Goodbye Old Friend

A farewell to Dave Harkey 1959-2008



I just don’t know where to start.


For those that may not know, Mr. David Harkey of Shipman, IL passed away this past Saturday, April the 19th. I was greatly saddened to hear of his passing, and without really knowing what else to do, I decided to put some of my thoughts down in words, and send up a short tribute to him. Dave, as everyone called him, spent a good portion of his life as an employee of Bigfoot 4x4 of St. Louis, MO, and it was while he was working for them that I first met him in the summer of 2002.


I met Dave in the obscure town of Sheridan, WY one hot June afternoon in ’02. I had just begun writing my first weekly article for a monster truck website, and this show that I met Dave at was my very first as a “non-paying guest”; at that point, I could hardly refer to myself as “media”. Truth be told, I really didn’t know any of the other teams and drivers, nor did I know Dave when I showed up at the fairgrounds several hours before the show. But having been a Bigfoot fan my whole life, I figured Dave and his Bigfoot hauler would be the proper place to begin my afternoon. Dave was never a boisterous person; never the type to intentionally draw attention or a crowd towards himself. So it is no surprise looking back that I found Dave all alone, quietly and patiently cutting grooves into his racing tires. I approached him with a mixture of caution and awe; at that point in my career, anyone that was allowed to even touch a monster truck was pretty dang important to me. I introduced myself to him, and he put down what he was doing, smiled, and said with a smile in his semi-raspy voice “Well hey, I’m Dave Harkey.”


The usual pleasantries were exchanged, and after explaining “who I was”, we began to shoot the breeze. That’s it. Two guys drinking some soda pops, BS’ing about any and everything on a warm Saturday afternoon. Except, I was nobody and he was Dave Harkey, with his monster truck and all. I was impressed. That afternoon, Dave shared some key pointers with me that have stuck in my mind as though he said them to me yesterday. Advice for getting around in the pits without getting in the way, how to know if I’m bothering people, etc. You know, the good stuff. I’ll never for get that.


I had no clue at that point that almost exactly a year later, I’d be working for a team myself and running across Dave every now and then. It was always a pleasure to see him and to work alongside him, and we all know what a great feeling it is inside when someone important remembers us. Dave always gave me that feeling, every time I would run into him someplace on the road.


The winters of 2004 and 2005 sit fondly in the banks of my memory. At the time, the team I worked for was running the full Monster Nationals schedule, as was Dave and Bigfoot, and a host of other great trucks and drivers. I raced against, shot the breeze with, shared tools with, swapped stories with, ate breakfast, lunch, and dinner with, and pretty much lived side-by-side with Dave for many weekends in a row. Although we always wanted to beat him on-track and he wanted to beat us, it was impossible to not like the guy before and after the show. Dave’s laid back demeanor and quirky sense of humor were always welcome in an otherwise stressful pit area. I have no idea how he managed to keep such a pleasant mood towards friends and strangers alike when he alone supported the truck and transporter that he was assigned to. Looking back, I wish I would have done it more, but I tried to sneak in a bit of help to Dave every now and then when he was really struggling with something. Sometimes I couldn’t help simply because there was nothing to do, so I’d just stand there in the cold, or in the dark, or in the cold and dark and just sympathize with his situations. It seemed no matter the time of day or night, no matter how catastrophically messed up the situation was, Dave always kept a level head, and made sure to say “goodbye” before leaving.


