Feature Story Writing Example

Olivia Morgan

It was a warm and sunny Sunday afternoon in Watkins Glen, N.Y. as J.D. McDuffie was on his fifth lap around the road course, speeding down the backstretch. He braked for the hard right-hand corner that was rapidly approaching. The car skated across a patch of grass and slammed into a pile of tires that cushioned the guard rail. He died instantly. That grave afternoon on August 11, 1991 was the last time J.D. McDuffie would ever race around that auto track. J.D. McDuffie had too soon met the fate that will someday afflict us all. Leaving nothing behind but the mangled remains of the red No. 70 Pontiac in which he had died, the memories cherished by his friends and now widowed wife Jean McDuffie, and his beloved old auto shop.

The people you talk to would describe J.D. as a hard-working, cigar-loving man. His shop, they say, was the most important thing in his world, and he paid for it with blood, sweat and tears. Working on the frayed strands of a shoestring budget, McDuffie could rarely afford new parts, and auctions were a godsend to him.

Despite the affinity J.D. had for pawning away his stuff, for the four years following her husband’s death Jean McDuffie couldn't bring herself to sell J.D.'s auto shop and everything in it. But today she is doing exactly that. "I just can't hold on to it forever," she says, dabbing at the tears with a tissue.

It's a cold morning. A crowd of people, lots of whom seem to know each other, are looking at tables and shelves in J.D.’s old shop which are crammed with everything necessary to field and maintain a race team. Boxes of spark plugs and air filters are stacked high. A dashboard panel still has all the telltale gauges in place, just as McDuffie left it. Yellow suspension springs are arranged neatly here, and a row of driveshafts lie in neat alignment there. Boxes of nuts, bolts and washers are within arm's reach wherever you walk.

McInnis is the auctioneer. Just after 10 a.m., he climbs on a cart and sits on a bar stool. With a microphone strapped around his neck, McInnis takes a deep breath, welcomes the crowd, says "No warranties, expressed or implied," and starts selling off J.D.'s stuff in that quick-fire auctioneer's voice. McDuffie's equipment had lost some of its value over the years, McInnis says, and was of little use. However, some of the equipment would still be useful at lower levels of competition, and some would be valuable as nostalgia, McInnis says.

Winston Cup driver Ken Schrader and noted engine builder Keith Simmons have friends in the crowd who were told to bid on the 1970 Chevy ramp truck that McDuffie affectionately dubbed "Ol' Blue." It took Jean McDuffie 17 months and the help of one of her husband's competitors, Dave Marcis, to get the truck back from a sponsor in New Jersey. The Aug. 9, 1991, issue of Winston Cup Scene still sits on the back seat. On its cover is a photo of Ernie Irvan, who three years later came perilously close to suffering the same fate as McDuffie. The paper's companion is a worn road atlas, its pages yellowed and curled. The auctioneer works the crowd hard for several minutes before John Parsons of Goldsboro, standing in for Schrader, nodded a winning bid of $7,750 for "Ol' Blue."

The land and the 5,000-square-foot shop sell for $72,500 to Fuquay-Varina's Ellis Ragan, who fields a car for Tom Usry in NASCAR's series for compact cars. "I'll probably resell it," said a smiling Ragan, whose overalls and gray camouflage cap belie his wealth. "It's worth at least as much as I paid for it." Finally, the two race cars on hand, one wrecked and the other having been mended, are bought for $6,900 by Richard Pugh, who came from Auburn, Ala.

Jean McDuffie hasn't been able to retrieve her husband's other car — the one in which he was killed — but she says a guy named Richard Pugh told her that he'd heard someone in Pennsylvania had advertised it for sale. That brought more tears. "That's what hurts so bad. J.D. trusted those people, and that car don't belong to whoever's got it," she says.

The auction is well over by 5:15 p.m. The Iron Horse crew has finished its job. The shop, the cars, everything is gone. Exhausted but with her mission of the day complete, Jean McDuffie is free to retire for the night. Hopefully with no doubt in her mind that her husband would be proud.