by Shey Stahl
I said it before and I’ll said it again because it’s the one thing I know to be true besides the love of my wife and our family.
As I said to my wife, and I believed this to be true, your life is measured in moments. Moments that can test you, challenge you, and moments that can make you fall to your fucking knees, begging and pleading for all you’re worth for just one more moment. But those moments define you as a person, the life you live, and the story of your life. You have to take them as they come because before you know it, you’re out of moments.
All you have left are the memories.
So when you think you’ve forgotten and you realize nothing lasts forever, look back to those memories because they do last forever.
My life couldn’t be summed up for me as being just a legendary race car driver as those times were simply just snapshots. Clips of what my life really was. My life behind the blaring spotlight became the shadows I knew and who I really was. I was the son of two of the greatest people I know. I was a brother to two of the most giving and unselfish people a sibling could ask for. I was a husband to a woman who I cherished more than anything, a father to three children that showed me more about who I was than I ever thought possible and now a proud grandfather.
Those were the greatest memories I had.
Exhaust Stroke – Sway
Sitting there with Jameson, being back around dirt racing was what our family needed. It was where our love story began and healed us from the scars we thought would never mend.
There’s something about the human heart that most never consider. It can be broken and ripped apart by this world, shattered beyond your belief. But what makes it beat again?
Love, family, sex, trust, all of it can heal a heart. I would know.
When I’m old, I want to remember certain parts of my life and hold onto them forever.
I want to remember holding my children, vowing forever to my best friend, painting my nails with my mom, watering a dirt track with my dad, Jimi with his smart ass remarks and Nancy with her compassion. I want to remember everyone in my family for what they brought to me.
Love.
Watching Jameson prior to Charlie’s memorial race we had every year, it was easy to see now that he longed for the moment that he could be at peace with his past, dreamed of it even, but it would never come without a fight. Finally, surrounded by everything that made Jameson Riley who he was, he was finally living where the clay met rubber.
From the day we met, to now, we’d come full circle, back to where the clay met rubber and desire defined greatness. Jameson went back to where he always felt comfortable, a dirt track. There was no pressing media here and nothing forcing him to race but his own desire. Sure we had challenges but they were different.
Sitting on his lap, gently, his lips touched mine, brushing softly before pulling away. “My wife,” he said softly as he drew me close. My senses engulfed with him, the track, and our love.
“I love you, honey.” He murmured holding me tighter.
Jameson took pride and poured everything he had into everything he did. Now wasn’t any different.
I honestly don’t think anyone can capture the vulnerability, magic, sensitivity, charm and pure greatness of this man I’ve loved all these years. He influenced and contributed to the racing world in ways no one ever had or ever will. People used to come from miles around just to see him race. Those were the people that understood. The people that stood in line for hours just to meet him prior to a race or stayed until the wee hours of the morning watching him celebrate after a victory. Those were the people that captured the magic that was Jameson Riley. It was a magic that consumed me in every way.
He taught me the love and the passion he held for a sport that changed our lives and intertwined them to the point that there was no us without it.
In turn, I gave him everything I had to give. I gave him my heart, my body, my soul and three wonderful kids.
The greatest man I had ever known.
Thinking back on my life, the fairytales of my childhood made perfect sense to me, but that wasn’t what I ended up with. I had my version of the fairytale. The glass slipper fit me. The dirty heathen turned into my prince and my soul was awakened with his kiss. And once upon at a dirt track, we found our happy right now.
Our lives were so twisted and turned that we couldn’t find our way back to where it all began and I was okay with that. The reality, the dream, was better than any fairytale.
I’ll always remember the feeling I got when I knew I loved Jameson. I’ve held it with me like a secret gift all these years. It’s a fire in me that burns to this day. Some fires never go out.
Some lights burn forever.
My love for him burned forever.
Jameson looked at me and breathed, the night air seized around us but I only saw him as he waited for my gaze to meet his. “I’ll tell you something, honey,” His finger traced my lips, “Something that a race could never offer me, something that’s worth all the aches and tears in the world. Something I believe in.”
“What’s that?”
His eyes shined as he spoke about a passion that held us as one. “A man and woman in love.”
Where the clay met rubber and desire defined greatness, a love was formed in a world of adrenaline and desire. Whether that love be for a sport that consumed your life or a man and woman in love, a taste would never be enough. Over tragedy and triumph, you fight, you don’t give in and you see within the shadows of the blaring spotlight why you did so.
I believed, as Jimi once said, believe in love and hold onto it with everything you have as it’s the only real legend of our time.
The End
Freedom is never dear at any price. It is the breath of life. What would a man not pay for living?
Gandhi
Behind the Wheel Outtakes
Continuous Stall Torque
Tate Harris
Continuous Stall Torque – Maximum amount of torque a motor can provide at zero speed without exceeding its thermal capacity.
