Indy in a vacuum

I wrote this today for my old employer, the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette. It's yet another chance for me 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 we'll never know how much we miss something until it's gone.
Here's the link. Sign up today.

So now I am back to race morning again, in the place where my memories live.

Down in the pits, the shadows still pool deep. Across that famous ribbon of asphalt, the morning sun paints the massive grandstands gold. And in those grandstands?

People. Masses and masses of  people, more people than you ever see or could ever count in one place anywhere, all of them talking at once and sending down a sound like the rumble of a train or storm-riled surf or the mutter of thunder a long way off.

There is no sound quite like it. There is no morning quite like it. And there will be no morning like it on  August 23.

That's when the Indianapolis 500 goes off in this pandemic-ravaged year, except it will not really be the 500. The Speedway announced today the race will be run without fans after all, despite the elaborate plans otherwise, despite what Roger Penske said back in June.

What he said was there would be no 500 without fans, because the 500 without fans would not be the 500. It would just be 33 maniacs driving really fast in a circle for three hours, trying to stay alive and maybe pour a bottle of milk on their head at the end.

Penske was absolutely right then. And he and the rest of the Speedway honchos are absolutely right now.

They are right because the plan to put close to 90,000 fans in the place, as sprawling an open prairie as it is, looked more like the Titanic bearing down on the iceberg with every passing day. Covid-19 was not going away, it seemed. In fact its spread was accelerating with every sandbar hoedown and mindless act of who-cares that thundered down the pike.

And so Covid-19, which in turn doesn't care, either, kept right on keepin' on. And Indiana's numbers crept into the top nine nationally. And finally IU Health, the largest healthcare provider in the state, piped up and said putting 90,000 humans in the Indianapolis Motor Speedway for the Indianapolis 500 probably was not a good idea.

The Speedway initially poohed-poohed that.

Tuesday it didn't.

Likely much of that had to do with the fact IU Health also is a major sponsor for the race, the bidness of professional sports being what it is.

And now I am back to race morning again. And I'm looking at a photo that hangs above the closet here in my den, a photo I have written about before on occasion.

It's a moment in time from some May afternoon in the late 1940s, not long after the war ended. Beneath a benevolent sky dotted with puffy white clouds, men in topcoats and fedoras walk toward a gate with a sign that reads "Indianapolis Motor Speedway Home of the 500 Mile Race."

To the right of the gate, two more men stand with their hands in their pockets, talking. Off to the left, a man on a motorcycle holds a spray of balloons. Two more vendors stand in the center foreground.

I can hear them calling out, as I look at that photo. And now I'm looking at it and trying to imagine it without those vendors, without the men in their topcoats and fedoras, without any human beings in the scene at all.

I can't do it.

And I'd hate it if I could.

And I'm going to hate it when I actually turn on the TV on August 23 and see all those grandstands stretching to the left and the right as far as the eye can see, filled with nothing but ghosts and echoes.

But you know what?

It can't be helped. Like so much else this strange dark summer, it just can't be helped.