Favorite race track?
Let's see, how about any local track where the drivers and crews are there to race; not for the show, not for the money and not for the sponsors, but actually paying the bills out of their own pockets because they live for the competition and the boost to their overinflated egos which comes from winning tonight?
Or, how about a track like Eldora? A half-mile dirt oval that has paid a million dollars to win for a late model show.
Martinsville before all the "improvements" and additional seating were added? The "old Darlington", before they changed it and added the concrete walls? The days of "The Darlington Stripe"?
Then there were places like The Pines, Westboro, Norwood, West Peabody, Seekonk, Thompson, Stafford Springs, Hollywood Speedway, Catamont Stadium, and hundreds, maybe even thousands, of dusty, dirty, splintery, miserable little bullrings where so many of those great drivers learned to ply their trade. Anybody else remember what I'm talking about?
There's still a whole bunch of those tracks left around the country, but they would seem to be an endangered species. Housing developments, shopping centers, and even public parks have all taken their toll over the years, but locally there's still places like The Star Speedway, which for many years was called "The Center of the Universe" for Supermodifieds. Lee USA Speedway has regularly had some pretty good shows; there's Oxford Plains just over the line in Maine, which for years hosted the richest late model race in the country. That's until Bob Bahre sold it and developed New Hampshire International Speedway.
There is no way that I could forget one of the best short tracks anywhere in the country; the highbanked soup bowl built out of a granite quarry in the Green Mountains of Vermont. The original Thunder Road in Barre has to be one of the most fun race tracks we ever turned a wheel on. From the owners and promoters, Ken Squire (yep, that Ken Squire) and Tom Curly, all of the other officials and employees there, to some of the greatest fans at any track anywhere, this is one fun place to race.
I could go on with a bunch more places which most of today's "driver" fans have probably never heard of, places like Oswego, Sandusky, Knoxville, South Boston and???
Like I said at the beginning, these, and the nearly 1000 others like them all across the country are where real racers pay out of their own pockets to put on the show, sometimes two, three or more nights a week, week in and week out, many of them racing up to one hundred shows a year.
But, this forum isn't about real racing is it? It's about overpaid, spoiled brats like that Earnhardt kid, showing off for the "fans" on the weekends, 38 weekends a year and complaining about everything they have to sacrifice to make those big paychecks.
Gosh, how things have changed since 1947.
Hey, have a nice day kiddies!!
