Indianapolis Motor Speedway changes while always staying the same

He was walking directly down the middle of Auburn Street, the middle-aged leather-skinned man in the jorts. You know, jeans shorts.

In his left hand he gripped a sign that read "PARKING Y'ALL, FOLLOW ME."

In his right he held onto the arm of an inflatable green alien, dragged, big-eyed and bopping along the blacktop, inevitably to burst upon contact with a stray rock or, more likely, a broken bottle.

The man with fistfuls of America strolled his neighborhood that looked like any community in any town in America. But this is Speedway, Indiana. This is where a glimpse through the canopy of firs provides a glimpse of a dark grey grandstand in the distance and rolling down the car window reveals…