NASCAR mania
Earnhart, Stewart, Johnson, Waltrip, Neuman, Wallace, Martin, Gordon...if these names mean nothing to you then you probably don't need to read any further because you're not a NASCAR fan. Then again you might just like to ponder silly things like this, as I'm doing this morning out on my porch.
When I was twenty (some forty odd years ago) I got over my lead foot days when I blew the engine in my first car. Now I've become a NASCAR fan and sitting here pondering the reasons why--why would I, an old fart well into his sixties, suddenly develope an interest in the banal sport of automobile racing? Have I become a victum of hype? What impels me to drop everything else on Sunday afternoons to sit before the boob tube and watch modified, shiney and gaudily panted cars going round and round an oval tract for three or four hours?
I remember a period in my thirties when I was living in Colorado, I got hooked on football. I spent nearly a decade of rooting for the Denver Broncos until time and circumstance caused a move to Texas and the excitement faded away.
NASCAR stadiums now have crowds of spectators numbering in the hundred thousands. Major corporations shower advertising bucks down on NASCAR like confetti at a Hero's parade. Where once stock cars were the domain of barnyard mechanics and pit crews were made up of fathers, brothers or hang-around-the-garage types, crews now are 'specialists': six to eight well-trained men who can change all four tires, fill the gas tank, make driving adjustments to the undercarriage and have a car in and out of 'Pit Row' in less than fifteen seconds and have a contest that awards the top team a million bucks each year. The top drivers, besides winning a lot of money, also sideline making commercials. The hype includes America's fascination with staying young (and phobia about aging) by naming the newer, hot NASCAR drivers 'The Young Guns'.
And there's also the vicarious thrill of the wreck, much like the oh's and ah's the crowds at a football game gasp out when a player is carried off the field.
I reckon I'm just as 'Americanized' as the next fellow (although it is an irritating thought) so I'll just let this go by admitting I'm hooked (at least for the time being) on NASCAR. Besides, I have a remote and can switch channels during the commercials to whatever golf tournament is on --they usually coincide quite nicely. I've always been hooked on golf--that's Jack Nicholas and Arnold Palmer's fault. Well, it was--now it's Tiger Woods and Phil Michelson's fault.
When I was twenty (some forty odd years ago) I got over my lead foot days when I blew the engine in my first car. Now I've become a NASCAR fan and sitting here pondering the reasons why--why would I, an old fart well into his sixties, suddenly develope an interest in the banal sport of automobile racing? Have I become a victum of hype? What impels me to drop everything else on Sunday afternoons to sit before the boob tube and watch modified, shiney and gaudily panted cars going round and round an oval tract for three or four hours?
I remember a period in my thirties when I was living in Colorado, I got hooked on football. I spent nearly a decade of rooting for the Denver Broncos until time and circumstance caused a move to Texas and the excitement faded away.
NASCAR stadiums now have crowds of spectators numbering in the hundred thousands. Major corporations shower advertising bucks down on NASCAR like confetti at a Hero's parade. Where once stock cars were the domain of barnyard mechanics and pit crews were made up of fathers, brothers or hang-around-the-garage types, crews now are 'specialists': six to eight well-trained men who can change all four tires, fill the gas tank, make driving adjustments to the undercarriage and have a car in and out of 'Pit Row' in less than fifteen seconds and have a contest that awards the top team a million bucks each year. The top drivers, besides winning a lot of money, also sideline making commercials. The hype includes America's fascination with staying young (and phobia about aging) by naming the newer, hot NASCAR drivers 'The Young Guns'.
And there's also the vicarious thrill of the wreck, much like the oh's and ah's the crowds at a football game gasp out when a player is carried off the field.
I reckon I'm just as 'Americanized' as the next fellow (although it is an irritating thought) so I'll just let this go by admitting I'm hooked (at least for the time being) on NASCAR. Besides, I have a remote and can switch channels during the commercials to whatever golf tournament is on --they usually coincide quite nicely. I've always been hooked on golf--that's Jack Nicholas and Arnold Palmer's fault. Well, it was--now it's Tiger Woods and Phil Michelson's fault.
posted by porchwise at 6:04 AM
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