Only a few people have ever personally witnessed the raw talent behind Jameson Riley. He’s known by millions but to know him from the beginning was different. I think those were the only ones that understood everything he put into racing.
There Jameson was being awarded his fifteenth NASCAR Cup series title as I watched from the crowd. He turned and looked at me before going on stage. Smiling, he gave me a head nod that was both, I appreciate you and yeah, that’s right, I’m one up on you buddy. Even though he was ten years younger than me, we had spent our entire careers battling it out together.
I still remember the night I met him as though it was just yesterday, that’s the type of impact this kid had on me.
It was the week of the Chili Bowl Midget Nationals in 1999 when I met him.
At first glance, you’d think he’s just some cocky kid with daddy’s money. Boy would you be wrong. For one, he refused to take daddy’s money and though he was in fact cocky, he had every right to be. He worked hard for everything he had won by 1999.
His head was bent forward, his arms folded over his chest. And if you didn’t know any better, you’d think at that point, he was just another racer. I knew at one glance that night he wasn’t just another racer.
Jimi was standing next to him, Jameson nodding to everything he said. Once again, some would think here’s a kid that fed from the bill daddy footed. But I knew.
He heard every word Jimi ever said to him.
Jameson sat there looking over the track before sitting on the edge of the wall in turn two, his feet kicked out in front of him. His eyes scanned over the track watching as they prepared the surface for the night’s heat races. Although he was just watching, his eyes never moved as he intently focused on the night ahead of him.
I knew very little about Jameson Riley other than he had surpassing success in the USAC division the last couple years and even won the USAC Triple Crown.
Having a
father like Jimi Riley, I assumed he could race but when I saw him go from a twelfth starting spot in his heat to the lead in two laps, I knew he had talent.
The thing with drivers who have raw talent was the way that talent is displayed. Some athletes have it and they know it. They don’t think they need to practice because in their mind, they’re too good for that. After all, they’re naturals, right?
Well here’s the difference between them and a guy like Jameson. He spent every day, every minute he could inside a car honing that raw god given talent. He knew he was good and he damn sure wasn’t letting it go to waste. That’s what set him apart from the others.
“He’s good, huh?” Bobby said watching the last few laps where Jameson pulled out to a six car lead.
“I don’t think good does him justice.”
“You wouldn’t believe the stats from the year he won the Triple Crown.” You couldn’t miss the sour edge to his voice. Bobby was the only other driver to win the Triple Crown. “You think he’d drive stock cars?”
I laughed leaning against the edge of the bleachers.
“Let’s hope not.” I teased.
In the end, that’s where he made a name for himself outside of the shadows of Jimi Riley.
Looking back on it now, I don’t regret ever helping him out and introducing him to Marcus because of days like today. I thought of him as a brother and seeing this kid win another title only proved I was right in helping him. That raw talent wasn’t wasted and that was more gratifying than seeing my own dreams come true, for me anyways.
There were times when he’d lose focus, but we all did. But it was individuals like Jameson who got right back on the gas and made the ride worth wild. That right there was worth it.
Independent Suspension
Casten Riley
Independent Suspension – A term used to describe any type of suspension that allows each of the two wheels of a given axle to move up and down independently of each other.
Someone once asked me if I liked my family.
My first thought was, what kind of question is that, who doesn’t like their family?
And then my next sobering thought, oh yeah, not everyone has a childhood like mine.
I loved everything about it. Where else would one find a group of highly unstable natural athletes, obsessive disorders, anger issues and borderline alcoholics?
The Riley family.
Nothing about any of us was normal. For a person like me, it was heaven. Most of the early years I remember a lot of love, smiles and good times at the race tracks. We traveled a lot with my parents; I remember that much and I loved it. When we were at home, it was the same thing. They made it all enjoyable while still keeping touch with that we were kids and needed some normal routines. Most of this involved a family dinner the night before my dad’s races or a trip to the local zoo or aquarium if one was around. Even with a dad that was on the road 10-months out of the year, we still saw him more than most would think. Me however, I was a mama’s boy. She couldn’t, and still can’t, do anything wrong in my eyes because who else would protect me when I filled my brothers bed with itching powder or glued my sisters phone to her ear?
My dad sure as shit wouldn’t, he just said, “You pissed in your bed, you lay in it,” whatever the hell that meant.
I usually found a way out of it by either crying or batting my eyelashes at my mom. They were long, thick and provided just enough shadow to a pair of sparkly green eyes. I was definitely blessed when it came to being adorable and I knew it. It worked well for when my plans for attacking didn’t roll well.
Even with all that, as I got older, the more entertainment being the baby of the family provided me.
I remember the first time I used this to my advantage and knew without a doubt, my mom was completely clueless when it came to me and my abilities to persuade those around me.
It was sometime after my sixth birthday. I was racing quarter midgets at Terra Haute with Axel and his friend Shane. That wasn’t the important part. The important part was I was six, and I was bored out of my six-year-old mind waiting for my heat race.
This is where Ryder Christensen came in.
