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This is the height of longing and anticipation, don’t you think?

NASCAR teams are testing here and there, but not much is on TV. The great preseason media spectacles are starting up, but they aren’t what they used to be. I had a long conversation with one of my few close friends still on the beat, and he was as wistful on the scene as I sometimes get in my living room. Maybe he was just trying to make me feel better at being away. If so, it didn’t do the trick.

I’ve been gone for four years – my newspaper job was eliminated on January 4, 2013 – and I haven’t been at a track that was longer than 3/8 of a mile and coated with anything other than red clay since. What really amazed me was that I didn’t miss it.

Until now.

I’m not sure why. I’m not good at analyzing the wind when my soul drifts into the doldrums. I just mope around and figure if I put much thought into it, the only result would be that I’d mope around a larger area.

Maybe it’s the sound and fury, which are what got me obsessed with stock car racing in the first place. Of all the magic moments in sports, none matches the moment right before the green flag, with all those colorful machines reined in like snorting stallions before being let loose all at once.

Ruhruhruhruhruhruhruhruhruhruhruhruhruh … ruh … ruhruh … ruhruh … ruh!

I love it like the fictional Lieutenant Colonel Bill Kilgore (Apocalypse Now) loves the smell of napalm in the morning.

Maybe it’s because Jeff Gordon, Tony Stewart and Carl Edwards – three men I know well -- aren’t driving. I can see how most of the racers now drive, but I haven’t a clue what makes them tick. They’re like characters in an old sitcom to me.

… And George Lindsey as Goober!

The living, breathing, righteous racers are no more than cardboard cutouts and action figures. They wear firesuits in commercials, for Christ’s sake.

They aren’t cardboard cutouts. They can’t be. They’re racers and thoroughly dangerous men, seeking truth, justice and half a half a tenth so they can track down the leader.

If I can scare up a halfway decent gig, I may show up at one or two of the tracks I used to revere. I didn’t have any such intention until last week. It may not happen. I’m well aware that the circus has passed me by. Come to think of it, I heard last week that Ringling Brothers – not to mention Barnum and Bailey -- is shutting down.

I feel like one of the elephants being set loose to munch peanuts and die in the bye and bye.

In fact, I look like one, too.