The Dale Jr. Download - Bonus: Next Level w/ Ken Squier - Chapter 1: The Law of Exaggeration

Episode Date: December 9, 2022

At the heart of every great NASCAR story is the storyteller himself, and there are few as iconic as the legendary voice of Ken Squier. For two days the Dirty Mo Media crew set out to Squier’s home in Waterbury, Vermont to hear stories from the NASCAR Hall-of-Famer. In this first installment of Andrew Kurland’s Next Level conversation with Ken Squier, the two discuss Ken’s upbringing as a young kid in Vermont. Ken shares stories of lessons learned from the great Chirs Economaki, his early days broadcasting out of WDEV, his first memories of racing, and the role exaggeration played in his play-by-play career. After time away from the NASCAR spotlight, Squier is back to share his story in this multi-chapter series of Next Level.  Check out Dirty Mo Media on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@DirtyMoMedia  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

What's up, download fans? Producer Alex Tim's here. Hope you're all having a wonderful holiday season and offseason for that matter. Here at Dirty Mo, we don't know an off season because today we have a bonus podcast drop here on the Dale Jr. Download feed. A few months back, Andrew Curland and our next level crew went up to Waterbury, Vermont to talk to the one, the only, Ken Squire. And today, we're going to bring you chapter one of that conversation right here on the Dale Jr. Downer's. download feed. Once you listen and like what you heard and you can't wait to hear the rest of the conversation, make sure you subscribe to the next level podcast where all eight chapters will be

released throughout the winter. So go over to next level, subscribe, turn on the notification bell so you never miss another episode of Andrew Curlin's next level conversation with Ken Squire. Chapter 1 starts now. Enjoy. This is a production of Dirtymo Media. It is a game of improvisation. played its very best right now all the leading car owners the patrons of the art are here today it is going to be a land rush to decide the Daytona 500 down to the inside every so often to scoop some fresh air into the automobile because the gauges begin to roll around and get red and rosy out there some of the greatest

races I ever saw on a half-mile dirt track you can't beat it the importance of exaggeration we were selling a product And there was these cars and these drivers. Somebody went down in a turn one and dumped a sprint car, and it went off into the midway. And it was a crisis. People that didn't give a fig about them would go to the race and think they saw something special. There are many great voices that have broadcasted over the NASCAR airwaves, but maybe none as iconic. as the legendary Ken Squire.

My name is Andrew Curland. You're listening to Next Level, and that's right, we went Next Level with the great Ken Squire. Spent a few days at his home in Waterbury, Vermont, and honestly, for me, an honor of a lifetime, to be able to sit down and really pick the brain of one of the greatest, in my opinion, to ever do it in terms of broadcasting and NASCAR.

and this first installment, we're going to be doing chapters of this interview to really let the conversation breathe. In addition to my conversation with Ken, we're going to have some bonus clips, bonus interviews with other people who have been in his life and who Ken has impacted personally. I had a great conversation with Dave Moody, David Hobbs, and some of the anecdotes that they bring up, some of the stories add to the flavor and the personality of Ken Squire to make this the full Ken Squire experience. You're going to learn everything about him by the time we are done with this series. This episode in particular is all about roots. Ken's upbringing, growing up in a household in Waterbury, Vermont. He actually lives on the same location. It's a hill in Waterbury, Vermont, that he grew up in. Literally the same place where his house was when he grew up and that is where the interview took place.

So he's been a Vermont, he's been a Vermont man all his life. We'll learn about how he fell in love with racing. Ken Squire's a guy who's so poetic when he talks about racing. How did his passion for motorsports start? We talk about exaggeration and a lot of it and that's kind of the theme of this first episode and you'll get what I mean in a minute. And we have Chris Okanamacki to thank for that. And when we start out, you're going to hear me asking.

It's the first question I ask about his radio station WDEV, and there's a great story behind it. We were setting up, our crew was setting up in the morning, and Ken was eating breakfast at the living room table. He had an antenna radio out and was listening to WDEV, and it was a show where basically people from the area called in and were trying to sell things. things as random as this, I remember this one guy, he was trying to sell an aluminum ladder, and it was that type of talk show. So yeah, Ken was listening to it in the morning, and I think that's a great way to segue into our conversation with Ken Squire. Was that WDEV playing earlier this morning? Yeah. Do you listen to it every morning? Yes, indeed. What's it like here in that station is still on the air?

A miracle. I mean, it was born right at the beginning of the Depression, 1931. And my dad was in it from the beginning. He was a pretty good poet. And he wrote poetry, sort of country poetry. And he was a featured attraction. Great, it's a great station. And still is.

It's a news station. Did you think it would, you said it was a miracle? Did you think it would? Well, in radio land these days, that's a miracle, I think. Yeah. But it's very fixed on what it wants to get done and doesn't step outside of that. So it's always been a news station. And we're only eight miles from the capital, Montpelier.

