By Jan Shaffer
indy500.com
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Note: Longtime motorsports journalist and media relations representative Jan Shaffer missed the Indianapolis 500 for the first time in 40 years this year, but he listened to the IMS Radio Network broadcast of the race from his home in Indianapolis and offers these impressions and memories.
Prospect Street is one block long with a boulevard in the center in the north part of Danville, Ill.
Every year, my father and his friends took the winding pre-Interstate roads through places like Covington, Veedersburg, Crawfordsville and Waynetown on Memorial Day to see the Indianapolis 500 auto race.
There were a dozen kids in that neighborhood, and, for various reasons, we were deemed too young to go. But in the mid-'50s, everyone had a radio, and us kids were no different about listening to Sid Collins and the excitement of the Indianapolis 500.
Indeed, it was so exciting that we recreated it on bicycles -- 20 laps around the boulevard, which was a long way for 7- and 8-year-olds. As I remember foggily, a kid named Dave Walker, the only one who didn't have a "relief driver" for part of the way, won it and darn near passed out.
Although times have changed, the style and excitement of the radio broadcast haven't. When television became a staple, the radio broadcast technology updated with the times, but the broadcast itself has not changed through Collins, Paul Page, Bob Jenkins and Mike King as the anchors.
Television and the Internet have swept the fancy of the world, but there will always be a place for these broadcasts, as they are.
Jenkins once said he had a note from some people in Arizona who had a tradition of listening to the broadcast and moving cars to it around a little track on someone's patio. If you're on a boat, in a car, on a train, at a picnic in a park or otherwise away from television and the Internet, radio is still the mainstay of your communications world. And don't forget our troops who awaken around the world to hear the broadcast on the American Forces Radio Network. Comcast has no deal in Baghdad or Bangkok yet.
For the first time in 40 years, I missed the race and had to settle for the radio broadcast and the scoring monitor on the computer because the telecast is blacked out in Indy. I bought a new radio and batteries and tuned in.
The way the announcers threw the ball to each other quickly around the track when something was happening and the call of the last few laps to the finish made the Indianapolis 500 the next best thing to being there. Before the big screen TVs were installed, everybody in the Speedway had a radio to hear the details of Tom Carnegie's P.A. call because you couldn't see around the whole place.
But last Sunday brought back memories, memories of excitement and the bravery, courage and physical fortitude to drive 500 miles to victory at Indy, before NASCAR hit its zenith, before television became commonplace, before this computer was a twinkle in a nerd's eye.
And it was fun.
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