Kerry Earnhardt's Hometown History Tour: Growing Up Adopted & Meeting His Father Dale Earnhardt

about two two and a half hours trying to build up the courage to walk out back to the race shop to meet my dad for the first time here comes this truck pulls in get in the truck and dad at K and my Aunt Kathy now I'm kind of wanting to know more well I don't think this video really needs much of an introduction what are we doing here hey I'm carry on Hart okay remember me we're heading out to my hometown where I grew up it's a little place called enable North Carolina it's in Kannapolis I'm gonna give you my little history of my life growing up you know there's really not that much information about you prior to like racing late models and stuff like I think the youngest picture of you I can find on Google you already had a mustache yep there wasn't a lot out there I put some out with a couple people and uh did the dirty Moe download with Dale Jr and I did something with Claire B Lane years and years ago on XM Radio he really never told my life story outside of that Claire B was the most in-depth I've ever got they aired it and it had a lot of good reviews so must have done something right I know we get to see where those stories take place yes no one got to see these so this is when you were growing up as Carrie key yes this is what I was carry key so you know my mom and dad separated when I was about two two and a half years old and then my mom met this other guy named Jack key and they dated and got married and he adopted me when I was three and a half four years old so I grew up as Carrie key didn't really know much about my dad and all that stuff so this is a little area where I rode bicycles around all the time I had a buddy I went to high school with lived back there and we worked on little Porsches and Volkswagens kind of tuned them up and did some Baja buggies out of a couple of them had a little track in his backyard we raced around a lot all this area right here is where I rode bicycles around and tormented neighbors and people around here cut through their yards a lot of times and got yelled at and remember this is many many years ago so a lot has changed since then so this is the home from the time I remember growing up this is the first home I remember we had a house before this but I think I was four or five years old when we moved into the trailer park what year was this man don't ask me that wait you were born with 16 469 so 70 four or five so this big tree we're coming up on here at a little trailer that's got the brown big stripe on it that's where I grew up is that the same one that's the same one the same trailer a lot older and that little addition on the backside wasn't there a lot older and a little dirtier than it used to be so that's where we grew up and this field across the road is where we run around playing ball and throwing Frisbees and everything like that ride the school bus and we'd come through here and drop kids off and I had to stay on the bus and go to what used to be Peter Pan daycare which I really loved because the people that are at Pete Marie Walker were super nice people and it's all gone now but this used to be all playground and it went way back up to the other Road over there the house used to be right here that we would go and have lunch and snacks and everything had a big basement and then some I don't know it's like a modular home there now but this was the old fence that we used to do work in the front yard me and a couple of boys would rate yard and mow the grass and everything you know one time we was out there wrecking yard to have watermelon and this van come by and we decided we're going to throw Ryan at the van get away with it well I hit the van and they say I know it Slams on bricks and puts in reverse and we take off running and they had this huge tractor tire on the playground of course I'd jump inside of it and hide inside the Tire man and another buddy of mine Danny Horton We've ran in there and in my now he's married to my cousin Sonny Langsford he went to another location I forgot where he went but he went and hid had a lot of good times a lot of weapons Hickory switches were you under the impression that Jack was your dad yeah and they you know I had a great life we we fished he took me fishing a lot he loved golf so yeah we got play golf a little bit hitting golf balls and stuff and as I got older up in high school he got he ran he leased land and it was a driving range for you know hit golf balls so I worked there after I get off from high school this was a route we took on our bus route this used to be all but a dirt filled with ruts we'd ride motorcycles at all this right here back side of my mom's house that I talked him into Vines over here I'm getting to so we'd ride the bus around through here and we I was always wanting to get out of the trailer because yeah I just didn't like trailers I didn't feel safe in a trailer another neat story there's a lake right down there I don't know if you'll be able to see it back in there yeah back in there that's Kannapolis Lake so this house right here with the red car is the house we drove by every time on the school bus and it had a four shell sign in it front yard and I kept talking to Mom about buying a house buying a house moving out a trailer and I told her about this house so so she got with a realtor and we come up here and we looked at it and her and my dad Jack bought it so we moved from the trailer park to a brick house huh we actually had a home now how old were you when that happened ah I think I was six seven years old six years old did you have your own bedroom yes I had my own bedroom and it was this corner bedroom right here the corner windows that was my bedroom and the window beside it next to the front door was my sister Janine key JJ's what we call her JJ was short for Janet Janine because I couldn't say Janet Janine and so she stayed in that bedroom and then that back corner was my mom and dad Jack's bedroom in the front is the living room and so since then my mom has passed away um about three years ago and they sold the house and they got new people living there now so she lived there oh I went through High School everything living there I actually moved out of there got married and the first try so I was 18 years old when I moved out so yeah I lived there until I was 18. and a lot of fun story back to that Lake we moved into here I didn't realize the lake was right here about 150 yards away from the house so I would come in and either go through these Woods right here or go down to that house with the red Suburban down there and sneak in behind