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Many years have passed. Some of the details have escaped my memory, but some are as vivid as a sunset or a waterfall. Apparently, I was four or five because Glenn “Fireball” Roberts perished after a crash in 1964, when I was six.

I remember that the race was on dirt, a quarter-mile track at the Greenwood Fairgrounds, about 25 miles from where I lived then and now. I don’t remember who won. It was a Modified race, which is to say that the cars looked like full-sized versions of what are called Legends cars now. Roberts’ car was black and gold, emblazoned with No. 22. He drove a similarly decorated Pontiac in 1962 at NASCAR’s premier level, which suggests I was four years old. I can’t find a photo of the Modified. It may have been fielded by a local owner who painted it to mimic the colors. I expect Roberts was there because the promoter made it worth his time.

The track wasn’t in operation much longer, but two decades later, when I wrote about minor-league baseball games nearby at Legion Stadium, the old grandstand was still there, crumbling like ancient ruins, with a paved parking lot where the track surface and infield used to be. My father and a family friend, Lewis Smith, took me, and perhaps it is because of that night that it so shook me in 1964 when Roberts died after his fiery crash in the World 600. To me, he stood alone among race drivers, but I wasn’t alone because, from the end of May until the first of July, each morning a man named Bill Norwood gave an update on his condition during “Mr. Bill,” a show otherwise featuring cartoons.

Honest to gosh.

I remember that Roberts’ condition seemed to be improving until one morning, Mr. Bill reported that he had contracted pneumonia. He died on July 2, just before the summertime race in his hometown, Daytona Beach, Fla. That was the 27th birthday of Richard Petty, who won his first championship that year and became the biggest name in stock car racing after Roberts died.

I don’t think the fans of today have any idea how famous Fireball Roberts was in the South. I think NASCAR was about as popular in my region of the country as it is now. It took many years for it to become similarly popular across the whole country. I saw Petty race for the first time in Bristol, Tenn., in 1965, and the only two times I saw him win were on the dirt of Greenville-Pickens Speedway in 1968. It was 1983 before I saw a race other than Greenville-Pickens, Darlington and Bristol (just that once), and Petty never won a race at Darlington after 1967.

The memories are mostly vague, but something about that steamy night in Greenwood made me a race fan. I persuaded my mother to subscribe to Stock Car Racing magazine before my years were in double digits. I wrote about a race for the first time at Rockingham in 1985 – Neil Bonnett won – and began doing it for a living in 1993.

I’ve been an old-timer for a long time now.