Easter just dragged on all Sunday long.

Just ask the people in the grandstands at Spokane Raceway Park, shirtless and sweaty, swilling water and beer, popping french fries and nachos.

It wasn’t an ordinary holiday. It was opening day for the drag-racing season.

The only Easterlike thing about the races is the candy-colored cars. There’s the thick odor of burning rubber, not roasting ham. The Sunday sermon was the ear-blistering rumble of cars for which “muffler” is a dirty word.

“That sound - oh,” gushed Ashley LeMaster over the roar of a skinny dragster. “It gives me such a rush. It’s like sex, only better.”

It’s like, deafening. Veterans stuffed cotton or fingers in their ears. Joshua Salo, 10, held his head as a car and motorcycle raced by.

“Why’d the motorcycle win?” Salo asked, wrinkling his face and burying it in his mother’s shoulder.

The Sunday opener was a doubleheader of dragging on the strip and racing stock cars on the track. Some preferred the drag strip; more watched the stock cars. Kevin Shafer, 8, explained the difference.

“That’s two cars, and it’s straight,” he said, pointing at the drag strip. He then jabbed a finger at the stock car track. “They got more cars running, and it’s a circle.”

Sunday was the first of 42 drag dates this year. Pumped-up Blazer vs. jacked-up Chevy. Cherry-red Chevette vs. redder Nova. Curvy Corvette Stingray vs. streamlined motorcycle.

Most fans knew the players and the cars from a mile away. They didn’t necessarily know it was Easter.

“I didn’t know it was Easter until a little while ago,” said Tony Blodgett, 21, of Kalispell, sipping sipping 32 ounces of Miller beer. “I’ll get some candy later.”

But Krystal Robinson, 4, wasn’t messing around. She toted her plastic pink egg filled with pastel M&Ms to the stock car races. Krystal rooted for any purple car, because that’s her favorite color.

On Saturday, Krystal and her 11-year-old sister, Ashley, left the Easter Bunny a carrot in a glass of water next to a yellow plastic egg with a note inside. The note said, “Leave something good.”

The carrot was gone Sunday morning. The note wasn’t read.

“He forgot to read it,” Krystal grumped between bites of Doritos and pretzels. But good stuff was left in a basket, from the procelain Easter Bunny music box to the rapidly shrinking candy supply.

Twins Tim and Matt Wakefield, 10, of the Spokane Valley bounced up and down the concrete dragstrip bleachers like wind-up toys.

Before heading for the race track with their father, they played Easter Bunny for their younger brother and sister. The family dyed 48 eggs, and Tim and Matt hid them Sunday morning. After the eggs were all found, the twins took them to a field and threw most of them at birds. They didn’t hit any.

Tim wanted to keep two blue eggs, but Matt didn’t let him. “He just hucked ‘em at a tree,” Tim said.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color photo

MEMO: Cut in the Spokane edition.