GORDONVILLE MUD RACES GOOD, CLEAN FUN

GORDONVILLE -- Watch the lights. Keep your truck tuned. Put it on the floor from start to finish. And stay out of other people's ruts.

That was Gordonville Town Marshal Jim Swift's philosophy just seconds before he plunged his truck into a 200-foot-long mudbath in Gordonville Park Saturday afternoon.

The 26-year-old Swift was one of the competitors at the annual Gordonville Fire Department Picnic mud races, a young male fantasy of roaring engines and flying mud. A crowd estimated at between 1,000 and 3,000 watched from the sidelines in sticky heat as trucks, dune buggies and ATVs drove down the swampy track.

At the top of the track, a homemade "Christmas tree" modeled on those used to start professional drag races set the racers in motion. Rooster tails of mud and water flew off the big tires, unlucky competitors sometimes swamped their trucks and had to be towed out, young men in mud-splattered T-shirts walked the grounds like blood-stained warriors, and beer flowed.

Most of the trucks were street-legal with the exception of five in the modified competition. Drivers had to be at least 16 years old unless they had permission from their parents.

One three-wheeled vehicle turned over but the driver was unhurt. There is the occasional radiator burn, but Fire Chief Roger English says the mud races aren't dangerous.

"We have a good time."

You might not be a redneck if you were at the mud races Saturday. Then again, you might be flying the flag.

Rednecks proclaimed themselves proud on windshield stickers and tattoos. One competitor flew the Confederate standard from the back of his truck on his trip through the swamp.

A truck with the words Games Rednecks Play painted on the side was a popular entrant. The shiny black 1936 Chevrolet with the 458 cubic inch big-block engine was the kind of truck you'd expect to see at a classic car show and looked out of place next to some of the jacked up bombs lining up for a chance to win a trophy.

The beauty belongs to Danny Cope, a body man from Kelso.

"Everybody says, You're not going to run that through the mud are you?," he says.

But he does because it's so much fun. "It's just dirt and mud," Cope says. "It'll wash off."

After the mud races, many people went home to clean up so they could return to the dance at 7 p.m. Some had more cleaning up to do than others.

That was the plan for Nikki Lawrence of Jackson and Becky Hamby of Crump, friends who were just watching, not racing. Lawrence used to compete when they had a powder puff category in the competition.

The mud races replaced tractor pulls nine years ago at the picnic.

Swift, who has driven his GMC truck in similar competitions in Chester, Ill., and Perryville, acknowledges that his job ordinarily is to stop people from doing what he was doing Saturday. "But not if they're doing it legally," he said.