NASCAR’s Ken Schrader Recalls Dale Earnhardt Treating Him To A “Seafood Meal” Of Crackers & Sardines: “He Was Country As Could Be”

What a guy…

Dale Earnhardt was country to the core, and no matter how much money he made, he was always that small town country boy at heart.

And during the pilot episode of Herm & Schrader a while back, former NASCAR driver Ken Schrader talked to fellow former driver Kenny Wallace about his friend, the legendary Intimidator, and some of his favorite stories about their time together.

Firstly, he recalled when they were building a reservoir right off Highway 73 in Concord, North Carolina and how Dale promised him he’d fill the pond they were getting lake water from with fish once it was full… but it didn’t exactly go how Schrader thought… Dale said:

“‘You get it done, you let me know.’ And of course he drove by there, but he said, ‘I’ll get you the fish for it.’ Okay. We get it done, we open up the water to it, and it’s filling up pretty quick, I mean, it probably filled up in three days.

It was pretty big, it was about an acre. And I said, okay, I need fish… he said, ‘I’m gonna put 100 catfish, and 200 blue gill,’ or something like that, in there. I said, ‘Okay.’ Well, it wasn’t a week later, they showed up… they were COD, but they showed up. He didn’t quite take care of the fish like the said, he just ordered them.”

Wallace laughed at the COD (collect on delivery) part, though Schrader assured him they still got paid… out of his pocket:

“I know they got paid for it.”

My favorite, though, was when he talked about a time they were working on Dale’s farm in Mooresville, and stopped to have lunch at local chain What-A-Burger (not the same as the one in Texas, and so much better… sorry, Texans. It’s true.), but it was super busy and Dale didn’t want to wait.

Instead, he asked Schrader if he liked seafood… but not what you’re thinking at all:

“One time I was at the farm, and he said, ‘You wanna go eat lunch?’ and I said ‘Yeah.’ and we went to What-A-Burger, and it was too busy and this and that. And he finally said, ‘You like seafood?’ and I said, ‘Yeah.’

So we went to that little, coming out of his shop you turn right, it was that little convenience store up on the left. Old timey. And he bought crackers and sardines. That was the seafood… so I didn’t partake in lunch. But that was his lunch, his seafood lunch.”

Classic… though I agree with Schrader, I think I’d be skipping lunch too.

Wallace added that he doesn’t think he ever saw Dale Sr. lean into being “wealthy,” though he was obviously extremely successful in both his racing career and other business ventures

“He was every man’s man. Everybody wanted to be him, but boy he was country as country could be. Literally wear those cowboy boots, and Lynyrd Skynyrd. I don’t think I ever watched Dale Sr. be wealthy, I mean, he was always country as could be.”

And I think that humility and authenticity is obviously a huge part of what made him the icon that he is.

You can watch them tell those stories below.