By MONTE DUTTON

I don’t often spend as much time in a day and night watching automobile races anymore.

Once the Xfinity race in Daytona Beach, Fla., had been rained out on Saturday and rained out at 11 a.m. Monday and finally conducted sometime around 9 p.m., I had most of a whole day to dedicate myself to other concerns such as reading, writing and researching online.

This kind of NASCAR injection would be lethal to some folks, but I still have some of the muscle memory from two decades at the circus.

Thrills! Chills! See the world’s greatest drivers cheat death at every turn!

At the end of the Daytona 500, won by William Byron, fireworks went off, and I thought to myself that the ones in the wrecks were better. More smoke, as much fire, only slightly less coordinated.

Had I been there, it would have scared me. That’s because, for the first half of my 20 seasons on the NASCAR beat, sometimes drivers who drove like that got killed or injured severely.

At the first Daytona 500 I ever saw, Richard Petty crashed horribly right in front of where I was sitting. His Pontiac spun like a top, ripping away shards of cable from the protective fence. Petty’s car came to a stop after having been rammed in the driver’s side after it came down on the ground. Fans piled on top of one another behind the fence, reminding me of a colony of ants, looking for a sign that The King was still reigning.

He’s okay! Yay!

At that moment, I realized that fans of auto racing did not gather from all over the world to see death. They came to see death defied. It was the same reason they followed Evel Knievel, astronauts and Ringling Brothers Barnum & Bailey Circus.

Thankfully, on Friday night during the Truck race, and on Monday during the marathon, TV provided a unanimous roll call of “examined and released.” Drivers walked out of the infield care center and discussed their brutal crashes as if they were dissecting moves in a chess match.

A synopsis of all the remarks added up to the universal answer, Hey, that’s racing, which is exceeded in the jargon of sports only by, Hey, that’s baseball.

The drivers are without fear. Some of them aren’t old enough. The vehicles are drastically safer, and all the daredevils are supremely confident in the protections of life and limb.

When it was all over, I kept on thinking about things that used to be and are seldom used anymore.

Toothpicks. Bubble-gum machines. Cap guns. Iodine and Merthiolate. Glass bottles. Paper sacks. Books.

A fellow might choke on a toothpick. An assault weapon? No problem.

For going on three weeks, I’ve been suffering from shingles, which has curtailed my live coverage. I was suffering. Now I’m just aggravated. I did have splitting headaches. Now they’re fairly mild. The rash is mainly a remnant.

At least one story has been posted for 38 days, a record for the site.

I still don’t feel so hot. Shingles has also knocked me off my financial rocker. I’m strapped for cash but still writing as hard and resourcefully as I can.

I apologize for boring you with more health updates than the Secretary of Defense, but I feel guilty at not getting out more.

A couple contributions arrived over the weekend. I can’t express my gratitude enough.

Blue, Green, Purple & Red cannot solely be funded by advertising. There’s not enough room. If you like the coverage, please donate whatever you consider appropriate via Venmo at DHK Sports. If you choose, make a monthly donation via Patreon. The Laurens County site is here. The Furman site is here.

Support the advertisers. They are all fine people who appreciate my attempts to restore coverage of local sports, however futile they may be.

In the off chance anyone would like to read my novels, they’re available on Amazon and many prominent bookseller sites.

Photo galleries are posted on Instagram @furmanatt and @laurenscountysports.

Thanks for your support.