It's got quite a history. I heard a story, and you can tell me if this is true or not, but at a young age, you accidentally took the radio station off the air? Several times. Several times. What was your dad's reaction, if you remember, to you taking it off the air? Probably I got a ass weeping. Frequently.

But I had to know what all that stuff was. What was it like growing up, being around it all the time? It was World War II. And it's a little town. in Vermont. So the Western Union office was in the radio station, and the telephone office was on the second floor. So there was the news mecca of Waterbury, Vermont.

And when the telegrams came about people that were lost or dead, my father had to deliver them. And that was quite a time. It really brought the war home seriously. And it did what it was supposed to do. It was relevant to the community and the surrounding communities. It's never lost that feeling to it. Growing up here as a youngster in Vermont,

you know, you're working in and around the radio station, going to school. Were you a good student? No. No? There were too many things to do. So I was not the best student, but it all worked out. Where did you apply your time the most?

Well, it was various activities and various things. We used to cover the country fairs. Boy, I lived for the autumn. And there would be six or seven fairs, and they'd go there and set up for three or four days. That was important stuff to people that live in Vermont. along with the news that Vermont continued to create out of Montpelier and out of Washington. We always sent pretty good people down to Washington, not all the time, but most of the time. And that was a part of it.

And it has never lost that part of the station, but it's a worry because anybody with a popular format of music is a competitor. usually a strong one. And so far we're there, here now. I think this is my first time in Vermont. What's it like growing up here and still being here today? What keeps you here? Well, I'm still here. And I love it.

I mean, this to me is home. And this piece of property we're on. My dad bought, he didn't have a penny in the... anything. And but he put enough together and married my mother and this house that I built here is on about seven acres that he bought just outside of Waterbury, Vermont. And he looked all over during World War II because you couldn't have any money for gas and stuff. That didn't exist. And they walked all these mountains around here looking for the place to build. And the war ended. And my mother said, Lloyd, do you remember where we used to go parking? And he said, you mean up on the hill?

She said, yeah, right there around the corner. She said, we ought to go up and look there. And that's this place. That's right here. Yeah. Wow. What was the household dynamic like growing up? Well, it was a tough time in the war, and my father was very fortunate. and pulled it off and did it well. As I say, the old squire was a known Vermont poet, and we leaned on that pretty hard. And on the whole idea of you had to serve the public. And if you didn't, nothing doing.

It's a hard thing to keep track of these days. Hard thing to keep track of. Yeah. Your dad was a poet. And, you know, with poetry, it takes a good understanding of words and you need a high vocabulary. Is that where you think you got your first idea of this is how I'm supposed to write in a certain way? And kind of where you developed your own vocabulary? I'm not really sure of that.

I had some good grandparents. I had a grandmother on the matriarchal side. that was big on reading and kept talking of everything. Never got away from that, nor her, nor my father's mother. But she was a town girl. That was a different life too. But we had the two of them. And if you had to have a background, I was blessed.

And I had the liberty of trying some other things that many couldn't do. And one of them was, in going to those country fears that we did every fall, the big fears, Rutland and Champlain Valley, those fears would have one day of racing on the weekend. When I discovered that was history. I couldn't get over.

It was so great. I haven't got over it yet. some of the greatest races I ever saw are on a half-mile dirt track. You can't beat it. What was your first? Do you remember your first memory of seeing those cars go around the track? Yeah, but it's sort of a cloudy cluster of events. The fairs would buy a day of racing from a promoter,

and they'd bring two stars of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. to your track out there to have to establish new records in open cockpit bobtailed streamliners who and i can still see them and they they were great then and they're great now it was a fun time and they were serious racers and they were part of a circuit and they were making their money on running those cars. And those tracks, which were horse race tracks, were exceedingly dangerous. The announcers of which one of the greatest,

and probably where I got one of my biggest pushed into the track business, was Chris Economacky. And he worked for a guy that promoted the Trenton Motor Speedway, the Indianapolis of the East, if you will. and it was great stuff. And I never, never got over it. Still haven't. What did you learn from Chris Economacky?

The importance of exaggeration. We were selling a product. And that was these cars and these drivers. Chris, in my mind, will always be the best. And so much of what I have done over my life is based on how he presented the races. and he presented them so that people that didn't give a fig about them would go to the race and think they saw something special. And they did.

Those guys drove their hearts out. It was a good time to be growing up even though it was in the war. How do you make someone who goes through the track know that they're witnessing something unique that night? Every single night, as you mentioned. Well, exaggeration. Yeah. Of course. But isn't that so much of what our life is and what we think we see when I watch television and motion pictures and so forth?

But there they were right there, on the track, right in front of you, going like hell. And Economacki would take incredible sites. I'll give you a story. This actually happened at the Essex Junction Fairgrounds, and that was a very beautiful half-mile track. And a lot of records for the trotters and pacer's were set on that track. But one day a year, in came the open cockpit cars, and it was magic. One day, this car went sailing down to the turn three, and it spun around,

and stopped and that was all the Connemack he needed. Oh, turn three faithfully, staying with that car as he lost control. Ladies and gentlemen, we try to be back this afternoon to continue racing. Whoa, that was a story. I mean, we actually saw it, and it was real. It wasn't a movie. It wasn't a book. It was there.

