Bringing balance to a track that's always been semi-off (cont'd)

His name was Robert Thrower, and he was a medicine man from the Poarch Band of Creek Indians, the same Creeks that once inhabited so much of the land around Talladega. Speaking in the Muscogee language and working from a folding table set up as an altar at the start-finish line, Thrower offered what he called a prayer of protection, restoration, and balance to try and ease whatever cosmic instability surrounds the track. Using bits of cedar, rabbit tobacco, and wild sage, he performed a short ceremony similar to one his great-grandmother -- the last tribal medicine woman -- would have done.

"Most everything in Native American belief is about keeping balance," said Thrower, who is also a Baptist minister. "Sometimes people and places can get out of balance, and that unbalance may be perceived as something bad. What we did today was bless the track, and ask for reconciliation so that balance can be restored."

This kind of thing isn't unusual for Thrower, who often blesses houses or farms. But a race track? In a public ceremony? Then again, if anything can be described as slightly off-kilter, it's Talladega. How else to explain all those beer cans raining down on the frontstretch after Jeff Gordon's victory in 2007, or the preponderance of too-anatomically-correct Mardi Gras beads in the campgrounds, or that general, on-the-edge sense that permeates the place on the race track and off?

So yes, maybe Talladega could use a little balance. Hopefully, Thrower brought the heavy-duty rabbit tobacco.

"I wanted to share with somebody the myth or the legend that a curse had been placed on the area by the Indians," Humphrey said. "[Thrower] made sure that I knew that he was not coming to do some kind of exorcism, and that was not we wanted. He didn't mention a curse. He may have mentioned it one time during a prayer. He said, 'What I can do, and what I will do, is I will come and bless the land. And I will come and restore balance.' So really, I didn't know what I was calling and asking for, other than sharing, in some shape or form, our desires to put the urban legends and myths behind us."

So, what to make of this? Obviously, there's a publicity element to it, with the race weekend approaching and Talladega off 15 to 20 percent from last year on ticket sales just like so many other tracks are. But as anyone who has ever been there can fully attest, Talladega is a strange and different place. Those high speeds, those impossibly tall bankings, those sprawling campgrounds and all that heavy wood smoke -- in concert, it all has a cumulative effect on the mind. Talladega has always been a little crazy. But here's the thing: people like it a little crazy. They pack Airstreams and pup tents and sleep out in the cold in the hopes of being a little crazy, too.

To that extent, you have to wonder what kind of effect Thrower's blessing will have. Thursday will arrive, campers will show up, beads will be passed out, beer cans will be opened, and Talladega will become Talladega again, whether it's in balance or not. Now, in terms of protection -- especially given Carl Edwards' accident there in the spring, where his car went airborne into the restraining fence and a woman's jaw was broken by debris -- you hope Thrower really does have the ear of the Great Spirit. Because more than freakish occurrences, those are the kinds of incidents that give Talladega a bad name.

But we can hope, at least, for a safe and incident-free weekend, that balance has truly been restored and whatever spirits hovering about Talladega Superspeedway are of the benevolent variety. Then again, Saturday night is Halloween. Hopefully, the medicine man will be on call.

The opinions expressed are solely those of the writer.