Word: laughlin
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...companies and parts manufacturers, California championship races that three years ago appealed to barely 3,000 people now attract crowds of 45,000, who stand along the dusty trails to watch. Last week TIME Correspondent David DeVoss rode two laps as co-driver in a newly inaugurated race, the Laughlin, Nev., 300. His report...
...helmet against the seat confirms Newton's third law of motion. The air is piercingly fresh, and the desert mountains glow golden in the morning sun. But soon the drive will become a spastic, three-hour Cinerama focused on 100 miles of lifeless mesquite moonscape-beginning in Laughlin and running across sand washes, over mountains, around canyons and back. "Howdy doody!" Evans yells, skipping the yellow truck over a 5-ft. ravine. "I can't stay away. Racing off-road is like narcotics to a dope addict...
...just as expensive. The mature males who drive open-cockpit racers, production vehicles and jerry-rigged "Baja bugs" at insane speeds over camel-backed "whoopdedoos" spend a minimum of $10,000 on their rigs. The cash prizes for most races are about $2,000. In Laughlin, a rest-stop community of 100 residents and three casinos tucked away in Nevada's desolate southern tip, the car with the fastest time...
...near the end of the second 50-mile lap, the Laughlin 300 has become a numbing routine. The dull ache at the base of my neck spreads downward into the cavities separating each vertebra. As Evans slows for a 20-second refueling stop, I get out. The race will last five more hours. Only 31 of the 111 cars that started will finish, not including Evans' Chevy-a transmission seal blew. I'm certainly not a winner. Nevertheless I walk from Walker's smoking truck with a trophy: an empty barf...
...wife Dolores ("Body") Taylor (who starred with him in Billy Jack) must sometimes think she is living in a nightmare. Laughlin reveres her and their three children. Yet Body is often in tears after a session with Tom. "There's a bursting rage in Tom over the privations of his childhood," explains one of his friends. Laughlin grew up in Milwaukee; his parents were often on welfare. As a football player, he kicked his way through various Midwest colleges. It was not until he saw a production of A Streetcar Named Desire that he decided to become an actor...