Just a Sunday drive

Twenty-five years on, I still have the photo, somewhere. It's in a box with a bunch of other photos in the back of a closet, a color print shot with a 35-millimeter camera.

(We still used actual film in those days, kiddos. Had to get it developed and everything. I know. I'm older than cave drawings.)

Anyway ... I shot this photo from behind the fence inside turn one at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, on a ridiculously mild August day in 1994. In it, a black-and-white stock car with a big "1" on it is diving into turn one, followed by 42 other stock cars. It's the start of the inaugural Brickyard 400, so I raised my camera, wanting to preserve a little history.

Twenty-five years on, it is history. In more ways than one.

The man driving the black-and-white No. 1, for instance, was Rick Mast, the polesitter for the first Brickyard. He's 62 years old now and has been retired from racing for 17 years. He led the first two laps of the race and never led again, finishing 22nd. It was fairly even par for a driver who answered the green for 364 Cup races and never won one of them. His best finish was a second at Rockingham that same year, '94.

NASCAR doesn't race at the Rock anymore. Hasn't for years.

So, yes, that day, that moment, is history now, and fast approaching ancient history. Jeff Gordon, who came of age as a racer eight miles down the road from IMS, won the inaugural Brickyard. He'd just turned 23. He's 48 now and retired from racing.

So is Dale Earnhardt Jr. He was 19 years old on the day of the first Brickyard, in which his legendary old man finished fifth. He wouldn't even reach NASCAR's top series for five more years. Yet he's been out of the car, mostly, since 2017, after running 631 races across almost two decades.

Like I said. We're talking a long time ago, that day in '94.

In the photo, for instance, that immense cliff of grandstand rising along the main straightaway forms the backdrop. It is an ocean of humanity, a carpet of living souls stretching as far as you can see. There were 250,000 of those souls there that day to see the first stock car race at the most iconic motorsports venue in the world, and the sound they made was like ocean surf breaking on a rocky shore.

I don't know what sort of sound they made yesterday, for the 26th running. Not that, surely.

That's because I turned on the race for awhile and no one was there, or at least what looked like no one in the immense expanse that is IMS. Whole stretches of grandstand -- the third turn, the north short chute, the north part of the seats behind the pits -- contained not a living soul. What fans there were in that immense cliff along the main straightaway were all in the upper deck; everyone else huddled in sad little clumps in the fourth turn and the south short chute.

Those who were there said all of that added up to 70,000 people. I'd say closer to 50,000, but I've never been much good at guessing crowds.

In any case, it wasn't '94. Hasn't been for a long time.

It was, instead, just another NASCAR Sunday drive, and Kevin Harvick won, starting from the pole and leading 118 laps while all that emptiness echoed around him. And I felt sad, as the flow of years and the changes it brings make all of us sad sometimes. The world of Aug. 6, 1994, the moment a man still in his 30s captured in a photo, is long gone.

I'm 64 now, for one thing. That young man in his 30s, that year and month and day when NASCAR brought 250,000 souls to Indy and was on the cusp of a mighty explosion: They're all, yes, ancient history.

Like those cave drawings, kiddos. Like that.