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I don’t see much use in writing about NASCAR’s big banquet, either beforehand or afterwards. It’s just a big exercise in stock car racing trying to be cool while still reciting commercialized nonsense and pretending that boring speakers aren’t.

As entertainment, it’s the equivalent of a rain delay, though, thankfully, not as long. Everything that’s interesting is already known. For anything else to be interesting, someone other than Dale Earnhardt Jr. would have to be Most Popular Driver.

Well, Donald Trump has declared that an election he won is rigged. Anything’s possible.

Okay. I wrote that I wasn’t going to write about the banquet, or awards ceremony, or Thrilla in Manilla, whatever it’s called. I’ll stop now.

Two Dillons have Cup to Be Determined rides now, and there aren’t any more for a generation. Matt Dillon the actor is too old (52), and Marshall Dillon (also Matt) hasn’t kept the streets of Dodge City safe since 1975. Dillon Culhern is a character in one of my novels, Forgive Us Our Trespasses.

Already, the offseason has brought disappointment. Brian France has not yet been named Ambassador to France as God intended.

Some people are going on social media every day so that I will know how long it is until the Daytona 500. Some people claim that William Butler Yeats was responsible for Famous Autocorrect Fails.

Something about Thanksgiving made me lose all memory of the NASCAR season just completed, even though I watched every race but one on TV and listened to the other on radio. What’s that substance in turkey? Tryptophan? Wikipedia tells me it’s in all poultry, so Bojangles is just as much to blame for memory loss. Then there are chicken wings, which are always accompanied by beer in my world.

It’ll come back. Thanksgiving only causes short-term memory loss. Let’s see. Who won the championship? Uh, oh, I don’t know, what’s that guy’s name? Jimmie … Johnson. He sounds familiar.

At some point, perhaps while Leopold Tech is playing North by Northwest South Dakota in the TCM Franchot Tone Bowl, I’ll start longing for the roar of engines and the smell of burning rubber again.

I’ll get in my pickup and drive up to the local dirt track and just sit there, outside the chain-linked fence, behind the rickety stands, in the rain, and daydream about the heroes of my youth.

Fred Lorenzen. David Pearson. Alvin Nabors. (He was a dirt tracker.) Billy Buchanan, pronounced “buckhannon.” (He was a bootlegger.) Daddy. (He was an auctioneer.)