Anderson, Indiana (pop. 59,000), a rusty manufacturing town way past its industrial prime, used to boast 33,000 General Motors jobs. Now the factories stand empty; stores are shuttered. Everyone who can is getting out. What’s left of the town gathers every Friday night at the Anderson Speedway. Here you’ll find NASCAR at its fender-rubbing-bumper-bumping-tire-trashing rawest. It takes a hardscrabble town like Anderson, Indiana, to produce hardscrabble racing like this. There’s nothing else like it in the world. In the words of weekend-warrior Sammy Hawkins, “We don’t make cars here in Anderson anymore, but we can still race them, and we can still wreck them, and they can’t take that away from us.”