Dave and Bigfoot stopped running the Monster Nationals tour after the 2005 season if I remember correctly; I do recall that I was saddened that he wouldn’t be around the tour anymore. That being the case, it was always a pleasure to catch up to Dave at the odd race or exhibition here or there. There was a sense of camaraderie that developed amongst the Monster Nationals crew of ’04 and ’05. We may have wanted to beat up on each other at the Monster Nationals shows, but if any of the group found themselves together at a “foreign” show or race faced against unfamiliar opponents, it was like an “us vs. them” mentality took over. Once, in Montreal, our team and Bigfoot with Dave driving were the only “hard-core” racers in the group (at least that’s how we saw it at the time), and we all sat around BS’ing the night before the show, mandating that we should “stick together” and win us the race the following night. Well, we did just that somehow, as Dave and my boss Mark Hall met in the finals, with Dave just nabbing Mark in the last turn. We congratulated Dave back in the pits after the race, and I remember him remarking after the show: “You know, it’s funny. All these great trucks and drivers come from all over the place, and here a pair of trucks and drivers that live only three hours away from each other, drive aaaaallll the way up here just to do the same thing we’ve been doing all winter long!” I know my team didn’t win that night, but silly as it may sound, I was proud of us, and of Dave that night.


The years rolled by, and though I seemed to see Dave less and less, it was always fun catching up with him each December at the MTRA Banquet in St. Louis. We would swap war stories, check up on how each others’ lives were going on, and vow that we’d do a better job of staying in touch. It’s funny how I look back now and realize that I felt closer to Dave than I do many of my own relatives. In fact, after doing some quick math Tuesday night, I realized that in the last five years I’d spent more time at an event of some kind with Dave than I had with my immediate family back in Wyoming. It’s funny, yet tragic at the same time, what the racing world does to families and friends. I guess eventually the friends just become family.


When I heard last spring that Dave had decided to retire from Bigfoot, I was somewhat heartbroken. I knew that Dave, like everyone, was getting older, and that the human body can only take so much abuse. I’m thankful that some of my fondest memories of Dave came at one of his last events; one that Dale, Travis, and I were at with him in Arkansas. We were blessed with good weather and an easy weekend of shows, so in lieu of that we all went back to our “stick together” mentality and parked all of our semis together in a “compound” outside in the pits. The daylight hours before the show were spent working the BBQ, talking, laughing, sharing some of Dave’s old war stories, and speculating about what the future might hold. I’ll never trade the fun we had that weekend, both on and off the race track, for anything. It was weekends like that that you almost didn’t want to end, ‘cause you knew that there wouldn’t be a show or a race that fun for a long time afterwards. Dave was a big part of what made that weekend fun.


Not long after that weekend, Dave moved on from Bigfoot and kinda dropped off my radar screen. I never forgot about him, and I always wondered how he was doing, but with so much craziness going on in our own lives, we tend to loose touch with those who aren’t right in front of us all the time. As the year progressed and my time as a team member in the industry expired, I found myself on the outside looking in, wondering where people like Dave had gone off to and how they were making it. As the MTRA Banquet rolled around, I excitedly hoped that he’d make a cameo appearance at some point, but alas, I never did see him there.


When I heard about Dave’s troubles late last week, my heart sank. I felt so bad for him; I knew that it couldn’t be the Dave that I had grown to know. I just knew that there had to be some kind of outside force pushing him into a corner. I don’t care what anyone says, or claims to know, or any of that; Dave Harkey was a good man, right down to his core. Nobody will ever change my mind on that.


As I sit here writing this, it breaks my heart even further to realize that our weekend with Dave last spring will go down as the last time I have seen my friend. It amazes me to think how many people Dave has touched over the course of his time on this Earth; how many checkered flags signed, how many miles traveled, how many smiles were made just because of Dave being Dave. Like I said…there are people who are hurting very badly right now…people that got to know Dave even better than I…but I miss him so. My condolences go out to all of Dave’s friends and family, from the bottom of my heart. Let this serve as a reminder to all of us who love this sport to do a bit of a better job of sticking together, keeping in touch, and watching out for our own. Let’s all carry on the good spirits that Dave always spread; let’s not forget him and his name; let’s not let something like this happen again, if we can stop it.


They say that time heals, and I hope it does for everyone. But not even time can erase the memories of our friends and family; I can tell you it won’t erase my memories of Dave. I hope you are off to a better place now Dave. Wherever you are, whoever is there with you should consider themselves lucky to be with you.



Goodbye , old friend.




-Kyle Doyle