Our 2021 season was unfortunately completely lost due to circumstances out of our control. And it’s a long, sad story.
For the first time since around 1989-90, no go-karts raced in the back of Galletta’s Greenhouse. Not even a single kart took a practice lap, let alone videotaped points races with several karts.
Why?
NOTE: Normally, this shouldn’t and wouldn’t be public knowledge, but it connects DIRECTLY to why we didn’t race.
It more or less started in Spring 2021, when head mechanic/track groomer Matt Stevens’ wife kidnapped their kids away from him and his eldest daughter’s school and hid at her parents’ house for 3 days.
(And it was over basically nothing… a Children’s Tylenol that grandma gave their youngest because she had a fever? This is what parents and grandparents do, not let their kids suffer with fevers, Lyme disease, and lice but judge others… but I digress). On top of this, the property owner (the kids’ grandma), believes that things… happen… over there and they shouldn’t be left there.
Matt was a nervous wreck over this, and the whole ordeal set him and his greenhouse work back quite a bit. After authorities (State Troopers, and CPS) were called in, they agreed to get back together.
While this was going on, CPS was utterly appalled at the water damage to the roof of their home. He and his wife needed to repair it or risk it getting condemned. The damage had slowly developed over a few years and sadly got neglected (Matt was busy with work and kids, Melissa was busy with work and… being apathetic and unwilling to invest in home upkeep), leading to basically a giant hole, which occurred from snow and ice buildup over the particularly rough and long winter.
But there’s a problem.
Melissa believes that the income she makes at her full-time job as a Teacher’s Aide (and child tax credit, COVID relief money, etc.) is hers and she takes zero responsibility for the roof over her, her children, and her husband’s head. It is completely Matt’s problem to her. He — with his extremely limited income as a seasonal greenhouse head grower (in a bad economy to boot) and stay-at-home dad — must pay for the repairs in full in her eyes, and guilt trips him over it.
Since he could not afford a roofer, he planned to do it himself (much like he often repairs his road vehicle for similar reasons).
The repairs were taking Matt all Summer, and Matt’s fear of heights along with his lack of knowledge of roofing meant that he was making almost no progress.
With Fall weather approaching, Matt’s brother Chris, sister-in-law Rung, and his mother Mary loaned them the $4,500 to pay for a professional roofer so the job was to be completed before the Winter. When we handed the money over, we distinctly said that Melissa is to pay it back and not Matt, as she works full time and Matt is a stay-at-home dad. Again, years later already, Matt cannot pay it back, and his wife had other things to spend money on that were more important (like, multiple daily deliveries for herself from Walmart, Amazon, flatbed tractor-trailer hauls from Lowe’s, UPS, USPS, Fed Ex, etc…).
GoFundMe
Matt has kept the karts and track running strong for 25+ years for no pay. Whatever nominal rental donations he gets, go completely to kart parts and gas. They do not cover his work, and most people don’t have the time to help him. We set up a GoFundMe if anyone wished to help Matt out and collectively help him pay his debt to his mom, brother, and sister-in-law.
And again, ANY should this be public knowledge? Normally it would not, but Melissa, her mother, and brother have made several threats towards us, gossiped lies, misinformation, disinformation, and gross exaggerations, to our friends and family on social media BEFORE and even AFTER this from 2010 to now… and — perhaps the most egregious of all — tried to get us in trouble with the authorities and fired from our contracted work as sushi chefs MULTIPLE times since at least 2016 and possibly before! So THIS is our defense and THE only reason it was ever put up publicly.
Back to Racing…?
We returned to regular racing in June 2022, and we are contemplating a way to “make up” the lost year by at some point having either two Point and Klassic Championships (or maybe a Mid-Summer Championship) to make up for our lost season. However, Matt’s track work vehicle died and we lost quite a few regular drivers, making it difficult to have more than a handful of races per season, so we were unable to have enough drivers to complete our 2022 Klassic, making two years in a row without one. Hopefully 2023 was better!
