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Prime Times Weekly publication of the Mail Tribune , Medford, Oregon When drag racer Miriam Cover gets behind the wheel of her Maverick, she looks like your grandma... Only Meaner By Susan Campbell of the Hartford Courant Two years ago, at 63, Miriam Cover asked her second husband, Bill, what he planned to do with a '72 Ford Maverick that sat in pieces in their Enfield, Conn., garage. Fix it up, Bill said. It was his mother's car. Some day, he just might race it, only not on the circle tracks. Those cost too much money, but he could definitely afford the occasional trip down a drag strip. Fix it up for me, Miriam said. So Bill, who loves his wife, did just that, and last year, in Miriam's first full season of drag racing, she won a big, shiny trophy at Lebanon Valley Dragway in New Lebanon, N.Y., her strip of choice. This year, Cover is again steadily and quietly climbing the ranks at Lebanon and looking for sponsors for her hobby. "I didn't look at it like she's taking the car from me," Bill said. "It's a team. We do it together." On her first-ever race down the strip at Lebanon Valley, Miriam's heart was in her throat, but as she drove back in the green car that sounds like a thundercloud to get her time sheet, she laughed and cried at the same time. This, this was what she'd been looking for. "I just wanted to race," Miriam said. Her sons don't like to talk about it. Her stepchildren are a little more accepting. Her grandchildren think it's cool. One granddaughter sometimes comes to cheer her on. Track workers love her. "I just bask in her aura," John Crosby said. When she wins, he stands by the track and bows, which makes Miriam giggle. Her 87-year-old mother says she's a nut, but she means it in a nice way. Years ago, when she still operated Mrs. Cooke's Home Bakery in Red Hook, N.Y., Miriam's mother, Florence Cookke, would close the shop every weekend and travel with her husband to watch the races at Lebanon Valley, but she won't watch her daughter race. "I told her she was nuts," said Cooke. "But she enjoys it, so I am going to let her go. You're only on this earth once. Why not do what you like to do?" Miriam, too, once sat in the stands, but when her husband died in 1989, she promised herself that -- even given the 37 years and two children they shared -- she would get out and enjoy life. Eventually, she took line-dancing lessons, where a friend told her there was a nice, neat man she might like. When Miriam first saw Bill, he was sitting at a table with six women, and she thought, "What am I getting into here?" She got over that fast. Their age difference -- Bill is 51 in December -- was never an issue. "First you were a mother, then a housewife, then a career woman," said Miriam, who works in an accounts-payable department of an area company. "That's what I was." But she'd always like cars. She owned a '49 Chevrolet with a carburetor that stuck. She knew enough to pull over, open the hood and bang on it with a hammer. Women racers aren't that unusual. One of this year's Lebanon Valley track champions is a woman. In her family's parking spot, not far from Miriam and Bill's RV at Lebanon Valley, is 14-year-old Kelly Boyle of Wappingers Falls, N.Y., who races in the junior division in a $5,000 dragster her father bought her with "Bandit" painted on the side. (Her father, Denis, bought her the car has a reward for her help while he raced his own car. He told her she didn't have to like it, "but she came back after her first run with a grin that ran from ear to ear," he said. "Case closed.") And Miriam herself has a fine jacket signed by racing greats Shirley Muldowney, Jessica Willard and Bunny Burkett. But a woman like Miriam can still get attention on the strip. She's a soft-voiced 65-year-old who looks like your grandmother with a car that looks like your teenage brother's. Weekdays, she drives her hulking Lincoln Town Car to her "boring old job." Weekends, she's revving the Maverick's motor. When she puts on her racing helmet, Miriam Cover still looks like your grandmother, only meaner. "I figured out that friendlier racers very seldom do well in races," she said. "I'm trying to concentrate more. When I get out on the track, I am thinking about those lights coming down." In the dragway's staging area, then, before Miriam drives to the starting line, Bill is squatted by her open door talking in a low voice about the car, the weather, the competition. She answers with quick nods, jaw out, eyes squinted. "We have people coming up and playing mind games," Bill said. "But when she's in the car, they have to deal with me." Inside the car, Bill removed all but the driver's seat to lighten the load. There is a tachometer on the windshield and a roll cage that will sustain high-speed impacts. Bill modified the car for Miriam's short legs and arms. The roll cage makes climbing int he Maverick feel more like fitting into a greased suit of armor. The car gets hot with its closed windows. Lucky, then, that the race for Miriam never lasts longer than 12 seconds or so, at about 109 mph. When she returns to the staging area, she often does so with her driver's door held open by her bejeweled hand, just to get air. "Bill says I'm the only person out there with a diamond bracelet," Miriam said, laughing. She doesn't want to remove the bracelet, a recent wedding anniversary present, but she does for go her earrings. The helmet makes them pinch. "When I am in that car?" Miriam said. "I have my 'Make My Day' look about me. In the car, you are the one making the decisions. Every fiber in your body is tensed and ready. You don't have anything else on your mind when you're doing this. My foot's on the accelerator, my thumb's on the lock. I'm Mrs. C., and he's Mr. Bill." The only thing? Mrs. C and Mr. Bill haven't been line dancing in years. Prime Times front page Mail Tribune front page Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1999, Medford, Oregon USA