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With the NASCAR season on the horizon at last, this morning I started reminiscing about my first trip to the Daytona 500.

It was 1988, and, then as now, I was immature for my age. I worked for a newspaper. It was weekly. I was young enough to believe I could head off to Florida on a Wednesday night, with a friend who said he had some friends who were already down there, and the two of us could stretch our limited resources enough to celebrate the fact that it was 1988 and George Orwell’s 1984 had not occurred. I’m not sure whether or not that subject actually came up.

Both of us had left our cell phones at home because they had not yet been invented in any approximation of the present form. I knew they existed because the banker Milburn Drysdale on The Beverly Hillbillies had had one years earlier. When we took off in search of the pomp, the pageantry, the human drama of athletic competition, at The Great American Race, I sang to myself, … so we loaded up the truck and we moved to Beverly.

Actually, it was my silver 1986 Thunderbird, one of many rides I wish I had today.

I’m not going to say things got out of hand, but I will tell you that my friend tried to pick up a pregnant woman whose boyfriend was apparently a Florida Gator linebacker, and my reservoir of tact and diplomacy was sorely tested in negotiations regarding my friend’s survival.

Later that night, we visited Fireball Roberts’ grave, thanks to a house painter who said his father created the headstone, and he could give us directions if we’d buy him a beer. When we arrived at a seedy “motor hotel” on the beach, we discovered that the assigned habitants of Room 118 weren’t present and the best guess was Orlando. I boldly walked into the office, said I’d left my key in the room and needed to get into Room 118. I got a key, no questions asked, but I didn’t sleep well because I was a bit worried about what would happen when our acquaintances returned to find unfamiliar persons sleeping in their beds. We might as well have been two little bears, missing Mama Bear and a pot of porridge. At 5:30, they staggered in, and my friend and I retired to the floor, where we slept on brief occasions for the rest of the weekend.

As my goal is a NASCAR column and not a Tom T. Hall song, I pick up action on race day.

My chief contribution to the trip, in addition to the aforementioned T-Bird, was two tickets to the various races. We had already attended the Twin 125s, IROC, and the Busch Series race. The source of the free tickets was a sportswriting friend who worked for the Greenville Piedmont. Our tickets were in the lower rows between turn four and the start-finish line. On the 106th lap of the Daytona 500, I was sunburned and weary. In the stands, amid all the noise, it’s common to see a bunch of heads turning and arms pointing at the same time. I was alert enough to turn my head. What I first noticed was the framework of the catch fence wiggling. Then I saw bright orange and blue flying everywhere.

Petty.

Richard’s Pontiac was spinning around on its nose like a wobbly top. As it screeched and whirred right in front of me, it occurred to me that what goes up must come down, and I flinched and looked up to see if any orange and blue was headed my way. Then I looked back down, where what was left of Petty’s car was sitting still.

For about a second. Then Brett Bodine’s Ford pinballed it in the left front, and the Pontiac went spinning again. A huge crowd appeared at the fence to my right. Fans were climbing all over each other, trying to reassure themselves that The King of Stock Car Racing was OK. Though a bit the worse for wear, he was.

It may have been the deepest breath I ever took.

Bobby and Davey Allison finished 1-2 that clear Sunday afternoon. Ever since that day 29 years ago, to paraphrase the great Jerry Jeff Walker, I have been “trying to recover from a misspent youth and gradually giving in to knowledge.”