and the water recedes. And for quite a while afterward, apparently. Blaming the media, itself an easy out, doesn't help this time either.

Here's a question for you: Should the racing, our other sports and diversions stop for a little while? Would that be the proper way to demonstrate our support for the victims and those who are trying to help?

I don't think so. But I'm not here to argue with anyone who feels differently this time.

This time I'm going to shut up, send some  meager donations in and try to remember how well parts of Long Beach, Miss., and other towns along the coast were able to recover - as difficult as it must have been - after Camille. Because I know those good people can do it again.

And, at  least for a little while, I'm going to try and cut my own humble abode in Charlotte a little slack. The next few times the stairs creak a little too loudly or I stop to think about how long I've been putting off painting and fixing the deck, here's what I'm going to do:

I'm going to just flat stop, remember our friends in Mi'ssippi and Louisiana, and say a little thanks that my house - many needs though it surely has - is still standing, the ground around it fairly dry.

TOM HIGGINS' SCUFFS: Northwest Flight 255

EDITOR'S NOTE: Tom Higgins vividly recalls a race day in Michigan that was marred by tragedy, but it wasn't on the track. As important as racing is to all of us, his story just as vividly reminds of us matters far more important. 

By TOM HIGGINS

I can imagine once again the wreaths out there on the grassy knoll, ribbons billowing softly in a slight summer breeze.

The spot is on Middlebelt Road, just a mile or so from Detroit Metro Airport.

It’s where Northwest Airlines Flight 255 went down on Sunday, Aug. 17, 1987, killing 154 of the 155 people on board. Two persons on the ground also died.

Dozens of horrified witnesses either saw the crash or experienced what happened in the immediate aftermath. I was among the latter.

Along with fellow motorsports reporters Steve Waid and Gary McCredie, both then with a publication called Winston Cup Scene, I had driven to the airport area from the Champion 400 at Michigan International Speedway. We had watched Bill Elliott outrun Dale Earnhardt for the victory a couple hours earlier.

Just after we checked into a newly opened motel to await an early flight to Charlotte the next day, the world seemed to explode 200 yards away.

I thought that 30 years of covering stock car racing at the time had left me somewhat jaded to the sight of sudden death. I had seen several drivers and a couple crewmen, some of them close acquaintances, die violently on race tracks.

I was wrong.

Nothing had prepared me for a tragedy of this magnitude.

Scenes and incidents from that sad Sabbath evening haunted me for months.

And each year, on the anniversary of the awful accident, I remember it all over again. That and the wreaths that have been placed on the grassy knoll each August at this time, always the same week as a major NASCAR event at MIS.

I recall a Northwest Airlines crew — two men, four women — who were at the motel desk checking in as I sat in the lobby. Suddenly, they obviously heard the plane struggling to get airborne and began screaming.

I recall, an instant later, an explosion louder than anything I’ve ever heard. And then a fireball flashing by the motel door.

The concussion was so great that it seemed the motel might have been hit.

I recall running outside just behind that flight crew, and being stunned by the sight of thick black smoke down the street and the heavy smell of jet fuel. Secondary explosions boomed every few seconds.

There was mass confusion among those of us watching in horror from the motel lawn.

Had two planes collided in the gathering darkness of a fierce thunderstorm? What airline was involved?

Steve and Gary joined me outside. We shared a chilling, mind-numbing thought: Was it a plane headed to Charlotte, loaded with NASCAR drivers, team members and others connected to Winston Cup Series racing?

"It was a single plane, a big airliner," said an ashen-faced woman, still holding the suitcase she was taking from the trunk of a car when the plane went over her head. "It’s left wing dipped down and hit the building across the street."

We turned to see that flames were licking the roof the of the Avis Rental Car building on the other side of Middlebelt Road.

Suddenly, sirens wailed and firetrucks from the airport came speeding by. The response time was incredible, just 4 or 5 minutes.

Police cars and other emergency vehicles followed.

By now the Northwest flight crew that had been checking in had hustled into a shuttle bus. They were heading back to the airport terminal. The women were sobbing and the men grim-faced.

"It was one of their airline’s planes," someone said.

I rushed back into the motel to call my paper, The Charlotte Observer, to tell editors about the crash. The power had been knocked out, so phones in the rooms weren’t working, but two pay phones in the lobby were. Knowing there would be news flashes on TV, I also phoned my daughter to tell her I was okay.

I went back outside and saw that a new procession of emergency vehicles was passing by. They were ambulances, dozens of them, confirming the worst fears.

