By Kerri Havnen Gordon

From the get-go, the San Jose Grand Prix sounded like a really bad idea. Why on earth would San Jose want to subject its streets to the abuse those gas-guzzling, hard-driving racecars would inflict?

Also, if I’m going to spend $35 per ticket, I’m more inclined to spend it on, say, a garden tour where I would feel right at home. I imagined that the Grand Prix attendees would primarily be beer-swigging, cigarette-smoking, pot-bellied, foul-mouthed, tattooed boy-men who should have shaved off those beards, mustaches and mullets back in the early ’80s.

So it must have been an out-of-body experience that inspired me to take my 14-year-old son to the San Jose Grand Prix. I had a hunch it would be a great mom-boy outing. Not my cup of tea, but, hey, we mothers will do just about anything for our boys.

Off we went, armed with hats, sunscreen and more money than I cared to spend doing something I didn’t really want to do. But my son is good company, and I figured we’d have fun.

I just didn’t figure how much fun.

When those cars came screaming around the corner of the Tech Museum, I understood what all the fuss was about. The tremendous speed and agility of the low-slung racecars was truly impressive. And when we walked around between races, we found, much to my surprise, that the venue was clean, the food decent and the crowds manageable.

There were certainly beer-swigging, cigarette-smoking, pot-bellied, foul-mouthed, tattooed boy-men milling about, but there were also plenty of folks who looked enough like my son and me that we didn’t stand out.

When I saw that the program featured a “Historic Stock Car Race,” I was compelled to tell my son a favorite story about my father. In the early 1950s when my dad was in his late teens, every Friday night he would tell his parents that he was off to the stock car races. “That’s fine, Tommy. Have fun,” my grandmother would say to her beloved only child.

All was well until one Saturday morning when my dad joined his parents to eat breakfast and read the paper. A half-page picture of a stock car in midair dominated the front page of the sports section. The headline read, “Spectacular crash at the raceway!” Underneath was the caption, “Driver Tom Havnen was not injured.” Imagine my grandparents’ shock to learn that their Tommy was a driver, not a spectator.

With my dad’s 1950s car in mind, I was hoping to see cars like his, but the “historic” race featured cars built at least 20 years later. I had to wonder, since when are cars from my high school days considered historic?

The real excitement came when the “drifters” were racing. “Drifting,” I learned from my son, is when the cars skid sideways into a turn. Amazing stuff. Very entertaining! I didn’t even mind too much when tiny flecks of burning rubber landed on my face, arms and all over my little yellow T-shirt. Had I known that morning that burned rubber is best removed by sharp fingernails, or better yet, an electric sander, I might have stayed home, but I was glad I hadn’t.

My son loved the drifting, of course, and said, “I am TOTALLY going to drive like that when I get my license.” Naturally, I laughed and replied, “What license? You won’t ever get one if you drive like that!”

At the end of the day, we were tired, happy and had our fill of racing. Next year, I might even spring for grandstand seating.