60'-70's Vintage Oval Track Modifieds

I suggest a week vacation off of work, because we are at 368 now, what will it be when you retire???

 

I love that there are people here who can say that.

 

Damnable golf courses, strip malls, and subdivisions.

I've overseen the construction of a few strip malls in my previous career, but happily I can say that the worst thing we ever tore down to build one was a caved in old grocery store.

There's a track in similar shape in Rolla MO, where Rusty Wallace and countless others cut their teeth. It's still there, but when the rich folks moved in next door, they immediately demanded that the city (which owns the fairgrounds that it's built on) close the place down and never again use it for anything.

They actually passed an ordinance forbidding the rehab and reopening of the track in perpetuity.

It's setting there now, slowly rotting. Since it was a fairly high banked racetrack, and paved, the place is weathering pretty well. The plowed up about 75% of the front straightway to have a demo derby at the fair one year, but that's gone now too.

Sometimes I hate city people, ya know?

That place was out in BFE when it was built, and those snooty asses knew it was there when they built their giant houses, but they were totally outraged when the races made noise at 8pm on Sat night.

Jackasses the lot of them.

Losing a track to development is one thing, at least they bought and paid for the land, and are using it for something else. These tool boxes didn't even have the courtesy to buy the place out, the just used their political pull to run the joint out of business and make sure it never comes back (nor anything else in its place).

That's just plain destructive, and gets my ire up. Unfortunately, this all happened long before I was old enough to do anything about it (or, you know, set upright and not shit my pants ). All I can do at this point is bitch.

The thing that really irks me about seeing any race track go under around here is that we ain't exactly over run with the things to start with, so every one we lose is a big deal.

I've got to tow two hours (one way) to put a car on a paved track, or an hour and a half (again, one way) to put one on dirt. If either of those places go under or are otherwise lost, it'll go from two hours to four.

 

Noise, dust and other environmental issues are HUGE problems that any track can face .. problems that can cause their closure. It doesn't matter if the track pre-existed the development of the surrounding area or not.

 

When it was built, Bridgehampton (NY) was a world class road race facility, but it was doomed from the start.

Early on .. any races they ran, that were of any consequence and drew any kind of crowd, the results were the same. The people got STUCK in the Hamptons traffic & then the traffic trying to get off this island. BOTH HORRENDOUS!!! Needless to say they vowed never to come back again. .... The very same thing would happen if they ever were foolish enough to put a NASCAR Sprint Cup track any where out here ... yes, even on the former Grumman site in Calverton (NY).

USAC very seriously looked into running the Indy cars there one year. It was even on the USAC schedule for awhile, but when they realized what the traffic problems were .. they canceled the event.

At Bridgehampton, I saw Paul Newman and a young Micheal Andretti race in different classes on the same day. I was able to give our then Riverhead (NY) Raceway champion Peggy Smith (& her then boy friend Mac) and my wife a thrill, by having them meet and spend a few minutes with Paul Newman and his wife Joann Woodward.

 

Nascar Grand Nationals raced there in 1961 [I think]. Pit area was on the grass, nothing fancy, nothing to sit on. Billy Wade asked me to help him get his car ready and I had a ball. Might have been the only Yankee with the cars. Imagine spending a whole day with Fireball, Junior Johnson, Joe Weatherly, Wendall Scott, Richard Petty, Ned Jarrett. Richard raced wearing a tee shirt. No Haulers, no air guns, nothin. I remember Richard getting angry because some guy smokin a pipe said he wasn't goin fast enough. They wondered if anyone on the Island made moonshine.

 

Jackie Hamilton #6 and Bill rafter #45

 

Not sure who the driver was

 

Bob Malzahn in the fireball 99

 

Kenny Shoemaker and Pete Corey on the outside

 

Some action on the backstrech at Reading

 

long before my time but two great drivers!!! shoemaker book was a good read.

 

Wonder if "The Shoe" upstaged Corey like he did with Cagle when they were a "team"!

 

<P>

</P>
<P>&nbsp;</P>
<P>http://www.lsracers.com</P>

 

I wonder how many tracks disappeared because of noise? I remember a car at Fonda speedway with mufflers,[ Donny Wayman I think ]. Maybe Quite race tracks would be better than closed race tracks. I lived 57 years within 10 miles of Fonda speedway and on a lot of Sat nights , The sound of those races would carry down the vally and you would think they where just down the street.

 

www.lsracers.com is a new site started in Oct. 2010.
It is somewhat different from other sites because we have such things as ;film footage from the 60's and 70's,slide shows of drivers,owners and crews,in depth articles of people associated with the 1/2 mile track known as Pleasantville, A.K.A Atlantic City Speedway. Do check us out, we think you'll like it and we welcome all comments and questions.....the lsracers team

 

You do beautiful work!

 

Vince Conrad ???

 

Music to the ears wasn't it !

