By MONTE DUTTON

This is “dead week” for high-school sports, a term I’m surprised hasn’t been changed in this humorless age. It is not dead week for dogs because fireworks are going to be going off even if it’s hailing.

Tuesday is Independence Day, which occurs with unerring reliability on the Fourth of July.

Let freedom ring, or at the very least, explode.

This week used to be reliable for me. Every year I was in Daytona Beach, Fla., which I liked because it reminded me of the Myrtle Beach of my youth. The race once started at 10 a.m., but it was 11 when I arrived on the scene. It was the best trip of the year. Cover a race and be on the beach by 4 o’clock.

Then they started racing it at night, and one year wildfires moved it, and now it’s not even around the Fourth anymore. Alphabetize it in the encyclopedia of things that have changed.

I wonder if Daytona Beach even allows firecrackers anymore. Probably so, since most everything else is.

Recent sporting events make me want to find the sketch pad. The United States Open golf tournament had L.A. high-rises as a backdrop, and NASCAR is racing through the streets of Chicago.

I wrote about races in “Chicagoland,” which is approximately the entire Midwest. The first year there I thought I was looking through my binoculars at a Chicago skyscraper. Upon further review, it was a distant silo.

Chicago is a bustling city. New York City never sleeps. San Francisco is a diverse city. Los Angeles is the American Dream where something has gone desperately wrong. Everybody’s somebody in Luchenbach, Texas.

Every single car on every single track where a driver must lift off the accelerator, the car behind gains on the car in front entering a turn. The car in front must slow down first. The car in front regains the ground because it regains speed first. Yet every time it happens on TV or radio, the announcers seem astonished.

One aspect of small-town life is the knowledge that everyone bumps into one another. Last week I bumped into a high-school classmate and was shocked I hadn’t bumped into him in so long. There are bumps I dread, but it was no different on The Andy Griffith Show.

Country music was better when the singers were uglier. I have a theory that the kids who don’t make it in Nashville wind up as TV anchors. Or maybe it’s vice-versa.

I keep hearing that “the fans came out in droves.” Perhaps I should start measuring crowds in terms of droves instead of people. In front of a crowd estimated at 4.7 droves, Ragweed edged Dandelion, 28-23, on Friday night at The Pasture.

I’ve written a baseball novel, The Latter Days, that can be purchased inexpensively at MonteDutton.net, along with other books I’ve written over the years. Insofar as local sports are concerned, you can contribute to the coverage here by contributing either as a patron or by sending a check to DHK Sports, P.O. Box 768, Clinton, S.C. 29325.