there it was a buddy of mine I went to school with we'd sneak in down through there and go down to the little Cove that come back off the lake and go down there fishing and there's no fishing there there's no trespassing so we'd always get chased we'd see the plane fly over and they have a little light on the bottom plane they'd turn on when it was above us and here come a boat with the game warden coming down through here security guy of what I call him yeah they caught him tiny but he was probably 350 pounds so all he could do is drive a boat so we knew we had it pretty easy with him so we'd always run away and get away from it but we caught a lot of fish there and one time there was about five of us down there fishing there's a little place you cross the Cove down there you walk across about Knee Deep and I walked across me and a buddy of mine named James Robinette and walked across a couple other guys down there Jeff trees a real good friend of mine and his cousin Chad were on this side and another friend over there stayed on this side the plane come over and I was like oh man we gotta go well Jeff trees lived in that direction so him and Chad come across the Cove went up through the woods towards your house and I was going to walk down the back of the cove and come out way down about three more houses down past that red Suburban so I get away well we was walking down through there me and James and he was behind me and I seen this guy squatting behind the trails hey how you doing I seen the badge and he was a police officer it's like James run so I turn around and ran right in James the next thing I know there's three cops on us so we got caught finally yeah and I was 15 years old then about to turn 16. and so we got hauled out they actually took us out to the way James and them went first they handcuffed me and James around the pine tree I was on one side they hadn't kept us in the officer that sat with us it was his last week and I kept trying to talk him into letting us go and he wouldn't do it I was like tell him we escaped or something I don't know but he wouldn't let us go so he ended up taking us out putting us in a police car and carrying us to the police department my mom worked third shift so she was asleep and James's dad he was a truck driver so he was on the road and he just got in so he was asleep and so we got stations like he got one call Who you gonna call so I called my mom of course she didn't answer because we didn't want to call James's dad because he's a big mean guy now he was a nice guy but I knew it was going to be rough we had to call him so he ended up having to call him and waking him up and he came and got us it took him a while but he probably showed up and got us and got us out of jail Billy wasn't in jail but we sit in office when we got out I was like where's my fishing rods because I had five fishing rods and I had three and James had two of them I said where's my fish rods I said well you know we've got a couple of them but we broke two of them so you broke two of my rods y'all got to pay for that so there's like no I said y'all were trespassing I said oh that's my rides you got to pay for the end buying me two new rides please for me so I got two new rides out of it and it was fun because I would sit here and watch you know the patrol cars come by whenever I knew people were down there fishing and we'd wait till the police officers left and I'd go down and walk the banks and find fishing rods and stuff where people would leave them running from the law so it was a lot of fun all these years I was sneaking in fishing at this Lake and this that's a well-known Lake for big fish a lot of big crappy two to three sometimes four Pounders out of there they asked for eight to ten pounds which is really big for a lake like yes and this is a reservoir where the Town gets the water from so that's why it was illegal to fish in it so I grew up on these roads here of course you see these Hills we had a lot of good sledding a lot of good bicycle riding and we'd always put a barrel out here and have a fire burning for the people sledding in the neighborhood did it snow every winter oh yeah it snowed a lot every winter and then so after time he left after we got caught tiny ended up leaving and uh Mr Black lived right here he had two daughters I went to school with Kim and Kelly black they were twins well he ended up being the gay Warden and he was mean he write his own Mama a ticket so we didn't fish much after that then by then I had my license and I was able to drive around to go High Rock Lake Norman wherever fishing so me and James my buddy would get off school on Fridays and take off to High Rock most of the time and fish up the High Rock on the banks you think he would have gotten as into fishing as you were if you didn't move into that house or have access to it like that yeah I was into fishing and like I said my dad Jack he took me fishing all the time we'd go all these little farm ponds and fish and you'd pay like two bucks and go in there and fish all however many people you had with you I always grew up fishing never did hunt with my stepdad or my dad Jack now I'm take you out and show you the schools and tell you some of the stories about the schools this Channel and doing these videos is our full-time job it's a lot of work and we'd like it to grow if you're enjoying this stuff it would cost absolutely nothing for you to help us by hitting the thumbs up button on this and if you're watching on a TV which statistically happy you are maybe you could pull out your phone or go into a desktop and leave a thumbs up the furthest I would ride to we'd ride up this store right here on the corner we had five different stores we could go to so we hit all of them during the week and this little building right here on the left is my elementary school it was enable elementary and in 2021 they closed the elementary school down and now I say church family life building and it was K through sixth some mean teachers and a lot of time with the mean kind of in-school suspension back then where you get in trouble you had to go to this classroom and do all your work and not even look at nobody I did that too Mr Eisenhower big old Feller and he was also a Kannapolis Police Officer at the time too so he would do this during the day and then go to work in the police department in the evenings and he he was a nice guy but he was mean if you were mean and got in trouble and the one time I'm a member of our teachers we had with this this school we changed classes we didn't stay in one classroom we would go to like a history of English and math and different classes