Their flashing lights added to an already eerie, surrealistic scene.

Policemen and deputy sheriffs set up a road block right in front of the motel, turning the curious away.

"Who would want to see such a gruesome sight?" I wondered.

Some insisted they had a right to go to the crash, including a guy that came down the sidewalk in a wheelchair. Cursing the cops, he reluctantly turned around and went away.

Another ghoul of a guy showed up on a bicycle. He ignored the officers and kept pedaling down Middlebelt Road. They pulled him from the bike and somewhat less than gently put him in a squad car and took him away in handcuffs.

Rain started to fall, so Steve, Gary and I went back inside.

By now the motel had a generator going and a TV was on in the candle-lit lobby. Newscasters reported the ill-fated plane to be Flight 255, bound from Detroit to Phoenix. It was reported a 3-year-old child, Cecilia Cichan, had survived the crash that killed her parents and brother.

The TV newsmen speculated widely about the cause of the tragedy (months later investigators blamed it on the flight crew failing to deploy the plane's flaps for takeoff).

Motel guests crowded a small bar in the lobby to order drinks.

"We can serve beer when we get the cash registers back on," said the barmaid. "But no liquor—we’re so new we don’t have our license yet."

By now the motel owner had arrived. He was a hairy, heavy-set man with thick, muscular arms. Wearing an undershirt, he looked like a Russian weightlifter.

"Give drinks to them," he ordered the barmaid. "Forget the cash register. Forget the license."

"But…" she protested.

"I said give it to them," he repeated firmly.

A line had formed to use the pay phones.

Awaiting her turn was a young woman, sobbing uncontrollably as she clutched a Yellow Pages phone book to her chest.

The motel owner approached her.

"Can I help you, young lady?" he asked.

"I’m a Northwest flight attendant," she said between sobs. "I had friends on that plane. I’m trying to locate the nearest hospital so I can go and give blood for this emergency."

This fierce-looking man took the young woman into his arms and softly stroked the back of her head.

Then, gently as possible, he told her that a donation of blood couldn’t help anyone on Flight 255.

Another young woman, carrying a baby, appeared in the lobby. She was desperate to make a phone call.

"My car stalled just down the road," she said. "I left it there and came up here to get help. I’m pretty sure the plane crashed onto my car.

"I’ve got to let my family know my baby and I are safe."

A man in the phone line let the young mother make a call before he did.

It was a night when strangers exchanged consoling words and kindnesses.

Upon boarding a plane the next morning to fly to Charlotte I found myself seated next to an elderly woman. She carried a Bible and she was shaking.

"Are you scared?" she asked.

I told her I was, but offered the reassurance that another crash happening was beyond the longest of odds.

"Would you hold my hand?" she asked.

I held her hand for the duration of the flight.

Back home, I received a phone call from a radio station in Phoenix.

A talk show host wanted me to share what I had seen.

"Most of the people on that plane were from the Phoenix area," she said. "The pain will endure in The Valley Of The Sun for a long time."

It has endured, I’m sure, elsewhere as well.

But the wreaths out there on Middlebelt Road are signs of some consolation.

Love endures, too.

God bless Jack and defiance

Jack Nicklaus played what he swears will be his last competitive round at St. Andrews on Friday, fittingly in the British Open that he's won twice.

I think everyone believes him and respects his decision. Golfers legendary and ordinary saluted the game's greatest on Friday.

Also fittingly, there was more tribute paid this week on that hallowed ground, as play on golf's greatest stage stopped, in honor of the victims of last week's terrorist attacks in London.

We salute those victims as well.

And we'll further appropriate this space to salute and promote in some small way the defiant spirit good people show through this link right here.

Hit the links below when you get there, have some fun, get mad if you wanna and post your own.

What's a fan to do?

Did you hear the one about the lifelong Dodgers fan?

Irv Zeiger, an aerospace industry retiree and former Navy pilot, has been a Dodgers season ticket holder and loyal patron since the baseball team was in Brooklyn. Longer actually. He bought his first tickets 43 seasons ago. And how have the Dodgers rewarded his loyalty? By trying to separate him from even more of his money.

The Dodgers attempted to shove a six-figure price increase down Zeiger's throat. So he declined and decided to sit out the season opener in a personal protest.

Here's a little of what ABC News' Peter Imber writes about it:

Zeiger's had at least four season seats right behind the Dodger dugout for all those years. He was in them for Sandy Koufax's perfect game in 1965 and Kirk Gibson's World Series home run in 1988. Last season, he paid $16,000 for them — $4,000 a ticket.

