Darrell Andrews has stories. Real ones. These come only from 18 years of hauling Darrell Waltrip’s No. 11 car across America for Junior Johnson, watching Dale Earnhardt’s crew dump illegal weight off their car after inspection, and seeing Junior Johnson grab a GM engineer by the collar for trusting a laptop over a race car. D.A. has seen things. But the best story he has told in a while has absolutely nothing to do with NASCAR. It starts with a dart gun and a terrible plan.
His trucking buddy Bob from Richmond, Virginia, headed down to the river one night with a friend who had bought himself a tranquilizer dart pistol. Twenty minutes in, they heard a loud squall from somewhere above them. Big bobcat, up in a tree. The friend raised the pistol, fired once, and the bobcat went loose and fell straight to the ground.
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As said on the latest episode of the FIVE WIDE Sports and Jeremy Mayfield Show, Bob looked at him. “Now what are you gonna do with him?”
The answer was a suitcase. The friend dumped his clothes on the ground, loaded the sedated bobcat inside, and clicked it shut. Their idea was to sell it to the Richmond Zoo. The zoo laughed and said no. So now two men were standing on a street in Richmond holding a suitcase with a bobcat waking up inside it.
They drove to the back side of Richmond and put the suitcase down on a street corner. The bobcat was awake by now. You could hear it in there, working on getting out. Bob and his friend got back in the car and watched.
“This big dude on the corner pulls up, this dude jumps out the back door, looks up and down the street, grabs the suitcase and jumps back in,” D.A. said. “He act like he’d stole a million dollars.”
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They followed him. Did not make it half a block.
“All four doors flew open before the brake lights come on,” D.A. said. “I can’t imagine flipping them tabs on a suitcase that’s aggravated and a bobcat come out in the face right in the car.”
Bob walked up. The man told him there was a lion in the car. The bobcat found an open door and was gone. D.A. has been sharing stories like this on The Jeremy Mayfield Show, and they set his personality into perspective once you know who he is.
In the Junior Johnson NASCAR garage, the nickname was only there because two Darrells confused the radio. One drove the car. D.A. hauled it from track to track in a Kenworth, then grabbed a wrench and went to work the moment he arrived.
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He is also a Vietnam veteran and Purple Heart recipient who has been fighting Agent Orange cancer for years. Doctors told him he would not make it past 2020. He proved them wrong, still drives his trucks, still restores vintage rigs out of his warehouse, and still shows up on podcasts with stories that nobody else alive can tell.
The bobcat got out of Richmond clean that night. The man who grabbed that suitcase probably still has nightmares.
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The post “Act Like He Stole a Million Dollars”– NASCAR Veteran Recounts Hilarious Wildcat Chaos After Stolen Suitcase Goes Wrong appeared first on EssentiallySports. Add EssentiallySports as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