And those guys were great. and this one day the Essex Junction Fair down near Burlington had this one day and then the whole fair people would move down to Rutland, Vermont, the southern part of the state,

set up and do the same thing for the following week. This one day, everybody had left Essex Junction except that the sprint cars were around to run a race on Sunday

on the Fairgrounds track. And And this man, gentleman, drove down in the corner and spun around and went through the fence. And Economacki was in heaven. Ladies and gentlemen, somewhere from somewhere in Pennsylvania, so-and-so, miraculously is climbing out that automobile after you just saw him out of control. But he is all right. And he may be back this afternoon to continue the program. Whoa.

and you're a loo and i thought he was superb and this one day this guy that spun around when chris gone on a roll and was really getting excitement out of the audience he would develop that story about this guy and so forth and carried on about him and he asked to have the fire truck and the ambulance immediately that reported to turn three. You can imagine in the exaggeration, the fear and trembling that went through the grandstand. As he continued it, he overdid it, which he often did.

And all of a sudden, this interval of time from the time that the guy spun around and was getting out of the car and trying to get everything together to get it picked up and put back and see if they could get it started. He continued to wax on about this and about this guy.

And at a certain point, he's looking out over the track and over the crowd. And he sees in the little flower garden below the start finish line, a woman fainted. And he couldn't let go. He says, imagine watching your husband going into turn three and spinning around on your track and trying to come back now. what a story this is, right? And he'd build on the story.

All of a sudden, took, trip, chit, trich, up there came the woman who said, what the hell are you talking about? I am Mrs. Ted Brown or whatever it was. And he looked over and said, oh, I beg your pardon, who was that? And the farmer that ran the program at the track

said, that lady had a cow over a, the third turn that didn't go to Rutland of the next fair. It still was staked out there. And she was worried about the cow. And he said, oh, I beg your pardon and so forth. And on me went with the soul. But that was the golden days of racing as they grew up based on a lot of exaggeration, which there is and always will begin racing. But also in the fact that people were serious enough at that time to go out and do those kind of things. We didn't see that in many places. And shortly thereafter,

through all of Vermont, there were 10 racetracks, dirt tracks. Farmers would take a field that wasn't doing well, didn't have any crops in it, and they would build a racetrack. And they all needed announcers. Well, I had heard from the very best, the authority, Chris Economacky, and I could imitate him to the nine's, the beginning of my career. It all started there. Certainly did. So you mentioned Chris, Chris Economacky, being able to sell these races like none other, and you got a chance to see him do it and hear him do it.

Was that kind of what sold you into this profession? Well, no, I love the races. but he had the formula and he was so good at it. So I learned a lot. And pretty soon he would start it and he had enough going on. He was quite a business and still is. In my mind, one of the great businessman embracing, would go on to the next and leave the end of the show for me to finish.

We finally got caught one year. when somebody went down in the turn one and dumped the sprint car and it went off into the midway. And it was a crisis. And the fare director came rushing up and said, where's Chris? Well, he's not here.

What do you mean he's not here? The race is still on. Well, he's on his way to Bayonne or wherever. Oh, that was tough. But that actually happened. But I was far enough along that he felt I could finish the show and say thank you and go.

night and do it in his style. So that put a lot of responsibility on me and I was ready for it. And from the very beginning, I thought, you know what we need is we don't have a paved track in Vermont that is exemplary of where racing is at this time. We have a lot of dirt tracks and we had a lot of dirt tracks that farmers we put together and the boys would come out on the weekend and race. stock cars. So we put together a deal and started

Thunder Road and tried to bring up this vision of what racing was all about. Well, we succeeded, I guess, still there, and they still race, and they race like the Dickens. And

I feel pretty good about that. I left you on a little bit of a cliffhanger there. We don't have a paved racetrack in Vermont. And then Thunder Road came about. Well, guess what? That's what all of next episode is about. But I want to go back to this episode real quick because there were so many great stories that we took from just this first chapter of the interview. But in particular, that story about the cow and that farmer in distress who came up to the

press box, after hearing that story, myself and the dirty mo crew, we found that we needed to go and get B-roll of a cow. And that wasn't originally on the shot list. be honest of things we thought we were going to have to film outside of just the interview to really give it some flavor. But on our way to Ken's house on the second day, we pulled off on the side of the road. It was quite cold. It was a cold morning in Vermont. And we went and we shot some video of some cows out in the field. So we have Ken and that fantastic story to thank for that. But a great episode. And like I said, Ken teased it right there at the very end, Thunder Road is coming up next. He built this track at quite a young age,

and we're going to learn all about that coming up on the next chapter. So stay tuned for that. But we are just getting started here on next level. Our conversation with Ken Squire continues. Thanks for listening. I've been Andrew Curlin. Check out Dirty Mo Media on YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Dirty Mo. You're going to do it. You're going to win it.