Here, it resounded. When Earnhardt's skull was fractured and he suffered fatal head trauma in an unspectacular crash on the final lap of the Daytona 500, this region shuddered. You enter Welcome, about an hour northeast of Charlotte, and you see the elementary school and the veterans' bar flying their flags at half-staff. Like the president, or the governor, or somebody. It is in the blood.
Newborns here take in exhaust with their first breath.
There is a dirt track on every country road. Some kids get their first Go Kart before they learn to ride a bike. Earnhardt, a native of small-time Kannapolis, a burg of about 37,000, ranked somewhere between prophet and demigod. So the worshipers came. Mostly they came from nearby tiny towns like Troy, N.C., population 3,404.