The Yodeling Cowboy who still races sprint cars past 90

MILL HALL, Pa. — Half an hour before the track opened at Clinton County Speedway, Jim “Cowboy” Kennedy climbed into his yellow and red sprint car, put his helmet on, and fastened his seat belt. He was ready to go.

Around him this late summer weekend was the cacophony of the pits. The roaring of engines gearing up. RTV tires squeaking on the gravel roads. The pattering of wrenches and air machines, fixing and refining cars down to the last minute.

Now, amid all those sounds was something else. Cowboy’s yodeling voice rang out amid the chaos.

As he sat behind the wheel, serenading his competitors, drivers and their crews were frantic, touching up their cars at the trailers, adding extra gas, visiting the drivers’ meeting — a session Cowboy would not attend.

Once he finished his song, Cowboy waited silently. His checkered orange fire suit was worn with years of caked dirt and fraying sleeves. At last, an RTV arrived to push him down the track. Then it was time to do what he knows how to do best: race.

The No. 7 sprint car sped down the 3/8-mile dirt track, sometimes tearing around the inside and sometimes drifting along the top of the track — looking like it was ready to take off.

After just two laps, Cowboy whipped down the exit ramp and returned to his trailer to wait for his race. He only warmed up with a couple of hot laps so he didn’t get too tired.

See, the thing about Cowboy is, he’s 91 years old.

The show

The race track is not just for drivers. Summer weekend nights in Pennsylvania are a time for sprint-car racing and there are a bunch of tracks between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, places like Clinton County Speedway, about 30 miles east of State College.

Much of the community comes out to feel the exhilaration of racing. There’s always the smell of gas and fried food in the air, the constant, deafening sound of engines accelerating, maybe a crash or two, and — on the wildest nights — even a heated argument between drivers.

For people in central Pennsylvania, it’s a respite from day-to-day life, a great way to kick back. Racing people call it “the show.”

“This is kind of what our weekends consist of, as a family, every weekend,” said Kasey Weaver, who — like his brother Kolby — is one of the drivers.

A lone rider

Cowboy is one of those people who fell in love with motor sports at a young age. He started in 1958 and did whatever it took to get on a race track, and he’s long been a bit of a lone wolf.

He used a cardboard wing when he began — the wing on the back of a race car does the opposite of a wing on a plane, it pushes the vehicle down. Cowboy only just recently updated his car to use a metal wing. He gets all his car parts from auction and is his own mechanic.

With a single wrench, Cowboy changes his own tires, fills his gas tank, and does the regular maintenance checks that sprint car racing requires. Although he can do most things, there are some areas that he needs help with — so he’ll recruit the racers in the pits around him to help out.

“I've got them to help me put the wing on,” he said. “The wing ain't heavy, but I can't put it on myself.”

Kasey and Colby Weaver’s shiny new trailer towered over Cowboy’s on the last night of the season at Clinton County Speedway. They had a plethora of gadgets, fuel and bright lights. Next to them, Cowboy operated off one light with only a few spare wrenches to fill out his tool kit in case of emergency. The Weavers helped as Cowboy’s pit crew that night.

“We’re here to have fun, and we don’t want to see no one miss out on the fun for something dumb, like not being ready,” Kasey Weaver said.

The Weavers race all over the state and across the country. They started in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic because they said that there was nothing else to do besides go to races.

But racing was never Cowboy’s way of making a living. He worked as a welder on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, joined a union, got married, had a family. All his extra money, meanwhile, went to funding his passion for the track.

Sprint car racing isn’t glamorous, but Cowboy was big time in his day. In his career, Cowboy has raced at 31 tracks. His biggest wins came at Port Royal Speedway, a nationally known track about an hour south of State College, where he had five wins in 410 sprints. Sprint car divisions are set up by engine sizes — 270s, 305s, 410s. To keep it simple, the bigger the engine, the cooler it is to win the race.

“People say, what track you like the best?” Cowboy said. “I just kind of like them all.”

