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The paint bucket sat across the shop floor, and Dale Earnhardt ordered his kid to pick it up. It was bulky, the five-gallon kind, weighing every bit as much as the boy. Dale Earnhardt Jr. had no hope of picking it up, and he knew it, so the 8-year-old moped across the floor, questioning his old man's direction: How could Daddy ask this? Why does he gotta make me feel bad?
Daddy despised reluctance, especially from blood, and certainly from the boy who bore his name.
Dale Earnhardt—Ironhead, The Intimidator—had built a life, and ultimately a legend, on will. He was raised by a stock car pioneer, Ralph Earnhardt, at a time when even the best drivers raced to put food on the table. Ralph had worked his way through the textile mill and manhandled a hundred secondhand race cars around a hundred crappy little race tracks. So Dale's kids sure as hell weren't about to get off easy. When Dale Jr. did anything less than attack that bucket and grab it by the handle, his father found another way to motivate: He asked a shop hand to move it—right in front of his son.



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