Writer’s Journal
I Saw A Greater Spectacle After The Indy 500
A vignette regarding a tired walk back to the car
I recently went to the Indianapolis 500, which they call “the greatest spectacle in racing,” but on the walk back to the car, I saw an even greater spectacle: the streets of Speedway, Indiana.
The walk was about four blocks, but with a crowd of 300,000 people, that took quite a while. It is, all things considered, not a great area. If we want to talk infrastructure, well, we can’t — there is none. The roads are cracked, there is grass in the sidewalks, there are couches on front porches, and there is a cop on every corner.
But the people-watching is incredible, particularly when everyone is 10 beers deep and either angry or ecstatic about the outcome of the race.
There was one guy who I couldn’t keep my eyes off of. He wore an oversized, flat-brimmed baseball cap, and he had a little brother who followed him wherever he went. His brother has a hat equal in size on his much smaller head.
He’s smoking a cigarette- I watch him spit a tobacco-flavored loogie into the grass. His little brother does the same, with a similar amount of gravitas. He is the shit.
