Mammoth Blog

It does not take a race on Halloween weekend for the ghosts of Talladega Superspeedway to rise. Whether it's karma or juju or the product of some supernatural power, there's always been something a little different about that 2.66-mile race track dug out of the north Alabama hills. NASCAR's very own twilight zone has been a place where strange, sometimes unexplainable things have happened, cast against a thousand campfires that give it an almost otherworldly glow.

There is no other venue like it, from the size to the spectacle to its turbulent and sometimes tragic history. It was at Talladega where Bobby Isaac abruptly parked his car and got out, claiming voices had told him to do so. It was at Talladega where the garage was once vandalized, where the pace car was once stolen, where parts of the infield still have a reputation for being as lawless as the tribal areas of Pakistan. Then there are the other events, these much more mortal, the water-tank explosions and helicopter crashes and racing accidents that have left sadness and devastation in their wake.

Why all this, in one place? The search for explanation began to take on a life of its own. People said the track was built on the site of an American Indian burial ground, and the spirits were exacting their revenge. People said the name of a nearby town was really a Native American word for "bad water." People said the place was cursed because the indigenous peoples had been forced to leave their homes and move west as part of the Trail of Tears. None of it was ever verified, of course. But it didn't matter. It persisted anyway.

Rick Humphrey, the track's president, has heard it all. He's heard every shred of rumor and myth and superstition about why his track, which hosts the Cup Series on Sunday, has such a checkered and tumultuous history. So through an acquaintance, he got in contact with a Creek Indian community based in a small town in far south Alabama, near the Florida line. And last Thursday, a man in a ponytail and wearing a rainbow-colored sash arrived to try and restore some balance to a facility that's been plagued by instability since its first race, which was boycotted by a number of top drivers due to safety concerns.

His name was Robert Thrower, and he was a medicine man from the Poarch Band of Creek Indians, the same Creeks that once inhabited so much of the land around Talladega. Speaking in the Muscogee language and working from a folding table set up as an altar at the start-finish line, Thrower offered what he called a prayer of protection, restoration, and balance to try and ease whatever cosmic instability surrounds the track. Using bits of cedar, rabbit tobacco, and wild sage, he performed a short ceremony similar to one his great-grandmother -- the last tribal medicine woman -- would have done.
Talladega has always been a little crazy. But here's the thing: people like it a little crazy.

"Most everything in Native American belief is about keeping balance," said Thrower, who is also a Baptist minister. "Sometimes people and places can get out of balance, and that unbalance may be perceived as something bad. What we did today was bless the track, and ask for reconciliation so that balance can be restored."

This kind of thing isn't unusual for Thrower, who often blesses houses or farms. But a race track? In a public ceremony? Then again, if anything can be described as slightly off-kilter, it's Talladega. How else to explain all those beer cans raining down on the frontstretch after Jeff Gordon's victory in 2007, or the preponderance of too-anatomically-correct Mardi Gras beads in the campgrounds, or that general, on-the-edge sense that permeates the place on the race track and off?

So yes, maybe Talladega could use a little balance. Hopefully, Thrower brought the heavy-duty rabbit tobacco.

"I wanted to share with somebody the myth or the legend that a curse had been placed on the area by the Indians," Humphrey said. "[Thrower] made sure that I knew that he was not coming to do some kind of exorcism, and that was not we wanted. He didn't mention a curse. He may have mentioned it one time during a prayer. He said, 'What I can do, and what I will do, is I will come and bless the land. And I will come and restore balance.' So really, I didn't know what I was calling and asking for, other than sharing, in some shape or form, our desires to put the urban legends and myths behind us."

So, what to make of this? Obviously, there's a publicity element to it, with the race weekend approaching and Talladega off 15 to 20 percent from last year on ticket sales just like so many other tracks are. But as anyone who has ever been there can fully attest, Talladega is a strange and different place. Those high speeds, those impossibly tall bankings, those sprawling campgrounds and all that heavy wood smoke -- in concert, it all has a cumulative effect on the mind. Talladega has always been a little crazy. But here's the thing: people like it a little crazy. They pack Airstreams and pup tents and sleep out in the cold in the hopes of being a little crazy, too.

To that extent, you have to wonder what kind of effect Thrower's blessing will have. Thursday will arrive, campers will show up, beads will be passed out, beer cans will be opened, and Talladega will become Talladega again, whether it's in balance or not. Now, in terms of protection -- especially given Carl Edwards' accident there in the spring, where his car went airborne into the restraining fence and a woman's jaw was broken by debris -- you hope Thrower really does have the ear of the Great Spirit. Because more than freakish occurrences, those are the kinds of incidents that give Talladega a bad name.

But we can hope, at least, for a safe and incident-free weekend, that balance has truly been restored and whatever spirits hovering about Talladega Superspeedway are of the benevolent variety. Then again, Saturday night is Halloween. Hopefully, the medicine man will be on call. source>>>