Daily News Sports Editor
SLINGER — Stories of Dick Trickle were heard in the pit area Sunday at Slinger Superspeedway. In a way, it was a battle for who had the best one.
Was it Conrad Morgan? Across from Morgan's pit box was the crew for Curt Tillman working on the car, sitting on jacks and a crew member sprawled underneath it.
"If he saw that going on right there," Morgan said, pointing at Tillman's crew. "He'd walk over and tell that kid he should not be under that race car without a jack stand. I gotta do it for him."
Was it Jerry Eckhardt?
"One time at Madison he was a lap down," Eckhardt said. "He let me go by, but he ran the hell out of me. I'll never forget that. I asked him about it after the race, he said, 'Well, I was just trying to keep you going faster.'"
Was it John DeAngelis, who won the Slinger Nationals limited late model division two years ago, then reminisced about it on the radio days later?
"He was making fun of me because I couldn't legally drink beer," DeAngelis said, who was 17 at the time. "At first he put it in front of me and said, 'Here you go.' He took it back a couple minutes later and said, 'Wait. You're not old enough.'"
In any case, that's what Dick Trickle meant to every driver at Slinger and beyond, an old-fashioned guy with a big heart, sense of humor and passion for racing. Kathy Eckhardt, Jerry's wife, said Trickle was the Richard Petty of short-track racing.
On the night another Slinger Superspeedway legend was honored — Alan Kulwicki — almost every driver thought about Trickle, who died Thursday of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound in a North Carolina cemetery. He was 71.
"I was stunned just like everybody else," said Morgan. "I've known Dick for 30 years and I never thought he'd so something like that. The pain must've been a lot more severe than he'd let on."
Morgan and Brad Mueller were two drivers to change their car numbers to 99 to honor Trickle.
"It wasn't even a decision. It was whether I could get it done on time," Morgan said about honoring Trickle.
Morgan, whose other car is driven by his son Donovan Morgan, has the No. 99 mostly because of Trickle and plans to keep it on his car through at least Nationals.
"The guy was an absolute icon," Mueller said.
Mueller and his family went way back with Trickle as Mueller's dad used to race against Trickle. Mueller watched Trickle build his legendary profile almost from Day 1. At Chicagoland Speedway in Joliet, Ill., a group of tailgaters often have a sign at their spot that labels them the Dick Trickle Fan Club.
Mueller didn't know Trickle as well as Morgan or Eckhardt, but he knew Trickle loved his beer and Mueller had Pabst Blue Ribbon, Trickle's favorite, in his cooler Sunday night.
Trickle was also honored with a moment of silence before the invocation at Slinger. During the driver's meeting before Sunday's races, a prayer was said for Trickle and his family, and Southeastern Wisconsin Short Track Hall of Fame board member Dick Melius reflected about his friend.
"Dick Trickle meant a lot to us," Melius said. "It was both a pleasure and a privilege that I knew the man.”
Trickle's death ends the glory years of short-track racing in the upper Midwest. Trickle, with the late Larry Detjens and Joe Shear, dominated the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s. Between them, there are an estimated 2,000 feature victories. If you wanted to win a short-track race in the upper Midwest, you had to beat one of those three.
"He was clean, smooth and didn't fight with anybody,” Eckhardt said.
Morgan, a six-time track champion at Slinger and Slinger Nationals champion, said he hadn't spoken with Trickle in about a year.
When Slinger Nationals come around July 2, many drivers wonder about the mood that night, an evening created for Trickle more than 30 years ago. It was an event he cherished, along with dear friend and longtime track owner Wayne Erickson.
Trickle won the event four times in his career, along with Shear. It's an event that brings in the elite stock-car drivers in the country — Dale Earnhardt, Bobby Allison, Rusty Wallace, Mark Martin, Darrell Waltrip, Matt Kenseth and Kyle Busch. It's all because of Trickle.
"There are going to be a lot of Dick Trickle fans here for that Slinger Nationals," Mueller said. "You're going to see people at the race track that you haven't seen in 10 years."
Trickle's oldest granddaughter, Nicole Bowman, died in 2001 when she was 16 years old because of injuries suffered in a car crash. Trickle was was teaching Nicole how to drive. Trickle’s friends said he believed he was responsible for her death and it was hard for him to move on.
Add that to growing intense physical pain, friends started to put the elements together as to why a guy who had a lust for life would commit suicide.
"He could stay out all night; come to the race track late; he'd have fast time and win the feature and he'd act like he got as much sleep as everybody else," Morgan said.
For most of Eckhardt's racing career, he has shown up well after everybody else had done so. It was a practice Trickle was known for.
For Eckhardt, it is the way his schedule works out. After all, he races three times per week. On Sunday, he raced in the early afternoon at Columbus Speedway. He was running second six laps into the feature until rain wiped out the rest of the day. So, Eckhardt quickly packed up his stuff and made the one-hour drive to Slinger to compete in the night race.
Eckhardt said he wouldn't be surprised if the rain at Columbus wasn't a mean joke played on him by Trickle. It probably was.
With Trickle arriving late, it wasn't arrogance, far from it. Once at the track, he'd hop out of his truck, took a couple drags of the cigarette hanging out of his mouth, drink a cup of coffee, get in the car and set fast time.
To fellow competitors, it was frustrating. But they knew he wasn't doing it to show off or rub it in with how good he was. They already knew it.
"I don't think it irritated (other drivers). Frustrate them? Yes," Morgan said. "But the guy was so good."
Morgan's best memory of Trickle was when Trickle twice drove Morgan's car during the Slinger Nationals.
"He bounced it off the front straight wall," Morgan recalled. "After the race, he finished fourth or fifth and he came over and said, 'You know. The only thing wrong with that car was the nut behind the wheel.'"
There are a lot of stories about that nut and they won't be forgotten.
"A lot of young drivers like myself looked up to him," DeAngelis said.
Mueller said, "We all dreamed of being Dick Trickle."
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