A Day at the (Lawn Mower) Races

As cultured as I’d like to think my friends and family are, the reality is that we do still live in Oklahoma. My neighbor painted his four-door Ford Tempo to look like the General Lee. My co-worker has camouflage flames on his pickup. Life is different in Oklahoma.

This is the only possible introduction I could come up with to try and explain how three generations of O’Haras (my son, my father and I) ended up at El Reno’s bi-weekly Lawn Mower races last weekend. The Lawn Mower races are held every other week in El Reno, and are part of the GRASCAR (not NASCAR) league. Don’t let the term “lawn mower” fool you — most of the machines we watched could do 35-40 miles per hour. We first learned about the races at Onion Burger Day, and decided it might be a fun thing to attend.

Races start at 6pm but their website says 5pm, resulting in an hour-long wait for us. Attending the races is free. Around the oval dirt track (which is surrounded by bales of hay) are multiple portable wooden bleachers, but we decided to back my pickup right up to the safety flags and watch from my tailgate. What? Pickup trucks at the lawn mower races? Please — we were the least red-necky people there by far. Think guys with mullets (shirts and shoes optional) and the women (leading a gaggle of children) who love them, covered with a light dusting of rebel flags.

The lawn mowers themselves come in several classes, from nearly-stock to highly-modified. They all resembled riding lawn mowers except for the fastest ones, which more closely resembled mini-sprint cars. All the mowers raced drove fast enough to continually slide around the track and throw dust and dirt into the air (fortunately we were upwind). There was even some mini-drama during one of the races when one young racer ran a fellow participant off the track into some orange cones, and later smashed into two other riders. The altercation appeared to continue after the race in the pits.

After ten or so different races of ten laps each, an intermission was announced. At that point, the MC announced that they would be having a foot race on the track for the kids, divided up by sex and age group (boys six and under, seven and over, girls six and under, and seven and over). Dad and I said “why not,” and sent Mason down to the track. Mason took off running with the first group of racers, which unfortunately turned out to be “girls six and under”. He returned to the starting line shortly after. He ran again with the boys six and under, and did really well. After the race, each kid got a handfull of candy for their efforts.

On the way home, Mason burst out in tears, saying he could have done better with his other shoes on. I told him it was okay and gave him many hugs. He wants to go back in two weeks to race again. We’ll probably go, and take a better camera this time around.

Mason enjoyed the foot race, dad enjoyed the absurdity of it all, and I enjoyed hanging out with both of them. Good times.

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