Dan Washburn's Sporting Life

Antique Tractor Pull: 'Good, clean American fun'

"Turn left at the only red light in town."

When you are given those directions, you know you are headed for a countrified corner of the world. And when you turn onto Holloway Road in Danielsville, you know you have arrived.

It's a graveyard for anything with gears. Tractors, backhoes and school buses -- in varying degrees of disrepair -- line the path that leads to Holloway Hollow, a remote pitch of dirt and grass that houses one of Madison County's biggest tickets the second Saturday of each month, April through October.

It's an antique tractor pull. And it's simple and straightforward. Folks driving old tractors try to pull a weighted sled as far as their engines will allow them.

"This is good, clean American fun," said Gainesville resident Tim Akins, 38, who has taken his bright orange 1960 Allis-Chalmers tractor to Holloway for the past two years. "You can bring your wife and your kids. You ain't got to worry about nothing."

Akins paused for a puff on his Hava Tampa Jewel cigar and then added, "I don't think this would be a terrorist target for anyone."

The Stars and Stripes fly proud at Holloway Hollow. The Georgia flag does, too -- and not that newfangled blue one, either. There haven't been many complaints about the Confederate flag's presence at the tractor pull.

If all the hauling makes you hungry, burgers and hot dogs are always on the grill. If you're lucky, there might also be some homemade apple pie and ice cream.

The pulling starts at 5 p.m. sharp. But spectators start arriving long before then. People plop down their lawn chairs to save spots on the grassy slope which has been leveled out into three tiers to accommodate the crowd. Country music is piped through the public address system until the action begins.

"There will be more good ol' boys gathered here than there are left in Hall County," Akins said. Holloway Hollow is one place where the phrase "good ol' boys" is actually taken as a compliment.

Broden Holloway used to farm the land that he turned into a tractor pull strip in 1990. The 69-year-old said, "It was just something I wanted to do."

Holloway, owner of Holloway & Sons Tractor Company in Danielsville, estimates that he lost around $2,500 holding the tractor pulls last year. He doesn't charge admission and only asks $5 per "hitch" from the drivers.

It's not money he's in it for. It's the people.

"Everybody's just good old country folk," Holloway said. "And they're enjoying themselves, it seems like."

On May 11, Holloway wore faded denim overalls and a John Deere cap, two items that appeared to be part of the antique tractor pull uniform. He had a wooden paddle in his back pocket -- an "educational tool" for his grandchildren, he said. The radio headset Holloway wore to communicate with his volunteer staff seemed out of place.

Holloway's tractor pulls haven't changed much over the past 12 years. And he doesn't plan on them changing any time in the near future. Tractors still need to be more than 32 years old to participate. They can only be driven in first gear.

"Most tractor pulls, there's a whole lot of hot-roddin'," Holloway said. "But we don't allow that here."

Some of the antique tractors are so polished and shiny that they might be mistaken for new. Others feature what Akins likes to call their "original finish." It's all rust.

"It's a tractor pull, not a tractor show," clarified Akins, who owns an equipment and truck repair shop in Gainesville.

The pulling action itself is plodding. The tractors never move too fast. No fire shoots out of their exhaust pipes. If people are looking for speed, they can head on over to the go-kart track down the road.

No, the pull is all about power. Sometimes slow and steady does win the race.

"I guess it kind of grows on you," spectator Suzy Seagraves, 25, of Commerce, said. "It's relaxing to me."

The weight on the sled electronically shifts forward during each pull, making progress progressively tougher. Every now and again, the front end of a tractor will rise up off the ground while the rear tires grind deeper into the strip of packed Georgia red clay. And every now and again the fans will clap.

What really brings the crowd to its feet, however, takes place during intermission. It's the kids-only pedal tractor race, a mad dash on dirt to a finish line where everyone receives a trophy. The little tractors move a lot faster than the big ones.

The adults don't pull for trophies or money. They get a plastic plaque if they place in their weight class. But really, these guys pull for pride.

"I come to win every one of them," Akins said. "I don't, but I have that in mind when I come."

The tractor pulls in Danielsville never drag on too long. Everyone is usually packed up and gone by 10 p.m. Plenty of time to sleep and get up for church the next morning.

Broden Holloway wouldn't have it any other way.

Slot Car Racing: '3-2-1, squeeze 'em!'

I inspected the car Mark Taaffe built for me. I had my doubts as to whether it would withstand the beating I was about to put it through.

The car was yellow. It had a big blue "0" emblazoned on its roof.

"Zero is as close as I could come to a bullseye," Taaffe said with a smirk. "The new guy always has a bullseye."

