Goldfish And Clowns

This post is originally from the NASCAR blog.

I saw a couple of things this past weekend worth mentioning.

Last Friday, I went down to Irvine in southern California to see a concert that was anything but just another rock’n’roll show.  (You can read the details here.)  It was a reunion, a celebration, a commemoration of what was and yet always is.  As one of the hosts noted, this was music that was the soundtrack of our faith.  Whether it was the joyous ‘80s synth-laden pop of Crumbächer, the punkish raw rock of the Altar Boys, the sophisticated textures of the Choir, or the somber power of Undercover, this was music that spoke to me on all levels during those heady days when everything seemed new and possible.  Here, for one evening, the music that is always alive was once more live, its creators having been through the fire yet still possessing the fire that gave their music and ministry life.

The artists that performed were not, and are not, wealthy people.  They didn’t sell millions of albums and play arenas packed with adoring fans.  No, they rode rickety buses and vans that any self-respecting junkyard would refuse permission to enter, sleeping on the floors of fans kind enough to take them in for the night before beginning the next day’s travel.  Their albums sold in handfuls compared to the “real” music world, their existence hand to mouth.  But they kept on playing, and preaching, and praying both with and for the faithful that would come out to see them perform anyplace that would let them play, no matter how many or few showed up on any given night.  They kept on until they could keep on no more, and then they usually laid their music aside in favor of finding something that offered the ability to regularly feed their families.  Yet through it all, through all the record company ripoffs and bad management and concert promoters lying about the evening’s take as they pocketed the lion’s share of the receipts, through all the broken promises and tough times and dark days, they kept the faith.  They keep it still.  And for this one wonderful evening, the people who loved them for what they did in the days of their youth were given the opportunity to once more share and taste how good it was then, and how sweet it is now to have kept the faith with the artists that live in their hearts.

Comparing such a powerful experience to NASCAR may seem trite, but there is a connecting thread.  Like the performers last Friday night whose names mean nothing to most yet whose sweat and blood formed the foundation of so much that now is commonplace in Christian music, it’s the oft-forgotten heroes of yesterday who gave life to today’s behemoth that is NASCAR.  Most of today’s fans know at least something of the giants of yesterday, of Richard Petty and David Pearson and Bobby Allison and many others.  However, there are so many more; names known only to the longtime faithful and patient historians willing to sift through mounds of yellowed clippings and collect the oral history of those who were there by those who were there.  They were the people who had the love, letting it shine at every race that would have never existed save for their labor.

These were the mechanics and track builders; the unknown drivers who put the wow in wild and wool in woolly from those days now forever gone.  They were the people who made NASCAR the working person’s sport, for they were working people themselves.  They were NASCAR; a living, breathing cast of characters no Hollywood scriptwriter would dare suggest for fear of being laughed out of the business due to having proposed such a preposterous cast of unbelievable souls.  Yet they were eminently believable, for they were real.  Sometimes all too real.

You see, the other thing I saw came Sunday evening on my way home while driving up the straight-edge dullness that is I-5 through the Central Valley, one almond tree grove after another on either side of the freeway occasionally interrupted by pasture or rows of grapevines doing little to break the drive’s monotony.  As I glanced out the window halfway between no place and nowhere, in the growing dusk I noticed a Highway Patrol car parked on the roadside, a lone officer walking toward a white station wagon.  But not a normal station wagon, for standing behind it were two men wearing county-issued jumpsuit uniforms taking a wrapped body off of a gurney and loading it into the back of this station wagon… that happened to be a coroner’s vehicle.

There were no obvious signs indicating from where the body might have come.  No trace of an accident could be seen.  The nearest town was miles away, so it was unlikely this was a hitchhiker.  Perhaps a farm worker, but even then one would think that someone would have been there telling the authorities what had happened.  Instead, there was just the cop, and the two men from the coroner’s office, and the body of someone being taken away.  No one else was there but me and the other cars driving past, not even slowing down to look on their hurried way home in the last few hours of the weekend.

This, too, has a thread connecting it to what once was in a day when racing was far more dangerous than it is today.  Not that it is truly safe now, but given the primitive and often ineffective safety measures of days gone by it is no great surprise that everyone left from that time can recite a lengthy roll call of those who one moment were friends and competitors, the next… gone.  The ugly truth about NASCAR is that it seldom honors its dead.  Instead, it offers a shrug of the shoulders as it says move on, for no one can effectively race today when their heart and mind are on who was lost yesterday.

This is also where the thread breaks between the concert, with what it meant, and NASCAR, with what it means.  Racing, or any sport for that matter, can be a pleasure; but it is fleeting.  Life, love, hope, faith; these transcend what is no matter how important it may seem at the time.  NASCAR can be a pleasant walk through a rose garden, albeit one where gasoline is the water and the engine’s roar serves as aural flower petals.  However, it is the way of the Rose that truly matters.

Nothing else comes close.