Hey Whizzer,
As another old phart who's been around almost as long as dirt, I too have never heard anyone in the racing community call those tracks anything other than Talladega or Daytona.
Only after getting online have I seen the shortening of their names.
Problem seems to be a whole computerized generation who is in too much of a hurry and too doggone lazy to even say the name properly, let alone type it out.
Lord forbid they should use a spell-check or dictionary; no time for that.
Doesn't it make you wonder what they would do if they ever had to write a letter, prepare a report, or a proposal?
Wonder what will happen to the English language over the next generation?
Probably us old pharts wouldn't understand a word of it if we were to survive that long!
Pretty bad when folks are too lazy, too stupid, or both, to bother with correct spelling and grammer.
Worst part of it all is that most those folks feel it's KEWL!
Down off the soap box, thank you!
As to the favorite racetracks? I think most of my favorite race tracks have long since been plowed under and turned into shopping malls, housing developments, and in some cases, simply vacant lots.
Remember tracks like Langhorne, Trenton, Riverside, (both the road course in California and the bullring in Agawam), Flemington, and Reading? Closer to home there were The 106 Midway, the old Lee Speedway, Catamount, and both the Pines and Norway Pines.
How about the old roadcourse through the sand dunes out on Long Island at Bridgehampton? Almost forgot Norwood Arena and Westboro.
I'll bet that most of today's fans have never heard of most of those tracks and many of them used to host the Grand National cars back when that was the name of the top division and NASCAR was, according to everything I see written lately, strictly a Southern sport.
Everyone seems to overlook the fact that history is only whatever someone choses to write down as history. Facts don't matter at all. Historians present the view that either they, or those whom they are recording events for, wish to have presented. After a story is told enough times, the facts of the events no longer are of any importance, the story itself becomes the fact and that is what is accepted as history.
Now, I guess I will climb down from the soapbox.
(My fingers are getting tired!)