And then he placed the car in my hand. It was time for my introduction to the scaled-down world of slot car racing, where the cars are small ... and the thrills are big.

"It's frustrating at first, there's no doubt about that," warned Taaffe, proprietor of Bullet Raceway, which occupies the back section of the arcade at Bumper's & Bogey's on Jesse Jewell Parkway in Gainesville.

"You can get discouraged. Because it looks so easy."

The regulars who race at Bullet Raceway every Friday and Saturday night do make slot car racing seem rather simple. Just press a button and watch your car go.

But there's much more to slot car racing than that. It's the turns that make it tricky. Slot cars, which buzz around the track so fast they become bright-colored blurs, don't always stay in their slots.

I learned that early during my practice session. Take a turn wide open and you're headed into the wall ... or over it.

"You built me a pretty sturdy car," I said to Taaffe, who apparently anticipated the torture I'd inflict on car No. 0. It happens to every beginner.

"It's a tank," Taaffe said with a knowing nod.

We were racing cars 1/24 the size of real cars. For those of you -- like me -- who have no idea how to visualize that ratio, we were racing cars about the size of an adult male hand. A motor is the size of a match box.

Taaffe's road-style track, built in 1964, is full of twists and turns. It's about 100 feet long and eight lanes -- or slots -- wide. Each lane is marked by a different color and has a corresponding control terminal along the straightaway.

Cars are powered electronically. Each "driver" has a controller that hooks into the track and operates a particular lane. Squeeze the trigger, and the car goes. Release it, and the car stands still.

Good racers find a rhythm, somewhere between reckless and reasonable. Great racers run awfully close to reckless, only without all the wrecks. Fast drivers at Bullet Raceway average less than four seconds per lap.

"If you watch the fingers, you can see the finesse," Taaffe said.

Terry Kelly played his controller like it was a musical instrument. His finger squeezed the same song lap after lap. He kept the beat with his head, back and forth, following his car around the track.

Kelly was my coach. And I couldn't have asked for a better one. He's a reigning United Slot Racers Association national champion, a title he won in April at a race in Anderson, S.C. He's also a regular at Bullet Raceway.

"Here, everybody will help you," said Kelly, 48, of Alpharetta. "Until the race starts. And then you're on your own."

Luckily, Kelly remained my crew chief even after the green flag dropped.

Races are split into eight three-minute periods. Each driver runs one period on each lane. The driver with the most laps after the last period is the winner. A computer does the counting.

Beginner races take a little longer to complete. The clock stops with every crash, and there are several. Thankfully, the "corner marshals" -- the drivers waiting for the next race -- are there to quickly return the careening cars to their proper slots.

Then the public address announcer barks: "3-2-1, squeeze 'em."

The cars and minutes went by so quickly, though, it was rather easy for me to lose track of how many laps I was losing by. Trust me, it was a lot.

After each round, Kelly took my car back to his body shop (he has a large, portable wooden equipment box that travels with him) and made adjustments.

This is serious stuff for Kelly. His story is similar to that of several slot car racers. He got into it as a child, lost interest as a young adult, and rediscovered the hobby in middle age. But slot car racing is more passion than hobby for Kelly these days.

"It's just like any other sport," Kelly said. "I like the competition."

Kelly constructs slot car parts at his home and sells them over the Internet and at Taaffe's store. He has his own racing team (he wore a "Kelly Racing" T-shirt on Friday) and boasts a roster of racers from California, Michigan, Tennessee, South Carolina and Georgia. The Kelly Racing team won five national titles in April.

Kelly said he put nearly 400 hours of work into his car leading up to nationals. He won about $400 for his efforts.

"You don't cover your costs," Kelly said. "But you do make some money."

Kelly, who often swaps out tires on his car based on changes in humidity, asked me if the car felt "loose" at one point during my race. I just shrugged.

Of course, Kelly is just an extreme. You can buy a car from Taaffe for as little as $45 and rent a controller for $2. Just like that, you are ready to race.

"We bought cars and just dove right in," said Kevin Umstaedter, 46, of Gainesville, who started slot car racing with his two young sons almost a year ago. "It's a great hobby for kids. And it's a kick in the pants. It's a heck of a lot of fun."

Twelve-year-old Brandon Howorth, a sixth-grader at Chestatee Middle School, has his parents drop him off at Bullet Raceway every Friday night.

"I just like racing," said Howorth, who stumbled upon the hobby six weeks ago and, by the way, soundly defeated the yellow car with a "bullseye" on its roof. "It's fun coming here every Friday to race."

You know Brandon, you're right. Just watch out for the ol' No. 0 car next time.