Mr. Charlie

A true story by Erick Sahler

I’ve never met Charlie Cathell, despite the huge role he’s played in my life.

Mr. Charlie’s folks created the dirt track in Delmar 60 years ago. I started going to the races with my grandfather and uncle on Saturday nights when I was a kid, back in the early 1980s. We sat on the top row of the bleachers between Turn 4 and the Start/Finish line and rooted for our favorite drivers, including Hal Browning, Richard Jarvis and Bob Toreky.

In 1983, two weeks after I turned 16, I drove myself for the first time to my bi-weekly art lesson with Keith Whitelock, who was putting the finishing touches on an illustration for a T-shirt for Mr. Charlie’s track, then called U.S. 13 Speedway. While I was there, I met the owner of a Salisbury silkscreen company that printed Mr. Charlie’s shirts and was offered a job.

I made $36 a week, enough to fill the tank of my parents' 1974 Ford Gran Torino and to pay my admission into the Saturday night dirt track races. At the time, it was all I needed.

A few months later, in the bedroom of my parent’s house, I drew my own T-shirt design for the Delmar track, which my boss shared with Mr. Charlie’s wife, Miss Joyce. The Cathells liked it and wanted to use it. In return I received a season pass to the races. I was on top of the world.

I kept going to the races until I got distracted with girls. Then college, a career, marriage and a family kept me away. Two decades passed, and while I was occupied with other things Mr. Charlie kept the races going and cars kept turning laps in Delmar.

In 2009, I suggested we take the family to the track and it was exactly the same as I remembered. We climbed to our spot at the top of the bleachers where I used to sit with my grandfather and my uncle. When the cars took to the track, it was like going back in time: the sites, the sounds, even the smells brought back a wave of memories.

Mr. Charlie’s kids now operate the track, and the drivers are the kids and grandkids of the drivers I watched as a teenager.

Dirt track racing is a family. Largely unseen by most, it is a Saturday night tradition all across America — one that thrives on the support of drivers, race teams, fans and track employees who continue to return year after year despite the challenges ranging from the economic fluctuations to the weather.

This week, Mr. Charlie and Miss Joyce were honored at ceremonies at the Northeast Dirt Modified Museum and Hall of Fame in New York for their decades-long support of dirt track racing.

Mr. Charlie said the award is just a sign that he’s getting old, but it’s way more than that. His family-owned operation has provided a safe and affordable opportunity for generations of Delmarva folks to spend their Saturday nights, and for that he deserves much gratitude and love.

I bet there are many others who he’s never met that feel exactly the same.

© Erick Sahler Serigraphs Co.

Mr. Charlie runs another lap in the grader, meticulously preparing the Delmar track for a night of racing.