like that and we had a math teacher she was really nice I loved her to death and I love math too so that might have been why it was her birthday so one of the students brought cakes this girl she brought cakes for her birthday for the class to eat her mom made but she didn't have no candles so me and a couple guys on the back side was her classroom we've jumped out of the window in their stores right there so we ran over there and we bought some candles from the store and come back and climb back in the window as we climb back in she'd come back into the classroom and caught us and it was for her birthday but we still got in trouble and that's one of the times I had to go to see Mr Eisenhower SS so we had a lot of fun and I can remember one time we were sitting here in a classroom right there next to the door right at that little Archway was my English teacher and I didn't like her too well she was mean a lot of main people here oh yeah a lot of mean people and she was really mean we think she had a night some kind of night activities going on that she did to make up for her pay or something I don't know if you know what I mean yeah she'd always kind of I'm as bad about not doing homework like I said I got off school and jumped on the bicycle and I got home and took off for the evenings and really didn't do homework so she come around and she's checking homework so I ain't got money she said you haven't learned anything either you know the ain't is not a word I see you watch one day it will be the dictionary I say it will be and now it is so I don't know if I had anything to do with that but you're a finder and tell her you told herself no I haven't seen her Miss Hedrick was her name I hadn't seen her after that and she was redheaded um pretty lady but she was mean and one time I was sitting there in classroom and I was looking out the window and just staring and daydreaming like I always do and a band came by and I had to backtrack later in the show here to tell about the story but a van came by and it was a blue and yellow van and this is at the time I was in the sixth grade and I kind of knew about my life what had happened with you know Jack adopted me and I had a dad out there and you know I knew who he was I'd done talked to him on the phone by this time that's all I did is got to talk to him on phone well a van came by and it was a blue and yellow van and he drove for Wrangler back then I always uh I wonder if that was him just checking you know right by checking on me and I never knew I never found out but I don't think he ever had a blue and yellow fan I think it was just coincidence we'll have to get that story later because it's a little out of the way to be able to do the route I want to do to be with everything sixth grade well I was going into my sixth grade year it was during in between the year fifth and sixth grade during the summer that I learned about my dad and got to talk to him on the phone which snuck off because my stepdad Jack he didn't want anything to do with me having a new any communication with my dad or anything so my dad's sister or brother Danny Earnhardt his wife Sherry or heart and my mom were real good friends and so one time we got slipped off to Sherry and Danny's house and Sherry had set it up where I could call and talk to Dad and so we had a little conversation and you know Mom we went in there and Sherry called and put me on the phone with him and I said hello and he said hey how you doing what's good there wasn't much to talk about because we really didn't know each other and no you know I didn't know what to ask him I was going into the sixth grade so I was young I had no clue what kind of questions to ask but we had a little small talk and he said hopefully we'll try to get to see each other sometime I said okay awesome we'll see I don't know if that'll happen but we'll see and that was it well that Christmas I ended up getting a present from Santa Claus but I found out it was from Dad it was a racetrack with an electric race tracks you sit there in control with the little finger fly cars and you had a little yeah slot car track so I played with that thing and it was of course you know had all the race cars and one of them disappeared one time it was the number three car that disappeared I don't know how but I feel like I do but I play with that thing into it wouldn't work no more and so that Lake I was telling you about officially and that's it right there that's Kannapolis Lake it's got a golf course on it so you said your Mom and Daddy's wife were friends did you ever meet Danny when you were younger not knowing that he was actually her uncle no whenever I went to you know called dads and talk to him for the first time on the phone that Danny was there too so I got I knew Danny because Sherry and Mama being friends um I didn't really know about the relationship I just thought it was friends but as you know I got to learn about Dad or who my dad really was my real dad was I learned then that Danny or Danny was my uncle my Mom finally told me all about all that and of course it was a secret deal I couldn't talk about it because of my dad's act I'm trying to figure out what's better if the like because it's like later here but then it's halfway across your face so I'm not sure it cuts off and so after that learning about you know who my dad was my my blood father I guess you call it you know I met Uncle Danny and knowing he's my uncle and got to hang out with him and you know we really didn't go off doing things we just kind of went to her house of time too and hung out and ate dinner and stuff like that when you were born where were they living at man I don't know that that's what I'm saying that trailer is the first house I know I remember anything about and I know it was a little white house but I don't know where it was at because I saw pictures of it actually I saw a picture of my papa Ralph holding me when I was I mean I was I wasn't even walking or maybe just the learning to walk at that time whenever he helped me in that picture but that's all I have is that picture and I don't know where it's at now because look some of my mom's passed and my sister JJ took care of all the papers and pictures and everything and it's funny how events in life happens and you know people spread out and go different ways and you'll like I ain't talked my sister JJ and a couple years just you know the way things go life goes different way ways you know we're on the road all the time with my daughter Kayla rodeoing and she's out in Oklahoma so she's between Oklahoma Texas to Kansas radio and we try to hit all of them to support herb I'm…