Andy Durham

Owner of Durham Racing Engines. Live to race!

[Andy Durham @DurhamAndy]

@melanie_mummert He runs our Chevy package

[Andy Durham @DurhamAndy]

Congratulations to Nick Hoffman on his win last night! 🏁

[Dale Earnhardt Jr. @DaleJr]

I thought this was maybe just a one race deal but I love seeing this car in my timeline every week.

[Classic Car Logic @Mopar_Logic]

Dope or nope?

[Echoes of War @EchoesofWarYT]

Doc Holliday was a dentist with a classical education in Greek and Latin who killed his first man at 19, coughed blood into a handkerchief for the next 17 years, and died in bed with a glass of whiskey, saying, "This is funny."

Funny because he'd spent his entire adult life expecting to die in a gunfight. He never did.

John Henry Holliday was born in Griffin, Georgia in 1851. He came into the world with a cleft palate and a partial cleft lip, a deformity that in 1851 was usually a death sentence for an infant. His uncle, a surgeon named John Stiles Holliday, performed the corrective surgery himself when the baby was two months old. His mother Alice spent the next several years patiently teaching the boy to speak clearly. She taught him piano. She taught him manners. She taught him how to bow to a woman and how to address a gentleman. By the time he was a teenager, John Henry could quote Virgil in the original Latin, play Chopin from memory, and dance a quadrille.

Then she died of tuberculosis when he was 15, and so did the small, soft world she'd built for him.

He was sent to Philadelphia to study dentistry. He graduated from the Pennsylvania College of Dental Surgery in 1872 at the age of 20, one of the youngest in his class, and his entry "Diseases of the Teeth" was considered exceptional. He won an award at a dental fair for "Best Set of Artificial Teeth in Gold." His diploma still exists. You can look at it.

He moved back south, set up a practice, and started coughing.

By 1873 the diagnosis was unmistakable. Pulmonary tuberculosis. The same disease that killed his mother. Doctors gave him a few months, maybe a year. They told him his only chance was to move west, where the dry air might slow the lungs from drowning. He kissed his cousin Mattie goodbye. He had been in love with her for years. She would later become a Catholic nun, Sister Mary Melanie, and she was the woman Margaret Mitchell would model Melanie Hamilton on in Gone With the Wind. They wrote each other letters until the day he died. Nobody has ever found those letters. The family burned them.

He went to Dallas. He set up a dental office. And his patients, watching this thin polite young man cough blood into a handkerchief between extractions, stopped coming.

So he turned to cards.

Faro, mostly. Poker when he could find it. He had a gambler's gift and a dying man's nerve, and within two years he was making more in a week at the tables than he'd made in a year pulling teeth. He moved through Texas and into the Colorado mining camps, then New Mexico, then Arizona. He drank an estimated two to three quarts of whiskey a day, partly because it numbed the lungs and partly because nothing else did.

Here is what made him terrifying.

Most gunfighters in the Old West were cowards in expensive boots. They picked fights they could win and avoided fights they couldn't. Doc Holliday already knew he was dying. There was nothing you could threaten him with. There was no future you could take from him. He would walk into a room of armed men with that thin slow smile and a Colt and a knife and sometimes a sawed off shotgun under his long grey coat, and the math running behind his pale blue eyes was simple. Every day he was alive was already stolen. The men across the table had something to lose. He had nothing.

He weighed about 135 pounds. He was five foot ten. He was usually drunk. And by the time he reached Tombstone, men crossed streets to avoid him.

His common law wife was a Hungarian woman named Mary Katharine Horony, better known as Big Nose Kate. She had been born to nobility in Budapest, run away as a teenager after her parents died, worked as a prostitute in Iowa, and ended up on the frontier with a temper that matched his. He once got her out of jail by bribing a guard. She once got him out of jail by setting fire to the hotel next door as a distraction, then walking him out at gunpoint. They fought constantly. They loved each other in the way two people love each other when they both know one of them is going to die soon.

He met Wyatt Earp in Fort Griffin, Texas, in 1877. The friendship that followed would shape both their lives. The legend goes that Doc saved Wyatt's life in Dodge City, walking out of the Long Branch Saloon to find Wyatt surrounded by cowboys with guns drawn, and putting his pistol to the leader's temple before anyone saw him move. Wyatt later said he owed Doc his life. He said Doc was "the most skillful gambler, and the nerviest, fastest, deadliest man with a six gun I ever knew."

Wyatt Earp said that. About a tubercular dentist who could quote Cicero.

At the OK Corral on October 26, 1881, the fight lasted thirty seconds. Doc was carrying a 10 gauge coach gun under his coat. He killed Tom McLaury with both barrels. When Morgan Earp was assassinated months later in retaliation, Doc rode with Wyatt on what history would later call the Vendetta Ride, a three week killing spree across Arizona that left every man they believed responsible dead in the dirt. They were never caught. They were never tried. They simply rode out of the territory and disappeared.

By 1887 the disease had finally caught up with him. He was 36 years old. He weighed less than 120 pounds. He had outlived nearly every man who had ever tried to kill him, and most of the ones who had only thought about it. He checked into the Hotel Glenwood in Glenwood Springs, Colorado, where the sulfur springs were said to ease the lungs. They didn't.

