Replies

FIRST race of the year, the 500 at Daytona, I'm standing next to Nascar dad for the anthem. Takes off his sunglasses, holds his hand over his heart. He's a big man, 40's, 6-foot-3, a gut-sprung 225, biker leather head to toe and a beard on him like ZZ Rasputin.
Comes to the end of our national song, 250,000 people shouting and applauding, flags snapping everywhere, and a sound rumbles low up out of the ovation and comes down out of the sky and breaks out of the clouds like a thunderclap. It's the pre-race flyover, four F-16's with the burners lit, 200 feet off the deck at 400 miles an hour and the crowd goes crazy. The sky cracks and the smell of jet exhaust fouls the grandstands. I, sophisticated tourist sarcast, turn to Nascar dad, cock my eyebrow and shout, "Our tax dollars at work, huh?"
He looks down at me through the beard, blue-eyed and red-faced in the heat. "Damn straight," he says, "damn straight," as the tears roll down his cheeks.

This campy, cliched introduction reminds me of the sort of dribble Jayson Blair would write. I wondered if this really happened.