It’s a mad, mad, mad, mad world*

By MONTE DUTTON

This day began as most days do, with me convincing this laptop I am human. All I had to do was identify three frames that had buses in them.

Oh, the humanity.

I got a text message warning me to pay immediately a traffic ticket I never got in North Carolina.

The Indiana Pacers are partially named for harness racers and partially for Indianapolis 500 pace cars. That’s what Wikipedia says, so it must be right.

Wikipedia is the reason writers never get to write, “And whatever happened to Sugar Bear Blanks?” anymore. Since his last season playing in Mexico for Azules de Coatzacoalcos, Larvell has concentrated on golf. When I was a teenager, he was a superstar for the Greenwood Braves and played in the bigs for Atlanta, Cleveland and Texas. He turned 75 on Jan. 28.

A man has to speak for himself. It doesn’t matter to the individual what gets the highest ratings. What matters is what’s the best team and what’s his or her team. I’m delighted the NBA is between the Oklahoma City Thunder and the Indiana Pacers. There may be more fans of the Knicks and Lakers, but all those big-city fans don’t love their teams a bit more than a Sooner or a Hoosier.

I guess I’m rooting for the Pacers because Indianapolis was one of my favorite cities to visit back in the NASCAR years.

As the teams went to the locker room at halftime, dozens of fans were leaning over rails with their hands held out, trying to get them slapped by the players trotting by. It made me think of what Harry Gant told me one time about autographs.

“Beats all I ever seen,” said the NASCAR driver when he was having his farewell tour. “These people will line up down the street in the pouring rain to get me to sign my name.

“I loved Elvis. I’d have liked to sing with him, but I didn’t care how he signed his name.”

When my tour with the NASCAR gypsies ended in 2013, once I started seeing both the forest and the trees, I realized that the drivers when I started writing about them – Mark Martin, Dale Earnhardt, Darrell Waltrip, Gant, Sterling Marlin, etc. — were nothing at all like the drivers when I finished.

I suppose it all started changing with Jeff Gordon, for whom, by the way, I have nothing but respect.

Part of it was I was getting older as the drivers were getting younger. They had all the talent money could buy, but it felt like I was interviewing JV football players.

It affected me so much that I developed a fictitious racer, Barrie Jarman, who combined youth and talent with the mischievous spirit I’d seen in the 1990s. I wrote two novels, Lightning in a Bottle and Life Gets Complicated, about Barrie. Of my nine novels, those are the only two that are connected to another. In most cases, when I write a book about people I made up, I’m tired of them by the time I get through.

Those novels – and several books about things that are for real – are available on Amazon.

It’s difficult for me to devote full attention to the ballgames – or my beloved old movies – because of the delightful catfight going on between President Trump and Elon Musk. Current events are similar to Mel Brooks movies right up to the time a tear falls down my cheek.