Mike Walters has been competing in demolition derbies at the Johnson County fair and beyond for more than 30 years.
But while the 2020 fair is going on later this month, the Trafalgar resident is more likely to be in his garage working on a car or watching old derby videos.
Walters won’t be running in a derby, because there won’t be one to run in.
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The COVID-19 pandemic has played havoc with county fairs around the state this year, with many being postponed or cancelled outright. Johnson County will still hold some traditional fair events, including the 4-H exhibitions, with restricted attendance, but grandstand events like the demolition derby are not being held.
With precious few events on the calendar this year, how are the county’s collision enthusiasts passing the time?
“Well, everybody’s just drinking,” local derby promoter Charlie O’Connor said half-jokingly.
Most drivers are spending at least some of the idle days in the shop, taking advantage of the extra time to prepare cars for whenever they’re able to run them. Walters and his son, Damian, have multiple cars sitting in their garage ready to go.
For guys who are used to having to revamp vehicles during the week or even overnight, the extended hiatus has provided an opportunity to experiment and add some new reinforcements to their vehicles.
“It is a luxury,” Mike Walters said. “More time, you start nitpicking at them, doing everything that you can to be competitive. That’s what it’s about, being competitive. The more time you spend on a car, the more competitive you’re going to be.”
“It just gets you in the shop and gets you more creative on different things you can do,” Edinburgh driver Zach Pendleton added. “Trying to bend different places and cut different places or add different places that you didn’t think about before.”
For many county competitors, the next event on the horizon is the River City Rampage, a massive derby held each year in Henry, Illinois. Normally set in May, that event has been pushed back to Sept. 24-25.
There had been some talk locally about wanting to hold a derby at the Johnson County Fairgrounds that weekend in conjunction with Franklin’s annual fall festival. But with the River City Rampage offering a $10,000 prize, few locals were likely to stay home to chase a mere fraction of that.
“Which would you go to?” Walters asked rhetorically.
Some derbies are still tentatively scheduled before September; Pendleton plans to run in the Freedom Bash Demo in Connersville on Saturday and another at the Lawrence County fair in Bedford on July 18. But many promoters have shied away from setting anything up this year.
O’Connor didn’t bother to purchase insurance for this year once the pandemic started shutting things down, and he can’t foresee any situation convincing him to change his mind as long as social distancing prevents grandstands from being full.
“The problem with doing a derby without fans is, without the fans, you don’t make any money,” he said. “You’ve got to have fans in the stands to help pay the bills and cover the purses.”
Had Johnson County’s derby been a go, O’Connor believes that it would have drawn a large field of cars since it would have been one of the first ones of the summer.
“We had one hell of a show planned for this year,” he said. “I used to run back in the day when we ran 72 cars a night, and it would have been bigger than that, even.”
Instead, many drivers will continue tweaking their cars and trying to stay patient until they have an opportunity to smash into one another.
That patience seems to be wearing thin, though.
“Everybody’s dying on the vine, wants to get out and tear some stuff up,” O’Connor said.
“We’re all chewing at the bit really bad to get out in the ring,” Walters agreed. “I’ve been doing this since I was 18 or 19. We’re ready to run.”
