From speedway to memory lane

Chills and spills

What’s your earliest childhood memory?

Mine is a car crash, but not the kind you’re imagining.

I was not yet four years old. My parents took me to the Streator, Ill., Speedway, where they had night-time stock car racing on a dirt track, probably a quarter mile round

In my mind, it’s a wild, dangerous place. There’s a gully at one end where cars can disappear into a drop-off so steep it may as well be the end of the earth. We sit high in the bleachers, better to see all the action.

On this particular night, chaos breaks loose. As cars speed around the oval, one careens through a flimsy fence right in front of us and plunges into the bleachers below us. People scatter, screaming and scrambling over each other.

The race screeches to a halt. An ambulance, already on standby, rushes to the scene, its red lights flashing.

That’s it for us. We head home.

The next day’s newspaper reported no serious injuries in a night of “rare entertainment” and “chills and spills.” Maybe the hometown press was playing down a serious incident. It sure was a spectacle forever etched into this little boy’s emerging memory.

The story rushes back because we recently passed the 70th anniversary of the worst motorsport accident ever.

It happened five years later, early in the 24-hour endurance race at Le Mans, France. A disintegrating car flew into the crowd, killing more than 80 people.

Even after such horror, the race continued for another 21 hours, officials saying if they had stopped the race, departing spectators would have clogged roadways needed for ambulances and medical teams.

The disaster caused at least five countries to ban motor car racing for a time. Switzerland restored it only three years ago.

So what’s your earliest memory? Is it as terrifying as mine, or more ordinary? Or somewhere in between?