A brief flash of the normal

And then, Friday came.

The Cardinals were all traveling to Chicago in separate cars because the Bastard Plague had taken over their team.

The NBA, secure in its bubble, was getting ready for the playoffs, midway through August.

The NHL Stanley Cup playoffs, same deal.

America had become a carnival funhouse ruled by a mad king openly violating his Constitutional oath to openly rig an election in his favor.

And then ... Friday came.

And suddenly down in Indianapolis you could hear the angry whine of steroidal engines again, starting as a muttering rumor way up there in turn four and then building to a full-on howl down that long famous straightaway. And as the sun went down, all across the state, high school football players were lugging leather into the crush and fleeing down sidelines and generally gettin' after it.

It was a mid-August Friday night in Indiana, and you could almost imagine it was a normal mid-August Friday night.  It was a mid-August Friday at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, and you could almost imagine it was May and normal, too, and that all was right with this crazy world.

You heard the usual chatter coming out of Indy, and everything was regular, suddenly. People were jawing about boost and tows and Marco Andretti's 233.491 lap, and what a nerve-jangling thing qualifying is. And it could have been Tom Sneva busting 200 in 1977 or little Teo Fabi in 1983, or Arie Luyendyk's 236-plus record run in 1996.

And on those football fields?

The lights were up. Coaches were hollering. Watching a video clip, you could see a play coming toward you and almost hear the thud-thud-thud of all those pounding feet -- the rumble and stomp of teenage boys in buffalo pursuit of the football, a sound unique to Friday nights everywhere in August/September/October.

Regular. Yeah. That's what it almost was.

It's not, of course. The leadfoots tearing around Indy put up all those 230s in a vacuum, in front of no witnesses but their crews and fellow drivers. Those teenagers pounding after the football in all those scrimmages did so in a vacuum, too; there were no fans, and even the newsfolk allowed in to chronicle it were confined to a corner of the field, well away from the players and coaches.

And yet. And ... yet.

For a moment, you could pretend it wasn't 2020. You could pretend there was no Bastard Plague, no masks or social distancing, no mad king taking advantage of it all to do his damnedest to dismantle American democracy.

 It was just a moment. But it was glorious.