Saint Dale

Last year I enjoyed watching the Daytona 500 -- from someone who decries the autocentric, auto brutalized nature of our living arrangements, I like this race, I'm drawn to it. Among the things I want to do in my life, I want to attend this spectacle once.

While not exactly in the bible belt, Daytona, Florida very nearly falls inside its boundary. Guns, God, and NASCAR define much of the southeast. In many respects I consider myself fortunate that my parents just happened not to have been raised there. You can be assured that there wouldn't be a Franklin Monologues if they had.

This year's Daytona 500 held all the same enjoyment as watching flies fuck. The track was fully resurfaced during the winter, allowing drivers to bump draft, which really destroyed the race in my little, non-autocentric view. What was interesting, nonetheless, was the near-constant memorializing of Dale Earnhardt who died a decade ago Sunday on that same track.

All those fans holding up three fingers during the silent, third lap. This is how gods are created. The day he died is now considered Black Sunday. His number "3" was retired, never again to be used on a NAScar for the rest of humanity. His death, something of a martyrdom for NASCAR safety, has "saved" many others from following the same fate. A half million people know more of Dale's life than they do of Jesus (perhaps because all accounts sorta skip everything between 3 and 30.) Perhaps in a few hundred years the records on Senior will get fuzzy, too, and Saint Dale will have deemed to have risen after "3" days on Easter Tuesday.

I'm not making this stuff up...