If Sunday is the Lord’s Day, then “Sunday Sunday Sunday” is reserved for an equally powerful entity: the monster truck. The monster truck is to legitimate racing what Barry Bonds is to baseball. It’s huge, loud and ultimately pretty stupid but nonetheless incredibly entertaining. Unfortunately, the future of the oversized El Camino is in jeopardy, and we all stand something to lose.

Monster truck shows are billed as family events. They fall on weekends, the tickets are cheap, and the noise from the engines is so loud no one can force you to talk to your spouse or children. Like Disney On Ice without the shame, monster trucks market themselves as kid-friendly, with vehicles named after Batman and Superman. But a family event needs to be a safe event, and monster truck safety is starting to look like an oxymoron.

In less than two weeks, two people have died attending monster truck events. The most recent death occurred last Saturday in Madison when a truck hit the show’s announcer. Just over a week earlier, a 6-year-old boy was stuck by a piece of debris. These disasters are tragic not only because of the loss of life — which is obviously terrible — but also for the potentially fatal attendance hit. People just don’t go to things that might kill them; it’s why we avoid war, dark alleys and Ozzfest. While these can largely be seen as freak accidents, this is an industry with little margin for error, and bad publicity combined with a bad economy typically spells bad news.

The entertainment industry isn’t recession-proof. A family facing a budget crunch is going to cut trips to the civic center to see Grave Digger long before it sells Suzie for pizza coupons. And if NASCAR, the nationally broadcast racing series said to be the fastest growing sport in America, admits the American auto industry is bringing it down, monster trucks are surely facing a similar, if not worse, situation. After all, Honda doesn’t make a Prius with 66-inch wheels.

So monster trucks are in trouble. Big deal, huh? Nobody cares when Tom Cruise movies lose money; why should we care about this? Well, we should care because, while Cruise’s soul belongs to Xenu, the soul of the monster truck belongs to America. Baseball is just the orphan child of a British game called rounders, and football is just rugby with Gatorade breaks, but the monster truck is purely American. It’s one part Henry Ford’s automobile, one part Evel Knievel’s showmanship, and one part Harry S. Truman’s affection for really big explosions. The only foreign piece of a monster truck rally is the dozens of Hyundais that get crushed during the course of each show.

But it’s not just about the monster truck. Like Dwight Eisenhower, I fear the domino effect. If the monster truck industry shows weakness, it could set off a chain reaction and rock the world of tractor pulls, demolition derbies and local speedways. Without those, you don’t have a county fair, and I’m not going to start on what this country owes carnies.

Invoking national pride in an attempt to save the monster truck might seem silly, but it’s our canary in the coal mine. We’ve long enjoyed a certain way of life, and with real economic problems looming over the country, some things are bound to change. Monster trucks are unnecessary, but they’re our kind of unnecessary, like Texas toast and Surge. Nobody is going to bail out the monster truck industry, and if it fails, who’s going to stand up for the WWE? So please, despite the noise, the safety issues and the assault on your social status, go see the monster trucks. And quit playing soccer.

Sean Kittridge ([email protected]) is a junior majoring in journalism.