Back when he was younger, in his 20s and even into his 30s, like most guys his age Dale Earnhardt Jr. was far from being a choir boy: he smoked, drank beer and chased women.
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“When I go out to clubs, I like to get trashed,” Earnhardt admitted when his first house was featured on the MTV show “Cribs”.
Whereas today, Junior is a G-rated picture of a devoted husband and father.
But when he exploded onto the Cup scene in 2000, Junior reveled in movie star-like celebrity status and fan adoration. Everybody wanted him: women wanted to get close to him while men wanted to be like him.
It would be a fascinating sociological study if there was a way to find out how many thousands of dollars Junior spent buying drinks for himself, his buddies and oftentimes others in a club or bar. Or how many hundreds of gallons of beer he likely consumed over the years.
Befitting of his rockstar-like status, he appeared in several music videos, including the appropriately titled “Rockstar” by Nickelback, “The Road I’m On” by 3 Doors Down, “Rough and Ready” by Trace Adkins, “Show Me What You Got” by Jay-Z and Kid Rock’s “Warrior”.
He also made several TV show or movie appearances including “Talladega Nights,” “Cars” and “Herbie: Fully Loaded,” among others.
Junior also had his house featured on “Cribs” twice (two different houses), frequently hung out at the bar he owned known as “Whiskey River” (and drank for free), and was literally a walking, talking party animal.
Speaking of where he lived pre-Cribs, while he was racing in the NASCAR Busch Series in the late ‘90s, Earnhardt and close friend Josh Snider lived together in a double-wide trailer that they called “Camp Chaos.”
And chaos is exactly what happened there, with almost non-stop parties, non-stop beer and non-stop girls. Needless to say, it was very unlikely if Junior would have been picked to appear on the much more prim-and-proper TV series “The Bachelor.”
Dale Sr. Crashed Dale Jr.’s Party — In A Chopper (and we’re not talking about a Harley)!
Heck, his father, the late Dale Earnhardt Sr., once broke up a party at Camp Chaos by having a friend circle the place with The Intimidator riding shotgun in a spotlight-equipped helicopter that made the 40-50 guests in attendance think it was a police raid.
Needless to say, they cleared out of there in a hurry.
As he became more and more popular, Earnhardt took on an almost air of invincibility. He could do no wrong and had fun doing anything and everything, including numerous pranks. One of the most memorable was when Earnhardt reportedly placed 2,000 crickets in Snider’s bedroom in the double-wide.
But Earnhardt’s days of pulling pranks abruptly ended — like Junior slamming on the brakes at 200 mph at Talladega to avoid “The Big One” — when another one of his friends, Christopher “Topher” Allen, pulled one of the most ingenious and cruel pranks ever done to a supposed good friend.
Earnhardt told the story on the Dale Jr. Download of how he and other friends broke into Allen’s house in the middle of the night and doused him with water and flour.
Talk about Shake and Bake!
The Best Revenge Ever!
But Allen made sure to take revenge a million times over when “Topher” left a positive pregnancy test in Junior’s bathroom (and the woman Junior was dating at the time was in on it). It turns out Allen had a pregnant friend who agreed to take the test, which everyone — except Junior — already knew would turn out positive.
Here’s how Earnhardt described one of the most infamous days ever in his life — and it had nothing to do with racing — but boy, it just about gave him a heart attack:
“So the ultimate end of the pranking was a single prank pulled by Topher,” Earnhardt recalled. “God, this was good. This ended all the pranks. … I come out of the bathroom, and I see something on the counter.
“It’s a damn pregnancy test. And I read it, and it’s positive. And I was like holy s***. … I was like, ‘Oh my God, that was diabolical.”
Yet even back then, Junior knew that his 200-mph sprint he made through daily life would one day slow down to a more pedestrian-like 55-mph crawl.
“What’s it gonna be like when it’s all gone?” Earnhardt said in a story from 2010. “It’s just part of what you do. And it won’t always be. I know it sounds ridiculous, but you start to appreciate it, welcome it.”
“It” has a double meaning of sorts. Not only did he appreciate the days of old, where he was officially the Most Popular Driver (and unofficially the Most Popular Autograph and Most Popular Photo), but at the time he also looked forward to appreciating a much slower, less chaotic life in his 40s and beyond, especially when he finished his racing career.
Heck, as hard as it may seem for many to believe, the Junior of the 2000s and 2010s, is now 50 years old!
Yes, his wild and crazy partying ways and days as a swinging bachelor are gone — his wife Amy saw to that when they married on New Years Eve 2016 — and Earnhardt truly does not seem to miss them, having traded all that chaos in for a more sedate, slow-paced, happy life as a family man.
But he does admit to one thing that’s carried over from his days of yore: he still loves and will never give up his beer — but that’s another story for another day.
