This past weekend, I took my wife and son to the county fair. We did not go to see the flower hall. We did not go for the rides. We did not even go to see the livestock exhibition. We had done all that on our previous trip. This time we had a single goal: the Demolition Derby.

This is one of those odd American subculture things I always enjoyed as a child, and now get the pleasure of sharing with my own little one. There’s nothing quite like watching a half-dozen beat-up old junkers with gaudy paint-jobs shoving each other around, kicking up mud everywhere, and crashing left and right, punctuated by the occasional geyser from a popped radiator or flare from a burping carburetor. Yes, somebody got shoved all the way on top of the four-foot burm surrounding the track. Yes, somebody’s car caught on fire. Yes, somebody showed up with a Confederate flag painted on his Impala. Yes, the Batmobile was trashed.

If you’ve never had the pleasure of attending your local demolition derby, you’re really missing out on something. I never understood the appeal of auto racing, not as a spectator sport. I never got the appeal of tractor pulls and monster trucks. But a bunch of guys in salvaged late-model cars duking it out for a prize that maybe represents two weeks pay, smashing and scraping and steaming and burning, well that’s just good times.

Pardon the photo quality, it’s from my phone.