Monday morning now, cloudy, rainy and a nice Fall day in Ohio, unfortunately, it is May, Cinco de Mayo, to be exact. That is the 5th for the non-Spanish speaking audience.
Last Saturday, one of the great moments in sports, or anything for that matter, the Kentucky Derby, and the singing of My Old Kentucky Home. I always have to stand when they sing that. The other great moment, Indianapolis Indiana, and Back Home Again in Indiana at the 500. Both generate many tears in my eyes, I have listened to those for so many years and they bring back a flood of memories.
Years ago, we occasional spent a short vacation in Kentucky, at Harrodsburg, and we, Mom, Dad and I would stay at the Beaumont Inn. One side trip was to the home of Stephen Foster, who wrote My Old Kentucky Home. I remember in those days they would let me sit at his desk, where the song was written. It was a rather quiet, secluded area in those days. I remember "Hedge Apples" ... almost as big as a softball, all over the ground.
I think they indicated that this would be the last year for Jim Nabors to sing Back Home Again in Indiana. How sad, such a tradition. Even sadder, it is not an all day race anymore like in the 40's, we made a day out of the event. Mauri Rose, Spider Webb, Wilbur Shaw, Sam Hands, A.J. Foyt, great names in racing.
We made a whole weekend event out of the 500, looked forward to it every year. Open wheel racing was a whole different type of racing. Racing today has all the excitement of "slot racing." That one game on the Price is Right where they have the windup mice has more excitement than races today.
Now, everything is a TV show, built around an event. The event is merely filler for the commercials. If they could they would just run four hours of commercials, but they need to break them somehow, so, Super Bowl, football games, basketball games, etc., all designed to break the monotony of 24 hours of commercials. Just look at the quality of the shows on now days if you think that is not true.
