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Right now, I'm thinking this is the best time of the year, not because the 400-miler at Pocono Raceway was rained out till Monday, or that Kurt Busch won an interesting affair, but, rather, because I just finished mowing two lawns, my mother's and mine, and the blackberries are ripe.

It won't last but a short time. This morning my hot laps were on a riding mower, and nothing today, and quite possibly this week, is going to beat the experience of sitting on that mower, sweating, popping a fistful of berries into my mouth and listening to Guy Clark sing "Homegrown Tomatoes" on an iPod.

Isn't that a wondrous mix of modernity, technology and nature? Isn't that going to school, old and new? The only criticism I can discern is that Clark, who died on May 17, would never have mixed the metaphors of blackberries and tomatoes. I must be obsessed with fruit. I wrote a song myself called "Scuppernongs and Muscadines."

Ain't that America? Ain't that NASCAR? Didn't it used to be? And didn't I learn as much about what happened in the Pennsylvania hills from listening to a progression of Guy Clark songs as I possibly could have listening to fans on satellite radio jawing about what Jeff Gordon said on TV and how Brad Keselowski, said, well, he's one to talk?

Lord, yes. The NASCAR I knew as a young'un was a heap more like "backsliding, barrel-riding Rita Ballou" than it was about some gal, some gal I never knew existed, who, by some miracle or mind-altering substance, thought a tractor was sexy. Back in my bush-hogging, grain-drilling days, I sure wish I knew her.

If you are younger than I, I can't possibly expect you to believe this, because I never would have, but a time is going to come when that which seems timeless ... isn't. I never thought stock car racing would lack a market for a Cale Yarborough or country music a comfortable slot for Porter Wagoner. I didn't think they would race or sing for as long as Willie Nelson. What I thought was that younger versions would come along from the dirt tracks and the honky tonks.

Uh, uh. Rich folks have taken over, partly because rich folks are the only ones who can still afford NASCAR and Nashville, and because the rest of us don't have the money.

Little-known fact: Many of the racers of today had a briefcase before they could talk and a Legends Car before they could walk. They go to school at the breakfast table, and the closest they come to a high school prom is an equivalency exam.

The world changed of its own free will. You and I were complicit in our own small ways. To some extent, our delusions of grandeur were the same as Brian France's.

Once upon a time, the arrival of carriages that were horseless made life a struggle for chuckwagon drovers.

We can move along, or we can grouse about "back in the day."

In my case, the latter is so much more fun.