PR: When I was going to Danbury I was a big fan of Kenny Webb. On a regional scale I was a big fan of Richie Evans. Did you have “that guy” who was your favorite driver or hero growing up?

DM:  Dave Dion. He was about the coolest thing that ever lived when I was a kid. And of course he arrived at Thunder Road about the time I started getting serious about it. He had that bright orange Ford Torino in a field of Chevrolets. I thought he was the Second Coming. Every Thursday night I would stand in line with the same 100 kids to get the same autograph from the same guy that I had gotten the week before and the week before and the week before. It didn’t matter to me… He is the most honest person I have ever known. And I really learned to love this about him when I was a sportswriter, that if you wanted the straight from the heart, honest opinion on any topic Dion was one of the first guys you went to. He would say something that wasn’t, necessarily in his best interest if he thought it was the truth. If you went to him and said ‘What do you think about the car count for today’s race?’ He’d say ‘I’m embarrassed by it, because this series isn’t working hard enough for the promoter. We got a bunch of guys on this series that just want to go out there and race and not wreck their cars and cash their check and go home. They never look up in the grandstand, they never count heads, they never worry about how the promoter is doing.’ He got himself in hot water with NASCAR because he didn’t like the way they ran short track racing. He is the ultimate straight shooter. They (family owned team) did everything themselves. People were buying cars from down south. Dave Dion’s cars started as a pile of tubing on the shop floor. It’s funny because as we have all gotten older he and I have become great friends and I actually co-authored his autobiography with him a couple of years ago.

PR: Yes, through Coastal 181 (publishing) and Lew Boyd. Same question with a different twist to it. Nationally I was a Richard Petty fan. Did you have the National guy you were a big fan of?

DM: I’m like you. You had to be a Petty fan back then. Richard was just the coolest guy alive. Still is. With the hat and the sunglasses and he won all the time. Petty is just a great guy. I’ve interviewed him probably a dozen times… and every time I talk to him I get nervous, still to this day. It’s like ‘We’re going to go talk to Gordon, we’re going to talk to Stewart, we’re going to talk to Johnson… like oh boy, we’re going to talk to the King today.’ (It is) a little different.

PR: He was the last autograph I ever got. I figured everyone else was below him so why bother?

DM: You stopped at the top.

PR: I was like you. I collected autographs of all the modified guys, of whoever I saw, whoever I liked, and when I got Petty’s I just figured ‘Well, that’s it.’ You spoke earlier of pit crewing on a guy’s car and then took over the announcing role. Was there an appeal of speaking on the microphone that wasn’t there turning wrenches?

DM: Oh yeah, absolutely. It’s funny looking back on it now. I remember as a kid sitting down in the fourth row of the turn four grandstands at Thunder Road thinking to myself that the announcer had the greatest job in the world. He knew all the drivers, he got to talk to all the drivers, and he got to hang out in the pits. I remember thinking the guy with the microphone had the coolest job of the entire racetrack. Never even having an inkling that one day I would be that guy. And I announced for Thunder Road for thirty years. Last summer was the first summer that I hadn’t been there full time. I did a couple of shows for them this year because it was their fiftieth anniversary show so they dragged me back out of quasi-retirement for a couple of appearances. But I announced on the mike there for thirty years.

PR: I’ve never been to Thunder Road but I am well aware of it. It is kind of short track lore in the United States.

DM: As Stafford is view across the country as one of the premiere short tracks across the country, Thunder Road is right there. It’s amazing. Anywhere you go in this country people have heard of it. ‘Oh, that’s the place that has the cow race.’

PR: The Milk Bowl. Kind of iconic symbols there, that kissing the cow. (The winner of the annual Milk Bowl at Thunder Road kisses a live cow in victory lane every year.) So how did started with MRN?

DM: I was working all over the northeast doing P.A. work. We had a little radio network up in the northeast, had six or seven radio stations. We traveled around doing what was then the NASCAR North Tour, which is now ACT (American Canadian Tour).  And Ken was again instrumental. He was one of the founders of Motor Racing Network and he heard they were looking for some new people. And he encouraged me to put together a demo tape and send it down to John McMullin whom at that point was the president of MRN. I sent him down an audition tape, and about three weeks before Daytona he called me up and said ‘We’d like to have you come on down and audition for us.’ I went down there, they strapped some equipment on me, and I went out to turn two and called a few laps of practice. Three days later I was doing the Daytona 500 as Darrell Waltrip won the race.

PR: When you first started out like that were you doing something to make a living or was that your full time gig?

DM: MRN only became a full time gig about ten years ago maybe, at the most. I was a sportswriter for the local newspaper there in Vermont. It got to the point I had to decide whether I was going to continue to be a sportswriter or do what I was doing. It got to the point where I was traveling so much I couldn’t do both. For a while I owned a sportsbar/nightclub. And it just got to the point where it you are going to be gone Friday, Saturday and Sunday, you are in the wrong business. So at that point I kind of made this my full time deal. What really turned the tide was when the Sirius deal came along six years ago. For the vast majority of people at MRN this is our golf game. Most everyone that works for MRN has a full time job (elsewhere). And they burn all their vacation on airplanes on Friday coming to racetracks. They work all weekend and then go back home to their full time job. I’m one of the few… and the Sirius Speedway deal allowed me to make this my full time job.

 MORE NASCAR NEWS