But when Zeiger got a phone call this winter from the Dodgers ticket office, he couldn't believe what he was hearing.

"I thought she was kidding," Zeiger said. "And that's exactly what I said to her, 'You got to be kidding.' And she kind of giggled over the phone and said, 'No, that's the price.' "

The price to get four tickets behind the dugout this year would be $120,000 — nearly eight times the old price.

The reason? Four rows of new seats have been built in front of Zeiger's old ones. The dugout is now 30 feet closer to the field. The new seats also include great parking and gourmet food. And the Dodgers say they need the money.

Greg McElroy, a Dodgers vice president, makes no apologies for the new $30,000 season ticket price.  "It's a very expensive business to run," he said. "And if you want to field the best team, you're going to have to pay for the best players."

Inflation is a fact in baseball. The average salary of a major league baseball player this season is expected to be more than $2.5 million. That's more than double what it was 15 years ago. Baseball ticket prices have also more than doubled in that time, up 120 percent while the consumer price index has risen only 45 percent.

Beth Ann Morgantheau, the BAM Racing owner whose No. 49 Dodges are sponsored by Schwan's Home Service, would like to show Zeigler how the better half lives.

"If Mr. Zeiger would like, I’ll buy him four tickets – four good tickets - to the NASCAR Nextel Cup race at California Speedway ... and throw in snacks too." "I can’t imagine taking a 43-year loyal fan and doing that,"  said Morgantheau, whose team fields the cars of veteran Cup Ken Schrader, "especially without a lot of remorse."

NASCAR fans have plenty of their own horror stories as ticket prices, parking and camping fees and the rest rise. Yeah, those three- and four-night minimums at hotels anyplace in the same state as some speedways count, too.

Still, so far, I haven't heard of gouging in that range of outrageousness at any race tracks, or on the part of businesses nearby.

If you have - or, better yet, experienced it - I'd appreciate hearing from you. We'll share some of those stories - horror or otherwise - right here.

More good folks per capita than nearly anyplace else you could go

My hat's off to David Poole for finding this little story and writing it. But I'm taking my danged hat off and waving it like a fool for the vendor who is at the heart of this little yarn.

Poole had the good fortune of spending a few days in the Bristol, Tenn., area last weekend. OK, some of those days were rainy and downright cold, so it wasn't all that swell.

And, as usual, the writer filed a ton of stuff, for this web site and for the newspaper that employs him. Some of it was big-bore stuff, some mundane and some was just necessary. But his best of the weekend was a little story about a family of race fans from Ohio.

I hope you hit the link, because Poole tells it far better than I ever could. But, in short, here it is:

A guy travels a long way to see a race, his family in tow. Nothing unusual about that. Fans are scattered all over this grand land. And even NASCAR has started to notice. Have you seen how they're moving race dates all over the map lately?

The guy from Ohio buys some stuff, keeps moving, keeps watching the racing and the rest. They decide to stay over Monday for the Busch race that was postponed because of rain.

And, somewhere along in there, he buys some peanuts. Then, a little while later, the guy notices he's lost his wallet.

Panic ensues. He thinks about calling his bank to try and put the brakes on the runaway spending that he imagines is going on with his credit cards. He figurers the hundreds of bucks in cash to be long gone already.

He sweats, wondering what his next nove should be. "I figured it was gone," he said. Then, the next thing he knows, he's being paged and reunited with his wallet.

He was told that Phil Tolleson, a peanut vendor from Chesnee, S.C., had found the wallet, which had been left at his stand. He also found a phone number for the man's doctor, which helped locate him in the crowd of race fans at Bristol.

"What a great experience to meet such a honest person," the man said. "He would not let me give him a reward. I'll forever be thankful to him."

I don't know if the guy has been to a lot of races. And I don't know how often he's lost touch with that wallet. But I do know this much: He was fortunate to have lost it when and where he did.

It just so happened that he was at a race track, where good folks are pretty much everywhere, in the stands, the infield, in the pits and even behind the counter where the peanuts are on sale.

This is not to say that routinely forgetting where you put your wallet is a good idea, but if you've gotta lose one, you could do a lot worse.

Beware the e-mail policy

Remember the dead-perfect impersonation of elementary schoolchildren on the playground that Brad Parrott and Robby Gordon performed in Mexico City earlier this month?

The driver said something the crew chief didn't like and the crew chief kneed the driver in the groin. Gordon grabbed Parrott by the throat and bystanders, including driver Carl Edwards, had to separate the boys much in the way a couple of teachers would have in the schoolyard.

