The month of May. Part the first.

I wrote this today for my old employer, the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette. It's the first in a series of columns that will run through the month of May. Because there will be no month of May as we know it, it's my recollections, from 40 years of covering the Indianapolis 500, of four of the more memorable ones. It's also my chance to throw in a plea for all good Blobophiles to subscribe to the JG, on account of local journalism is a vital public service and the hedge-fund vandals and corporate vultures are taking it away piece by excruciating piece.

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You always remember your first. People still say that, don’t they?

And so it’s May and the grass is green and the flowering trees in our yard are soft white ghosts against the dawdling twilight, and here I am. Here I am at Indy again.

That would be the Indianapolis Motor Speedway for the uninitiated, a vast sprawl of grandstand and lantern-jawed oval that comes with its own ghosts. One hundred and nine years of roaring bloodstained history have happened here, a century and change of the brave and the foolhardy chasing immortality and sometimes finding the end of their days instead.

Now their ghosts crowd close every May, and here I come into the mix: Twenty-two years old, Indy nerd, a kid sportswriter for the late lamented Anderson Daily Bulletin. And for the first time, I’m covering the Indianapolis 500.

The year is 1977, and if I know where I am, I have no idea what I’m doing. Naivete is the province of all just-turned-22-year-olds, but never more so than when the just-turned-22-year-old grew up loving Indy and now finds himself covering Indy.

And so I saw myself chatting up Mario Andretti over cups of espresso, just the two of us. Saw A.J. Foyt slapping me on the back and calling me “pard.” Saw Johnny Rutherford – good ol’ Lone Star JR – inviting me into his garage for a little bourbon and branch water; Gordon Johncock and Wally Dallenbach drop by, and there is manly talk of popoff valves and what the heck Danny Ongais thought he was doing entering turn three the other day.

None of this happens, of course.

What does happen, once that precious credential is draped around your neck like the Medal of Honor, is you park somewhere in the Great Plains of the infield. Then you follow the Oregon Trail to the media center – which, instead of the palatial suite you imagined, is a tiny, unadorned room in an unremarkable cinderblock building, jammed with long tables and raftered with cigarette smoke.

Lunch is no catered spread, but a Track Dog and some greasy fries grabbed from a vendor down in turn one.

So much for the glamour and romance of covering the Greatest Spectacle In Racing.

What I remember most about that first race day is the immensity of it, the numbing sound and sheer human mass. The reek of methanol – one my colleagues dubbed it “Speedway funk” -- boring a hole in your nasal cavities. The surf mutter of 300,000 people talking at once. The shattering blare of 33 rocket ships coming to the green; the merciless sun of a 90-degree day, the seventh-hottest 500 on record.

Somewhere in all of that, as I gasped from the pressbox across the track down to Gasoline Alley and back again through the heat and the humans, history was happening.

Janet Guthrie, the first woman ever to qualify for the 500, started in the middle of Row 9 and departed after 27 laps. Tom Sneva, who ran the first official 200-mph lap in qualifying, started on the pole.

And A.J. Foyt started second and won, inheriting the lead with 16 laps to run after Johncock, who had dominated all day, broke a crankshaft and drifted to a stop in turn one. It made A.J. the first four-time winner in the race’s 61-year history.

I never got close to him that day. I spent most of it chasing my sweating tail like the rookie I was; my biggest “get” was a quote from the famously reticent Ongais after he dropped out on the 90^th lap.

“Danny, what happened?” I inquired breathlessly as he race-walked through Gasoline Alley.

“Mechanical problems,” he said.

You heard it here first.

Later, trudging back through the infield, I encountered someone else with mechanical problems: A drunk sleeping it off beneath the front of a car, as if he were changing the oil.

The guy never moved. Neither did I, stuck in traffic again.

 But before I eventually got out that afternoon, I knew one thing.

I couldn’t wait to come back.