rdawson@jg-tc.com
CHARLESTON – Thirty years haven’t erased Mike Graves’ memories of his first trip to the announcing booth, from the smell of the fuel to the rev of stock car engines. Ask him and he might show up with an old demo.
Had he not taken that tape recorder to the track as a teenager — a raw, lap-for-lap, play-by-play rolling off his tongue — he might not be sitting outside the Charleston Speedway grandstands today, musing about where he’s going as he approaches his 50th birthday later this month. Or, more to the point, pondering the direction in which the Speedway he loves is heading.
Without his voice pealing above the roar every Saturday, all that might be left is an awkward silence, as some discovered when he missed a race while attending a wedding a few years ago. It was his only absence since picking up the microphone in 1977.
“Something just didn’t feel right,” said V.A. Benson, the track photographer. “You take it for granted, but when (he’s) not here, you really miss him.”
Graves, a native of Newman who now lives in Paris, would be lost if he didn’t make the long climb up the ladder to the small box overlooking the track, one he and track spotters occupy for several hours a night during the racing season. He figuratively sees it as a view onto a world that opened up in a cautious encounter with club members in the former Coles County Stock Car Association.
Owner Dave McDonald, trying to resolve a dispute over the finish of a race, discovered that Graves had taped it. He was asked to bring the copy to the next meeting. When previous announcer John Calhoun wasn’t present for an event later in the year, he was asked to take over. Just a year out of high school, he didn’t exactly jump at the opportunity.
“I wasn’t really prepared to go up there but they said, ‘Hey, we’ve got to have somebody to do it. Why don’t you go on up there? Give it a try and if you don’t want to do it then we’ll find somebody else,’” Graves said. “Well, that’s all it took. Once I got up there I was in heaven.”
It was sheer luck that the track got an announcer and not a driver. His father Bill, a mechanic who died of a heart attack in 2001, once sent Graves and older brother Jack to mow the grounds of a cemetery near their home. Instead, they rode their bicycles eight miles to Murdock, where they were converting a 1957 DeSoto that had been given to them into a stock car.
The cemetery would wait another day – leaving a father who later learned of their disobedience notably perturbed. But he also realized their curiosity wasn’t bound to go away.
“We had no trailer, so we drove it,” Graves said. “Some people used to drive their stock cars through the country to the Speedway. So we loaded up. We had a five-gallon can of gas. We put some water in there and about halfway here it got hot on us. We had to stop and put water in it but we finally got it here. I think (Jack) drove like five laps in the heat and it got hot. He had to pull in.
“We made $5 that night. But we thought we was doing good.”
Neither knew that stock radiators were useless in a 50-lap event, the length of most races during the ‘70s. Bill eventually purchased a “midnight black” ’67 Chevelle with air shocks from a cousin who had accidentally flipped the car over an iron bridge. Jack drove the car to a midseason championship.
But Graves’ voice would be his own calling. Intrigued by Calhoun’s antics behind the mike – the latter intoned with a huge “ribbet” when Don Bennett, who had a habit of sending his car into the frog pond alongside the track, was part of the field – Graves patterned his own style after his predecessor. He follows a tireless ritual to prepare every week, adding points, posting them on Web sites, and making his rounds through the pits to talk with drivers before heats begin.
He was there when two of his favorite drivers from the past, the late Sonny Trosper and Don Pearcy, dominated at Charleston, and when Denny Schwartz owned a two-decade stretch through the ‘80s and ‘90s, a man he praises for supporting younger drivers who are following in his footsteps.
He even tried to do double-duty, working at the Vermillion County Speedway for nine years. The long schedule eventually wore thin. Still, owners of the Danville track have expressed interest in bringing him back.
“If we got rained out on a Saturday we raced Sunday,” Graves said. “At that time Danville was racing on Sundays. So I got caught once where we raced down here early enough that I could get done here and race up to Danville. And I got there just as they got done qualifying.”
Retirement isn’t on the immediate horizon, he insists, although his wife’s health of late could make him reconsider. He has too much vested in the track to leave it behind quietly. Jack has welded chassis for Bob Pierce and C.J. Rayburn Race Cars, and they’ve helped sponsor the likes of Rob Fuqua, Mike’s boss.
The back of the grandstand at Charleston Speedway used to be filled with sponsorship signs. Programs with driver profiles were given away in years past. Late Models packed the place. Promoters have come and gone. Graves worries that time is running out on the facility.
“The potentials’ here,” Graves said. “Kenny Schrader looked at this track but the water was the issue. It had a well. No city water.
“I’ve been around racing. I’ve seen a lot of tracks shut down because they just didn’t have the backing. I would just like to see everybody get more involved out here.”
Jack is in the process of building another car, perhaps for one more attempt to get behind a racing wheel. Whatever happens, he’ll have a rabid supporter.
“When I get in the truck and fire up and run down the road, you know, I know where I’m going,” Graves said.
Contact Rick Dawson at rdawson@jg-tc.com or 238-6855.
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