What a Society Prepares Itself For :: Personal Narrative Racing Death Papers

What a Society Prepares Itself For I'm from Texas. And when I lived in Texas, which was before I lived in New York, my friends were Texans. I don't mean to say they were the all-got-up-in cowboy hats, tight jeans, bit belt buckles, and snakeskin boots kind of Texans a lot of people tend to think about. But I do mean to say they were the beer drinking, football playing, pick-up driving, bar brawling kind of good 'ol Texas boys that don't really exist anywhere else but where I spent the first eighteen years of my life. And, although you might never be able to tell from my long hair, baggy pants, lack of shoes, and the random book I'm usually reading, I was one of them. We'd go to Mexico on school breaks and hop keg parties on the weekend. And on one Saturday night, I went and watched some drag races with my friends at this little speedway in a town called Ennis, which is outside of Dallas. We drove out in two trucks, the seven of us, drinking beer on the way. When we got there it wasn't quite as nice a place as the Texa s Motor Speedway (I've been to the Texas Motor Speedway also, you see), or the Indianapolis Speedway, but it is a similar atmosphere. It was dusty, loud, and smelled like tire rubber and motor oil. A majority of the crowd seemed to be either drinking beer, betting on the races, or both. But it wasn't just an "overweight, sweaty, wasted, smelling-of-beer-and-marijuana, American, middle-aged man" gala weekend attraction either. There were plenty of hard working middle class men (mostly men) that had nice houses in the suburbs of Dallas who worked hard all week long, maybe even owned their own business, with their kids going to college at Texas A&M, or Texas Tech, or the University of Texas, or maybe even Rice. And as the night went on, I began to notice something. The first thing was that my friends knew a hell of a lot about racecars. That was odd because nine out of ten of my friends barely went to school half the time, much less studied, and yet they knew the intricate details of the speed, weight, torque, and horsepower of the cars. My second observation, more subtle yet more striking than my first, was that ever yone was getting along impeccably. What a Society Prepares Itself For :: Personal Narrative Racing Death Papers What a Society Prepares Itself For I'm from Texas. And when I lived in Texas, which was before I lived in New York, my friends were Texans. I don't mean to say they were the all-got-up-in cowboy hats, tight jeans, bit belt buckles, and snakeskin boots kind of Texans a lot of people tend to think about. But I do mean to say they were the beer drinking, football playing, pick-up driving, bar brawling kind of good 'ol Texas boys that don't really exist anywhere else but where I spent the first eighteen years of my life. And, although you might never be able to tell from my long hair, baggy pants, lack of shoes, and the random book I'm usually reading, I was one of them. We'd go to Mexico on school breaks and hop keg parties on the weekend. And on one Saturday night, I went and watched some drag races with my friends at this little speedway in a town called Ennis, which is outside of Dallas. We drove out in two trucks, the seven of us, drinking beer on the way. When we got there it wasn't quite as nice a place as the Texa s Motor Speedway (I've been to the Texas Motor Speedway also, you see), or the Indianapolis Speedway, but it is a similar atmosphere. It was dusty, loud, and smelled like tire rubber and motor oil. A majority of the crowd seemed to be either drinking beer, betting on the races, or both. But it wasn't just an "overweight, sweaty, wasted, smelling-of-beer-and-marijuana, American, middle-aged man" gala weekend attraction either. There were plenty of hard working middle class men (mostly men) that had nice houses in the suburbs of Dallas who worked hard all week long, maybe even owned their own business, with their kids going to college at Texas A&M, or Texas Tech, or the University of Texas, or maybe even Rice. And as the night went on, I began to notice something. The first thing was that my friends knew a hell of a lot about racecars. That was odd because nine out of ten of my friends barely went to school half the time, much less studied, and yet they knew the intricate details of the speed, weight, torque, and horsepower of the cars. My second observation, more subtle yet more striking than my first, was that ever yone was getting along impeccably.