Escapees September-October 2023

I stumbled into this opportunity, and we almost gave up on it at the last minute. We had been work camping at an Amazon ful fi llment center in Kentucky that April, and Indianapolis seemed like it was too far away. Too much gas money to squander all at once. But none of our other plans were mate rializing, and my husband and I fi nally looked at each other and said what we always said when we didn’t know what else to do: “Stick with the plan.” So we did. We hooked the Jeep up to the RV and headed north. The Indianapolis Motor Speedway is situated outside Indianapolis, in the small town of Speedway, Indiana. It was a quiet, walkable town, and we immediately knew it would be a pleasant place to spend the month with our kids. We had no idea that it would be fun, too. We were given a campsite on the grounds, but it wasn’t in a campground. Work campers were assigned to a grass fi eld just outside the racetrack. Water was brought in by hose. Temporary electric cables were run to each site, and a pumpout service emptied our tanks weekly. The fi eld got a little mushy when it rained, but the tradeoff was more than fair, as only one of us was required to work. And the work was part-time and for pay, not just in trade for the site. A Yellowshirt The next day, I became an Indy Yellowshirt and found out that I was taking part in a proud and longstanding tradition. The IMS safety patrol workforce are nicknamed for the yellow button-up shirts they wear, making them easy to spot in a crowd. Considering that 300,000 people converge on the town of Speedway for the Indy 500 event, being easy to spot is essential. Many of the Yellowshirts are lifelong racing fans, and they are welcome to keep working at the raceway as long as they can still stand. Or in one case I saw, as long as they could still sit. A 90-year-old Yellowshirt I met was assigned to sit on a bench in the museum for the month, chatting with guests as he pleased. He spent the days among his favor ite cars, and when the mechanics pulled the “whooshers” out of the museum garage, he found the energy to hobble outside in time

to see these famed jet turbine cars get their annual rev-up. His job seemed to have all theperks. Finding a Position I, on the other hand, had to move around a few times until I found a position that suited me. My fi rst assignments were mind-numbingly boring — I was initially told to stand alone next to an elevator for eight hours at a time — but they got better once I learned I could make a few requests. I moved from standing next to an elevator to standing in the museum to standing in front of the VIP Suites, checking credentials and keeping unauthorized fans from sneaking in. Sometimes I got to interact with the VIP’s, like the mornings I greeted Mario Andretti’s brother, Aldo, when he came over for breakfast. And then on race day, I made a blunder that’s still fun to tell about: I kept Bobby Gordon out of the ABC Supply Suite because he didn’t have a ticket. (That day I found out that Bobby Gordon gets to go where he wants, ticket or not.) A friend of ours got an even better job. He was only a fi rst-year Yellowshirt, but had amazingly been assigned to the pits. He got to see the drivers and pit crew up close during every event that month: practices, quali fi ers, Legends Day, Carb Day, Grand Prix, Fast Friday, and the Big Day Itself. Learning at the Raceway While I was having fun at my job, I was a little concerned about just leaving our kids to their books for a month. I’m normally a very hands-on homeschool teacher, and I wanted our kids to learn as much as possi ble. What I found out was that the raceway, the town of Speedway, and the city of Indianapolis would fi ll in for me in a greater way than I could have imagined. Again, the Yellowshirts get a lot of the credit. The men who were in charge of our camping lot took our kids on with pleasure. Hearing that our son, who was 12 years old at the time, wanted to earn money, one of the men asked him to push-mow the entire lot each week, which he was thrilled to do. The Yellowshirts also wanted the kids to love the sport of racing; they wanted to create lifetime Indy fans. One day, they picked the kids up in a company truck and

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ESCAPEES Magazine September/October 2023