The spectacle of the Daytona 500 is buzzing on the TV in the distant background.

It’s still a habit of mine to start the race season.

The race and I have both changed. I don’t try to keep up anymore — not for long anyway.

This morning, when I realized the season started today, I thought about how we experienced it when I was young.

Sitting on a pew thinking, “C’mon preacher… green flag drops at 12:45.”

After lunch, if the weather was nice, the radio would go in the open window. The big three TV channels didn’t carry many races. The big ones, of course — but not many. Cable was barely available in town, a couple miles away. Satellite was something folks were just starting to talk about.

But the races were always on the radio.

Adults might sit in lawn chairs under the shade of the big oaks that surrounded the house. If it was a big family lunch, the menfolk — my dad and any other adult males — would sit and talk, read the newspaper, half-listening to the action. The women usually gathered at the table, talking and enjoying coffee. Kids were playing, reading, or otherwise occupied.

Engines humming through a speaker. Grease and gospel and summer air.

Later, I went to races occasionally.

I was a couple of years into photography when I went to the last big one. A Richmond race. We were living just a couple miles away. My brother had worked on the safety/maintenance crew at the raceway for years. This was his first race attending after retiring from that. He and his wife stayed with us, and we tagged along with the kind of access you don’t turn down.

I walked the pits. Rubbed elbows.

I watched Kyle Larson, in his rookie year…

start from the pole position — drift down in front of Clint Bowyer’s #15 — and get turned heading into the first corner on the first lap.

Welcome to Richmond.

We followed our plan and left after 20 laps or so.

I was satisfied with the images.

And the time.

I’ve shot some smaller tracks since then, but never a larger race.

I miss the days when drivers and families built something at home — in a shed or a yard — showed up on Saturday night or Sunday afternoon, and saw who could cheat the best.

And not get caught.

If push came to shove, it was blood, knuckles, and grease.

Some of that is still there.

But it’s evolved.

It’s big business now.

I’ll listen for a little while today. But I’ll probably drift away. The new formats. The restrictions. The polished edges.

My mind’s too cluttered to learn new names anyway.

But somewhere in the background, the hum of an engine still sounds like Sunday afternoons under the shade trees, when radio was enough.