On the morning of November 8th, the nurse brought him a glass of whiskey. He had always sworn he would die with his boots on, the way a gunfighter was supposed to die. He looked down at his bare feet under the white hospital sheet. He looked at the whiskey. He started to laugh.

"This is funny."

Then he drank it.

And he died.

[Rocket1 Racing @Rocket1_Racing]

𝗚𝗿𝗲𝗲𝗻 𝘁𝗼 𝗰𝗵𝗲𝗰𝗸𝗲𝗿𝗲𝗱 𝘁𝗼𝗻𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁 𝗮𝘁 𝗦𝗽𝗼𝗼𝗻 𝗥𝗶𝘃𝗲𝗿 𝗦𝗽𝗲𝗲𝗱𝘄𝗮𝘆. 🏁

A great way to kick off the week for Brandon Sheppard and the @Valvoline Rocket1 crew as @bsheppb5 took the green flag and never looked back in tonight's @FloRacing Night in America opener.

Proud of the entire team for a strong performance to start Illinois Speedweek, and thankful for our valued partners and fans. 🚀 #XRWon

[Patrick Duffy @PatD64]

Good morning my fabulous friends ☀️☀️☀️Rise-n-Shine☀️☀️☀️#FrontendFriday ☀️☀️☀️

[Brent Jordan @thegoldenbrent]

@NASCARClassics .@Yates_Doug was your dad driving this rig that day?

[Flea Ruzic @ripjetson9]

As someone who drives sprint cars and has crashed them i think Austin’s opinion on the subject is very credible and pretty spot on

My biggest take away from that portion of the interview tho is the fact that he keeps saying “i might get in trouble for this”

Thats the fucking problem with the world today. Theres a bunch of thin skinned people that don’t like being challenged on subjects. And people don’t wana speak up for fear of losing a sponsor, pissing off a series, or stepping on a friend of a friends toes

Pride and profits will always hinder progress

[Andy Durham @DurhamAndy]

@joeduvall91 The things we have to do in the shop at 9 at night! 😂

[Doug Yates @Yates_Doug]

You’re the best! Thank you!

[Rock'n Roll of All @rocknrollofall]

Origins of Purple Rain,

Purple Rain' was originally written as a country song, and was intended to be a collaboration with Fleetwood Mac singer Stevie Nicks.

According to Nicks, she received a 10-minute instrumental version of the song from Prince, with a request to write the lyrics, but she felt overwhelmed by the task.

She later said: "I listened to it and I just got scared. I called him back and said, 'I can't do it. I wish I could. It's too much for me.'"

Prince then asked his backing band to try the song: "I want to try something before we go home. It's mellow."

According to Lisa Coleman, Prince changed the song dramatically after Wendy Melvoin started playing the guitar to accompany the song: "He was excited to hear it voiced differently. It took it out of that country feeling.

"Then we all started playing it a bit harder and taking it more seriously. We played it for six hours straight and by the end of that day we had it mostly written and arranged."

Prince's explanation on the meaning of 'Purple Rain':

"When there's blood in the sky – red and blue = purple... purple rain pertains to the end of the world and being with the one you love and letting your faith/god guide you through the purple rain."

After recording the song, Prince phoned Journey member Jonathan Cain, to ask him to listen to it.

Prince was concerned that it might be too similar to Journey's 'Faithfully', a song composed by Cain which had recently been in the US charts.

However, Cain reassured Prince by saying that the songs only shared the same four chords.

"I thought it was an amazing tune," Cain said. "I told him, 'Man, I'm just super-flattered that you even called. It shows you're that classy of a guy. Good luck with the song. I know it's gonna be a hit.'"

Ladies and gentlemen,
Prince performing a special and an absolute classic song, Purple Rain, live at Paisley Park, in 1999.

Credits for the background information: @SmoothRadio

[Mike Kelley @MkelleyHyak]

Three of the greatest and yourself sir! @Yates_Doug

[Doug Yates @Yates_Doug]

Today we celebrate the three men who have played a defining role in my life and the history of Roush Yates Engines.

[Flea Ruzic @ripjetson9]

Dinner with @DblDwn7777777 and @lanman67 followed up with an hour long life talk with @vangurleyjr

I wake up everyday and never really know what direction life is gonna take me

Still enjoying the ride tho 🤘🏼

[Quality Classics @nelmagene2010]

Cargasm or E.D.? 1969 Chevy Camaro

[Brandon Sheppard @bsheppb5]

2015. 2017. 2019. 2025. 🏆🏆🏆🏆

Some of the best memories at this little dirt track a just an hour from the house. Going for 5 this weekend at @FarmerCityRacin !

Grab your 4x & Defending #Illini100 Champion Limited Edition Tee online or trackside! https://t.co/wktCjWKbkM

[Andy Durham @DurhamAndy]

@WhiskeyRiff @spaseycasey Was there Saturday it was in my top 3 best concerts of all time for me.

[Lara Logan @laralogan]

They wanted him alive. To suffer.