The month of May. Part the second.

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.

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Greatest Spectacle In Racing, my left clavicle. This was something else entirely.

This was 1992, the Greatest Spectacle In I Can’t Feel My Feet. The Greatest Spectacle In Who Let November In Here? The Greatest Spectacle In ­­Used Spare Parts … or Hey, Let’s Torture The Andrettis Some More … or, down there at the end, No Soup For You, Scott Goodyear.

What you can say about the ’92 Indianapolis 500 is it was cold, it was gray, it was long and it was ugly. Aside from that, it was a lovely day.

Start with the weather.

Through four decades of Race Days, I never saw the like of it. There’d been smothering heat and torrential rain and, yes, even a tornado one year, but there was never anything like this.

The temperature when Race Day dawned was 48 degrees, with a windchill of 29. It warmed up all the way to 52 with a windchill of 39, by the halfway point of the race. And it created unshirted chaos; nearly half the race (85 laps) was run under caution as cold tires spun and people went sailing off into the wall on every restart.

Rick Mears crashed. Mario Andretti crashed. His son, Jeff, crashed. Tom Sneva crashed, Emerson Fittipaldi crashed, Jimmy Vasser crashed, Arie Luyendyk crashed.

Between lap 6 and lap 143, a dozen drivers turned their cars into lasagna against Indy’s unforgiving concrete. Of the first 122 laps, 68 were run under caution.

Finally, Michael Andretti’s fuel pump let go after he’d led 160 of the first 190 laps, the capper on a hideous day for one of Indy’s first families. And, after almost four hours, Al Unser Jr. outdragged Scott Goodyear to win by 0.043 seconds, the closest finish in Indy history.

It was as if the racing gods decided we all deserved a cookie after such a miserable day.

But 0.043 is not the relevant number here. Neither is 29 or 39 or 85.

The relevant number is 11:14.

Eleven-fourteen gave me the opening sentence of my column that day, as a clump of us media types huddled miserably outside Roberto Guerrero’s garage that morning. A side door opened and then closed. And in the brief moment it was open, we could see the Quaker State clock on the wall.

It read 11:14 a.m. And I had my starting point.

It’s 11:14 in the morning, and already we are waiting on Roberto Guerrero …

What happened was this: Guerrero, the polesitter, crashed out of the thing on the parade lap. Not on the pace lap, mind you. The PARADE LAP. Squeezed the throttle a skosh too hard over in turn two, cold tires spun on cold pavement, and, bang.

Game over, before it had even begun.

There are days at Indy when it’s not about the checkered flag or Victory Lane or the cold milk the winner invariably spills down his cheeks, as if winning has made him incapable of feeding himself. This was one of those days.

Here’s the thing about the 500: It’s a counter-intuitive event. Because of its geographically sprawling nature, you quickly learn the best way to see the big picture is not from the middle of it, but sequestered behind an acre of glass or in a tiny unadorned room in a tiny cinderblock building. It’s one of the few sporting events I know that’s best kept track of on a TV monitor, even if you’re there.

Sometimes, though, you need the little picture to illuminate the bigger one. And so you have to get out in the middle of it -- which is why, at 11:14 in the morning, there we were waiting on Roberto Guerrero. Because so much of what would shape the day began with him.

Oh, yeah. And in case you were wondering: No, I couldn’t feel my feet.