Well, even though it was a far more interesting story than the race, it didn't do much to change Mexico City fans' minds about NASCAR racing and didn't take much of the perceived sheen off the company's first international points-paying race. So there were no penalties levied and subsequently no appeals process to sit through. For that, we have to be at least a little thankful.

But a related story was one of a reporter who tried to get both sides of the Parrott-Gordon entanglement for his report on the web site he worked for. Yeah, that's past tense. Lee Montgomery has since been let go by NASCAR.com.

I wrote a little about the boys' dust-up  - no, we're not talking "good ol' boys" here - a couple of days afterward and quoted a little from Montgomery's story that appeared on our competitor's site.

Offered a chance to share his side of the events, here's a little of what Parrott told Montgomery:

"I want to know why on NASCAR.com there's a full-face blown lie," Parrott said. "My wife just called me and said something happened on NASCAR.com that I don't believe in."

Asked to explain his side, Parrott declined.

"I'll explain it to NASCAR, and I'll let NASCAR explain it to you," Parrott said. "Anybody who knows Robby Gordon knows how Robby Gordon is."

Well, sure, Robby Gordon is a well-known quantity in racing.

And, Parrott's comments make it pretty well-known how the second-generation crew chief feels about his name appearing on NASCAR's official web site if the context is anything less than laudatory.

Unfortunately, all the news is not always good, is it? Here's a little more of what I wrote as we waited for NASCAR to investigate the Gordon-Parrott matter:

What happened in Mexico City between those two? That's certainly NASCAR's to sort out. And, as I suggested, they'll let us know when they feel the time is right.

What happened on the phone between a reporter working a story and a guy who was slap in the middle of that story? That's the NASCAR investigation we should be watching the closest.

NASCAR, it should be pointed out, doesn't own NASCAR.com. It has been run by Turner Sports Interactive since January 2001 under an agreement with the France company. Same way that NASCAR doesn't own Speed Channel, Fox, TNT, NBC or any of its other partners in presenting stock car racing. Same deal with all of the licensed and "official" publications of NASCAR.

Montgomery, an N.C. State University grad who covered that school's sports programs for a North Carolina newspaper before becoming a motorsports journalist, is looking for a new job. On Thursday, he and his wife expect to close on a new house.

The timing of the abrupt change in his job status might've been a little worse, but I suspect it's pretty hard to imagine how right about now. And he never saw it coming.

"There goes a good guy," a co-worker at NASCAR.com told me. But he couldn't say anything more, given that this is a personnel matter. Plus, he really doesn't really know much more than he'll miss working with Montgomery.

When he was told "game over" by his bosses, Montgomery said he  was informed that he had violated Turner Sports Interactive's policy on use of company e-mail.

How scary is that?

Most of us are likely guilty of personal communication on company equipment. I get jokes - some of them admittedly far less than tasteful - from co-workers all the time. Send some myself, I do. Bet you do, too.

But here's the point: You might be OK if you work for yourself or are the boss where you work. Otherwise, you might need to take the occasional look at your company's policy on use of e-mail. Never mind that the spammers don't give anything that resembles a damn for what your company's policy is. There gonna do what they do anyway.

Same with evolving blog policies. Some people who have blogged about bad experiences at work have gone to the salt mine the next morning only to be told they were being fired for violating company policy on blogging. And they didn't even know there was a "blog policy."

What your civics teacher might have told you about freedom of speech, it looks like, absolutely must be tempered with many of the realities of today's workplace.

Highway vs. speedway

A few more words  - doubtfully the last - about some of the idocy encountered when simply driving around town, or getting from Point A to Point B. Hizzoner the mayor of Rantville and I weighed in earlier and these come from a couple of racers.

Chip Williams, the former NASCAR public relations boss who now represents a number of drivers, teams and sponsors in the sport, polled a few of his clients. Basically, he asked which was more challenging, the highway or speedway.

“Both are tough for different reasons," newcomer Eric McClure said.  “On the race track, you have a lot of people who want to be Richard Petty. On the highway, you have a lot of people who think they already are Richard Petty.”

And this is what Stanton Barrett, the Hollywood stunt man-racer, had this to say: “You mess up on the highway, and there are three witnesses and a state trooper to figure it all out, and your insurance company to answer to.

"Make a mistake on the race track and 100,000 people in the grandstands and a million or so more watching on television will tell you how you could have avoided the whole thing.”