Response to NASCAR and the South

Growing up in a family that loves racing and NASCAR, I never really considered it a lifestyle. Although, looking back, it actually may have been. My dad went to many races; I played with only NASCAR hot wheels; I had more Dale Earnhardt t-shirts than anything else; my family came together on Sundays to watch races; I could go on all day. But, my favorite thing of all was going to dirt track races on Saturday nights. A lot of people don't realize how dirt track racing is almost the backbone of NASCAR. It's where the best drivers grow up and learn. "Dirt track racing is the single most common form of auto racing in the United States." [1] It is also very popular across the world. I think that I consider it a Southern sport because that’s the only place I’ve really seen it. The same with NASCAR. Because I grew up going to races in the South and seeing only Southern people at those races, I only considered it a Southern sport. Over the past decade, my family’s interest in NASCAR has significantly decreased. Was it because of the influx of non-southerners to the sport? Or the nationalization of it? I personally feel that because of the spread of NASCAR across the nation, it became just another sport. It no longer had that Southern identity. The true excitement and understanding of the sport were lost in translation. I found this journal that talks about Southern geography and has a great paragraph that perfectly describes what the expansion of NASCAR really means to Southerners.