By MONTE DUTTON

Time stands still.

I do a lot of thinking. And reading. And watching old movies. And playing my guitar. I had big plans for today. As it turned out, I never left the house. It’s been a moribund day. TCM ran a series of Tab Hunter movies. The Red Sox have won nine straight games, but I haven’t watched any of them.

Until impending business affairs resolve themselves – and I get enough money to afford a lifestyle based on more than Dollar Tree and $10 worth of gas at a time – I’m doing more thinking than anything else, and thinking is free if a man doesn’t rely on artificial intelligence too much.

I don’t like NASCAR races on street circuits. Stock cars are too ungainly to race where there are barriers bordering both sides of the course. Maybe it’s because I’ve never been to one. I always enjoyed going to Watkins Glen and Sears Point.

One doesn’t often think of Wine Country where NASCAR is concerned. When I wrote regularly about NASCAR, it was common to get invited to a fancy winery. The samples were wasted on me. The only difference I can tell between Paul Masson and Boone’s Farm is the headache the next morning. Then again, I haven’t had a swig of Boone’s Farm or Ripple since I was, oh, 20.

I’d come home from Sonoma with a bottle of wine I’d gift somebody when I got home. One year at North Wilkesboro, the media gift was a Mason jar of moonshine. That was a long time ago. As I recall, I drank it at a bachelor party back when I had friends young enough to get married.

The best road racer I ever saw in NASCAR was Tim Richmond.

Not having to use a clutch (the Jerico transmission arrived in the 1990s) made it much easier for oval veterans. Shane Van Gisbergen still doesn’t use one, so a clutch must be a bit of an advantage. My favorite road racer was Marcos Ambrose. The most accomplished was probably Juan Pablo Montoya. Among the oval-track standouts, Jeff Gordon and Tony Stewart put on a great show racing each other.

I watched a movie I had never seen. In fact, I had never heard of it.

“The Straight Story” is like no other David Lynch movie. It’s based on a true story about an elderly man who rode a riding mower (pulling a trailer) 240 miles, from Laurens, Iowa, to Mount Zion, Wis., to see his estranged brother. The brothers are Alvin (Richard Farnsworth) and Lyle (Harry Dean Stanton) Straight, and Farnsworth was nominated for Best Actor at the 1999 Oscars.

Why did this movie touch me so much? Because I, too, have a brother I haven’t seen in 10 years, though I do not intend to ride a John Deere all the way to Virginia Beach, where Brack lives. It is, however, my intention to go see him as soon as I am able.

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