“He still races about the same,” said Jeff Weaver, a frequent winner at Clinton County who is not related to Kasey and Kolby. “He’s just not as fast as he used to be.”

Although the times and technology have changed, Cowboy likes to keep his racing simple. His fire suit is secondhand — the name stitched on it is “Niki Young.” But he’s gotten good use out of it for 10 to 12 years, now.

And he comes to the race track alone. He drives his trailer over from Everett, which is about two hours away. He arrives dressed and in gear, unlike most drivers, who get dressed in their trailers just ahead of the race. Then, he’ll eat one or two cheeseburgers from McDonald’s that he picked up along the way, and after that it’s time to set up his car.

Cowboy had four children with his wife, Marlene. He prides himself on his family, but they haven’t attended in years. Marlene doesn’t go to sleep until he gets home, he says, but races can go very late, sometimes 11:30 p.m. or later — and then there’s the drive home.

“I retired when I was 62, and that’s 29 years ago, and she didn't want to go no more then, so she hadn’t been in the grandstand for 29 years,” Cowboy said.

At the season-ender at Clinton County, called the Fall Clash, Cowboy finished last in all his races — but he asked to start in the rear, anyway. At this point, he goes about his racing in a smart way, not racing to win, but racing just to be on the track and feel the thrill.

“He’s kind of settled into, okay, ‘I’m not as fast as I used to, so I’m going to run the bottom, and try to stay out of everybody’s way,’” said Dale Schweiart, another driver and friend of Cowboy’s. “He’s doing it a lot smarter than he had a couple years ago.”

After finishing 15 seconds behind the second-to-last racer in his first event, Cowboy waited all night to participate in the Sprint Car Feature. Halfway through that race, a driver in front of him hit the edge of the track and flipped. It was too late for Cowboy to get out of the way, leading to a crash.

Both drivers were determined to be okay, but this meant the end of their nights. The yellow and red car, littered with stars, had a totaled frame. Luckily, it was almost the end of the racing season.

It didn’t seem to faze Cowboy. He was all smiles back at his trailer, saying that he would just go to the auction in the offseason and fix it up. In the meantime, he would compete at the Bedford Fairgrounds Speedway in mid-October with his backup car. It’s what he does.

Beating the clock

Cowboy is among the oldest racecar drivers in the country, if not the world.

In the Guiness Book of World Records, the oldest male racing driver is Erik Berger, a Swedish race car driver who was 89 years old in 2014 when he set the record, and continued driving for some time after that. He died in 2018.

Charles “Red” Farmer is a 93-year-old American stock car and dirt track racer. He competed in Alabama, recently hanging up his helmet for health issues.

“Cowboy knows that's the mark he has to try to beat,” said Jason McCahan, the Clinton County Speedway promoter.

But, because Red Farmer was not a sprint car driver, it is very possible that Cowboy is the oldest of his kind. It’s hard to ever know for sure. This isn’t Major League Baseball, with a massive and authoritative record book.

McCahan has been trying to get Cowboy into the Guiness Book of World Records, but it’s a difficult process — and a costly one, too. While applying for a record is close to free, having an event to celebrate with a Guinness World Records official can cost thousands of dollars.

Who needs retirement?

This may not seem surprising, but Cowboy doesn’t have any plans to retire soon. Why? Why even ask why? A lot of things about Cowboy are a little bit of a mystery.

His nickname, for instance. Cowboy says it’s just something he’s had all these years. And the yodeling. Why does he do it? Can’t say. It’s just what he does — might have picked it up from his dad or an uncle.

But in Pennsylvania, that yodel is the song of the racetrack. And as long as he wants to come out, the boys at the track will welcome him.

“Fans cheer a little louder when he rolls onto the track, and every driver in the pits looks at him with the kind of respect you can’t teach,” McCahan said. “Watching him race reminds us all that passion doesn’t age, dreams don’t expire, and legacy is built one lap at a time.”

Maybe the only people who know how long Cowboy will be cowboying are the man and Marlene.

“I tell the wife I’ll be 102,” Cowboy said, “and not driving these.”