 

Kinda like our familys summer camp on Saratoga Lake. A mile or two from Albany/Saratoga Speedway, would drive us kids Nuts as Nascar Big Block Mods would warm up . Felt like forever for Dad to eat supper before we went over.

 

I ?THINK? Axel Anderson (Wayne's Dad) and a few others from around here participated in that race.

 

Nice site, I'll go back for more.

A suggestion, if I might .. I viewed Gone But Not Forgotten, Memories of P'ville and Stock Car Graveyard Part 1 and all three move along too fast to be able to absorb.

I never heard of some of those New Jersey tracks before. Glad to be able to add them to the memory bank in this old noggin.

In the 1970's Johnny Action (John Karklin) and mysef would sometimes take his midget to the remains of the Atco (NJ) oval and fire it up, to test some work we'd done. The Atco oval looked pretty much as it does in your slide show.

I know people who had did the same thing at the Old Bridge (NJ) Stadium, before the property was developed.

This past September someone said that a complete, but over grown Vineland (NJ) Speedway still exists, including a portion/remnant of the now well decayed grandstands. They mentioned where it's located (on what road & across from what, etc.), but duhhhhh, this old head didn't retain that info. I'd like to explore the actual site.

I was Chief Steward (and Bob Lee the starter) for a benefit midget race that Ilene Sall put together for the benefit of the Deborah Heart Hospital. Even the comparitively light midgets were ripping up CHUNKS of asphalt and firing them at me, like they were shot from an artilery piece, as I stood in or near the entrance to the track from the pits.

Ken Butler was a promoter that sure wasn't afraid to get his hands dirty. He did &/or helped do anything & everything there was to do around that place. He was also one of the very few promoters that I knew who was able to SUCCESSFULLY PROMOTE on a shoe string. His "Ken Butler" Thrill Shows were GREAT!! Both are gone,Ken Butler and the Pleasantville (NJ) aka Atlantic City Speedway he promoted. .... They're both missed.

 

I know exactly what you're saying. One of the finest dirt racing surfaces on the east coast, was the Monroe County Fairgrounds track, located about 8-9 miles south of Rochester, NY. The track was built sometime in the mid-late 1930s, in the middle of "farm country".

In the late 1950s, Rochester saw a tremendous amount of residential growth, as the EPA had not yet been formed and handcuffed factories, so Rochester was growing into a bustling manufacturing area. The people manning these factories needed homes, and at that point in time, a farmer who had a couple hundred acres of land across the street from the legendary Fairgrounds track decided to retire. A builder (I hate the term "developer" in this context) came in bought up the land, and started building houses on a wholesale basis.

A couple years later, the people who knowingly moved in across the street from the racetrack, decided it was a nuisance, and petitioned the county to stop the races. A year or two later, weekly operation of the track ceased, and the only races held were "booked in" shows during the county fair week. That lasted for 4-5 years, then the racing ended completely, when the town widened the public road which ran paralell to the back straight, and the road was then within 50-60 feet of the track....

 

Tasnady in the 39jr., not sure who was driving the 707, maybe James Bond?

 

Backstrech at Reading, Freddie Adam driving the 76, not sure who driver of the other car was.

 

More Reading action

 

Al Tasnady in the Piscopo 39

 

Jackie Evans in the Lux 77 at Reading

 

Again environmental noise .. in this case noise from a race track .. is a BIG problem that just about every track will face .. sooner or later.

Again, it does NOT matter if the track pre-existed devlopment in the area & then the people knowingly moved in. Noise &/or dust &/or other environmental issues does not make you (a speedway) a good neighbor.

As I posted earlier in this thread, when I was a part of the promotional team of the Riverhead (NY) Raceway I/we BATTLED a noise ordinance that truly threated to close the our facility. We were VERY LUCKY in that we were able to come up with a compromise that worked. This was in the mid 1970's. However, that didn't mean the problem was went away. It has reared it's (ugly) head, more than once, over the years and the current owners/operators of the facility have had to deal with it and I'm sure will have to do so in the future.

It cost an unbelieveable amount of time and money to fight any of these environmental issues. We were EXTREMELY LUCKY and were able to reach a satisfactory compromise. That is not a possibility in many/most cases .. no matter how much time & money is spent &/or how much legal talent is employed.

 

Well, I don't know what to tell you.

Racecars are noisy. Hell, that's part of the draw IMO.

What are the options then? Muffle them down to 80 dB? Pave every track in the country? Give up entirely?

The simple fact is that there is too much government interference in most parts of the country. Property rights mean pretty much nothing anymore, and folks don't even attempt to work things out with whoever they have an argument with, they just resort to government action from the get-go.

Whoever is there first needs to have the high ground in the argument. That doesn't mean they automatically win, but they ought to at least get the benefit of the doubt to start with.

This sort of crap is exactly why I prefer to live out here in BFE. If someone moves in down the road from me (closest they'll even get is 400-500 ft) and they don't like the color of my barn, it's tough shit for them.