I’ve seen a lot of races in my life, but what I saw on Sunday at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway was not a race.

Now while it’s obvious that Jimmy Johnson probably deserved to win the Brickyard 400 (notice I didn’t mention the official name of the race), no one else even had a chance to prove they had a car that they might have brought home first.

There was no race Sunday. The have longer runs between pit stops at the Brownstown Speedway. Heck they don’t even have pits stops at the Brownstown Speedway.

I know there was a safety issue, but Sunday’s debacle was almost as bad as they one involving Formula I at Indy in 2005.

It’s easy to blame the track for the tire problems even though nothing’s been done to the track since 2005. Michelin did it back in 2005.

NASCAR and the crews chiefs should have held an open test at the Speedway and they didn’t. So let’s blame them. But let’s also blame Goodyear.

That company has a reputation to uphold, and I don’t think they did a very good job of that Sunday.

I think NASCAR needs to reconsider and allowed anyone who can meet specs to sell tires for races. Teams have all kinds of options when it comes to chassis, car bodies, engines and even drivers. Why is Goodyear the only supplier for tires?

A lot of drivers spoke out about Sunday’s non-race, but one in particular, Tony Stewart, was silent on the issue at least that day. He later said on his radio show that he couldn’t blame Goodyear entirely.

I guess as car owner, Tony is trying to learn to be a little more diplomatic and maybe that’s why he was silent Sunday. That’s a shame because while he might not always be right, Tony sure doesn’t have a problem saying what he thinks. NASCAR could use a little more of that especially in light of Sunday’s non-race.

A lot of fans, including myself, left the track less than happy. Some of us may not be back. There were a lot of empty seats Sunday and there will probably be more next year even if NASCAR says they have the tire issue corrected.

As for Tony, I’m glad to see him jump on a deal that made him a instant car owner and promises to keep him involved in the sport for years to come. Who wouldn’t jump on the chance to be a car owner without having to put a lot of money into it.

Tony brings a lot to the table and hopefully he may one day make Stewart-Haas a top team. That would be special.

I came of age in the 1970s when Rock n Roll was king.

I still enjoy cranking the radio up and listening to some of the better songs of that decade, and interestingly enough my 15-year-old son enjoys some of the same songs. I think that may be because there isn’t any good rock to be heard any more. Over the past three decades, however, my musical interests have fluctuated quite a bit.

I was never into disco music and I never had much use for hip-hop.

For a while there I was heavy into country western music something I attribute to my Mom and Dad taking me to the Grand Ole Opry when it was still held in Ryman Auditorium in downtown Nashville as well as my wife who is a big country music fan. Over the years, I’ve also taking a likening to the Blues, Bluegrass and even some gospel.

The bluegrass comes from the release of “O Brother Where Art Thou” back in 2000. I don’t know why, but I’ve really come to love bluegrass over the ensuring years, and especially the sounds of The Del McCoury band. 

Del McCoury, a North Carolina native, has won 31 International Bluegrass Music Association awards and has been named that organization’s Entertainer of the Year nine times. In 2006, Del McCoury won his first Grammy for his album, The Company We Keep.”

Back in the early 1960, McCoury sang vocals and played rhythm guitar for Bill Monroe’s Bluegrass Boys, but the 69-year-old artist has been in the business for much longer.

That’s why it was a little hard for me to understand why he took time for a stop at the Bluebird in Bloomington on Saturday night. I decided to go to that show, and it was my first visit to the Bluebird. It’s a nice place to see a live act, but small.

There couldn’t have been more than a couple of hundred people there to see Del, his two sons, Ronnie and Rob, and the other members of the band play. But it was one of the best shows I’ve ever seen. I don’t know how Del keeps going, but he was fired up and smiling throughout the whole show. The energy was just what I expected of the man who sings “Never Growing Up Boy.”

McCoury’s definitely a man who loves what he’s doing. He was constantly smiling and seemed very happy to be up on that stage playing and singing.

He reminds me of Dale Earnhardt who believed you needed to be doing what you loved when you get out of bed every morning or you needed to be looking for another job.

 McCoury told the audience he was back at the Bluebird for one simple reason.

“We don’t want you to forget us,” McCoury said.

I don’t think we could forget you if we tried.

Del plans a return trip to Southern Indiana later this year. He’ll be at the Little Nashville Opry on Nov. 29. I plan on being there and I plan on dragging along my son this time.

For the past several years, we’ve published a morning newspaper on the Fourth of July. That means that some of us find ourselves working in the newsroom on the night of July 3.

This year was different because the Fourth was on a Friday, which means some of us had to work the night of the Fourth to put out Saturday morning’s newspaper.

As a rule, I’m usually in the newspaper for our nation’s birthday and that means I miss out on the fireworks, which is not that big of deal. I’ve seen a lot of firework shows both here in Jackson County as well as Indianapolis and Louisville.

On Friday, however, we took a break from putting out Saturday’s newsaper and ventured out on to the roof of the Tribune  just prior to the fireworks show at Freeman Field. That was a good show, but before the main event there were a lot of other people putting on their own firework shows around the city.

From what I can tell people must spend a lot of money on fireworks because from our central point in downtown Seymour you could look any direction and see spectacular displays. There was a constant barrage of fireworks from points all over the city during the brief time that I and a couple of other staffers were on the roof.

The celebration reminded me of the time that my mother and I took my two older children to New York City on our nation’s 200th birthday back in 1976. That city celebrated the bicentennial in style. We stayed at my brother’s apartment in Queens, but traveled to Battery Park in lower Manhattan and wound up watching the show from a perch somewhere near the World Trade Center and not too far away from the Statute of Liberty.

It didn’t really matter where you where in the Big Apple that night, because the firework show was repeated from key spots around Manhattan and everyone had the chance to see the same show.

Our local celebration didn’t match that event, but it was a pretty good show anyway.