Now it always started with Tommy Davis and Ryder, two of my dad’s close friends who spent the majority of their time corrupting me.
So Ryder said, “Casten if you get me a beer, I will...” and every time it was a different outcome for me. He’d ramble off some request, usually beer runs and I’d come up with a demand—most of the time I wanted candy. For some reason unbeknownst to me, my parents didn’t like me to have candy.
Now I had the optimal deal there with Ryder and Tommy and developed some excellent ways to sneak beer away from the other teams. Sure, they had their own beer and own money to buy the beer but what fun was that?
Anyway, my mom never caught onto this, even though she was usually there and just smiled at me. Sometimes I thought maybe she knew and just wasn’t saying anything because it was also entertaining to her watching a six-year old walk around with his jacket full of Coors Light.
Eventually though, I got bored and stealing beer was above my six-year-old world and I was sure there was a bigger payout for things like, I don’t know, stealing cars?
I blamed my twin cousins Charlie and Noah for that one.
I stole a car or two, drove them around the parking lot and then would park them in different parking spots while Cole, Noah, Charlie and me watched those poor unsuspecting folks look for their cars after the race.
We did this a few times and sooner or later actually stole a few and parked them down the street. We decided when the cops showed up to report the missing car that it was tad risky for a six-year old (we being me and myself). So we went back to stealing beer.
A couple years later, someone said something along the lines of me stealing a car and my mom got right in their face and said, “He’s eight. He wouldn’t steal a car!”
Little did she know I actually stole two to be exact when I was six and rearranged a handful of them. I always returned them though. I thought for sure if I at least returned them, it would keep me out of jail.
I moved on from beer stealing and carjacking around ten and got into things like persuasion. You’d be amazed what you can convince people to do when you have chubby cheeks, bright green eyes and dark lashes to bat at them. As I said, this worked well for me.
I lied a lot but what kid didn’t? I hit my siblings, I got grounded, earned myself a few spankings when warranted for the larger mishaps when someone got hurt unintentionally and I don’t know how many times I heard the words, “I told you so,” from both my parents and my grandparents.
But still, I wouldn’t change any of it.
My parents were cool; I’d never tell them that. They let us be kids and have normalness even when we didn’t.
Mom made us focus on school, even when we didn’t want to. Between Arie, Lexi, Cole, the twins, and me we had quite the team against them. School was their way of getting some time away from us probably. Axel and Lane were in on it most of the time but they were different from us. They were more involved in racing than we all cared to be. Though we loved to be around the local tracks, we enjoyed the people more than the racing itself.
Aside from Axel, Arie and I attended public school, as did the rest of our cousins. Got suspended a time or two and were just normal kids and even played sports.
We just played the types of sports that involved a motor. I learned a lot by being at the tracks and growing up around racers. They were all entertaining to me and the idolizing fans provided loads of ammunition for torturing them.
As I got older, my focus shifted slightly from entertaining myself to girls.
What boy didn’t shift focus to the opposite sex though?
Even my brother who rarely found time for anything other than racing was interested in them. Cole and I found great entertainment in catching him and Lily making out. We learned a lot about girls between him and Lane. We probably would
have learned from Charlie and Noah as well but they were honestly too stupid to understand the opposite sex (unless it had an engine, they were dumbfounded).
Some thought I was some sort of player once I got into high school since I had a few regular girls but never any committed relationship. But if you actually asked those girls I was with, they wouldn’t say that. I treated them all with the respect they deserved.
I lost my virginity in Knoxville when I was fourteen to a girl Willie hooked me up with. It may seem young but I was very eager to experience the whole sex thing after hearing my cousins and brother talk about how enjoyable it was. Jenny, the girl I was with, was sixteen and experienced. I was not. But she was patient and taught me a lot about women in general.
I never told my parents about Jenny as I only saw her if we were in Knoxville but any time I was there, she was the first person I called.
When I got into high school, that’s when the girls congregated to me. I never had to tell them who my dad was or use my family name but I never would have anyway. If a girl was into me simply because my dad was Jameson Riley, then she wasn’t worth it. She wasn’t in it for me and in turn, that wasn’t a good deal for me.
I’m sure all of them knew who I was, but I didn’t need the name to get their attention. I knew what they like since I was so close with my sister and Lexi. It also helped that anytime my aunts were together I was usually around as well. I liked hanging out with the women in our family; they provided just as much entertainment as the men.
All of the women in my family also would have kicked my ass if I disrespected the girls I was with. And they deserved respect. They weren’t my property or even a possession to me. They were women, they all deserved respect, and to be treated as the beautiful mesmerizing creatures they were.
Surprisingly, I learned the most about how a woman should be treated from my dad. He held my mom up on a pedestal and looked at her as if she was his very reason for breathing. If you knew either one of them, you understood the love they had and that they were each other’s reason for breathing. When the world wasn’t looking, they had something noteworthy of fairytale.
