'It's All About the Adrenaline'

Cars, Crashes, Cheers Provide Md. Family's Passion

Several hours before Jim Stirling's Chrysler station wagon was reduced to a smoking carcass of twisted steel, the whole family gathered in his driveway to lavish it with love.

It had taken several late nights under the hood, but Stirling now had the engine purring. The wagon's new coat of black paint glistened in the morning sun. Stirling's wife, Angie, held their 2-year-old daughter, Brooke, on her hip to help apply a finishing touch.

"I love Daddy," Brooke wrote -- with her mother's help -- in crooked gold letters on the wagon's rear panel. She switched to red marker and drew a heart over the gas cap.

There was only one thing left to do to the car: destroy it.

"It's a family thing," Angie Stirling said.

Some families take their station wagons on leisurely weekend road trips. But on four Saturdays every year, the Stirlings, who live in the rural Southern Maryland outpost of Mechanicsville, take their cars to the demolition derby.

It's a tradition that started with Drew Stirling, 51, the stout patriarch and plumber who has been crashing cars for more than 25 years. For two years in the late 1990s, he stopped driving and worked as a track official overseeing the derby. But the itch to compete was too strong.

"It's all about the adrenaline," he said. "I realized I'm not going to give up the derby. Well, when I'm in a wheelchair, maybe."

His sons, Jim, 31, also a plumber, and Robert, 26, a former Marine who works at an industrial supply shop, grew up with a detailed knowledge of motors and a passion for collisions. Both competed in their first derbies as teenagers, before they could drive legally. It is a family of buzz cuts and mustaches, blue jeans and dirty hands. To strangers, the Stirling men can be stoic and taciturn, but among friends and on the topic of cars, the words spill freely.

"When they're not working on their cars, they're talking about their cars," said Angie Stirling, who runs a day-care center at her home. "They love it, the kids love it."

Saturday's demolition derby was held at Potomac Speedway in Budds Creek. It was put on by the Silver Hill Lions Club. After 32 years at several different venues, it has grown into the largest derby in the state, organizers say, attracting capacity crowds of more than 2,000 people to the muddy track in Charles County. The winner takes home $1,000, a trophy and a black champion's jacket.

The actual competition involves about 20 cars gathered in a 60-by-120-foot enclosure. They line up on two sides with the rear ends of the cars facing each other. The crowd chants along with the announcer, who counts down, "10 . . . 9 . . . 8 . . ." On the signal, the drivers step on the gas and ram into each other in reverse. The unmuffled cars roar like monster trucks, and the spinning tires shoot mud into the cheering crowd.

The bodies of the cars, which have been stripped of all glass, chrome and any extraneous fiberglass or plastic that could become a projectile, careen around the track and smash like beer cans. Pintos are prohibited.

A firetruck waits to put out any flames. The five cars that survive each heat move on to the finals, and the last driver still hitting is the champion.