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I think sometimes about what I miss from not being at NASCAR races anymore.

I haven’t been to a track on a race weekend since the end of 2012. That’s because, on June 4, 2013, my job of 16-1/2 years was eliminated. I had a few offers to write about a race here and there, but I decided I wouldn’t go back unless I did it right. Many have assured me I’m missed, but no one missed me who was in a position to do anything about it.

My free-lance writing is from home, and the chief reason is that it’s worth what I get paid but wouldn’t be if I was paying expenses out of my own pocket.

The disadvantages are obvious, but there are advantages, too. In order for me to appreciate the bubble I was in for 20 years, I had to see what it was like popped.

I used to live in a world where everyone in it loved NASCAR. I now live in a world where most everyone in it used to love NASCAR. If I made a quarter for everyone who says to me “I just don’t pay much attention anymore,” I could probably pay my way to all those race tracks.

It is easy to come up with dozens of reasons why NASCAR has declined: the economy, the departure of familiar and legendary drivers, the convenience of watching on high-definition TV, the aging fan base, etc., etc.

What’s hard is assigning the relative importance of all the different reasons. NASCAR thinks it has all the answers, but it’s asking the wrong questions with all its research centered on data from its fans. The ones with the answers are the ones who are gone.

Few mention what I think is the biggest reason for NASCAR’s decline. It’s not that the races are boring. It’s not that TV coverage is so good. It’s not that being there is so bad. The economy has improved.

Stock car racing just went out of style. The kids aren’t wearing the jackets and caps anymore. Kids at the J.V. football game whom I used to give caps I picked up at the track would look at me now, 10 years later, as if I were offering bunches of grapes with seeds in them.

Racing isn’t on their radar, not unless their daddies run at the local dirt track or their granddaddies used to work on Bud Moore’s pit crew.

I think NASCAR is just about as big now as it was when I was seven years old, watching Ned Jarrett win the Volunteer 500 with Ralph Barnes and his sons Marty and Steve and Mooney Mims, the boy Ralph and Sybil raised because there wasn’t anybody else to do it.

We all slept in the seats of a ‘64 Plymouth after stopping off at a local auction in Forest City, N.C., the night before.

Here in the wilds of upstate South Carolina, stock car racing was a mainstream sport in 1965, and I’ve come to believe that it’s just about the same now as it was then. The sport spread like kudzu to the rest of the country. It’s always been this way here.

I can’t really blame NASCAR for getting while the getting was good, but the sky was never the limit. After the turn of the century, Brian France thought he was going to run football out of business. NASCAR might as well have been Wham-O or K-Tel, peddling Hula Hoops and Mister Microphones.

They couldn’t sustain it. The Hula Hoop’s somewhere, caked with dust, leaning against the wall behind an old ironing board in the garage.

Stock car racing will rise again, and it probably won’t fall any farther. The people running it can’t completely kill it no matter how hard they try. They ran down this sport like buffaloes in the West.