An 11 Year-Old's Tribute to Jeff Gordon

A Poem About Jeff Gordon

By Josh Watkins

Racing down the lane,

faster and harder than the speed of pain.

Making opponents eat dust,

his car never rusts.

He zooms past the Intimidator and the King,

He has won his fourth championship ring.

He's on top. So all you beginners stop.

He's the champ and everyone else is a chump,

You'll always feel the pain,

because he'll beat you to Victory Lane.

I wrote this at the peak of my NASCAR addiction. When I was a kid (and Saturday morning cartoons were worth getting up for) there was a cartoon called NASCAR Racers. The drivers in this series battled many bad guys (human and non human), raced on tracks with loops, jumps, and traps, could boost over and around other cars, were at certain times allowed to wreck each other, and if they crashed, they could bail out of their car in a smaller version known as a rescue racer. I was enthralled in this show. Then one Saturday after watching the cartoon, the biggest race of the year in the then called Busch Series (the minor league of NASCAR) was on and I watched some of it and caught a little interest. Then on Sunday, the biggest and first race of the year, the Daytona 500, was on and I sat through the whole thing. Forty-three cars racing at 200 miles per hour, bumping and banging was crazy. I also witnessed a huge crash where a car went airborne and was hooked. Unfortunately, that was also the same race where Dale Earnhardt (the Intimidator) was killed on the last lap. I watched the rest of the season hooked on NASCAR and Jeff Gordon which is what inspired me to write this piece as an 11 year old.