Remember when...

[dirtcrazy4u]

Ah I good old days of dial up. A land line phone. Dirt tracks had pits that would be busting at the seams. Slide jobs got settled in the pits, some got settled from a guy you never saw coming. Crates ? We busted those up to start fires and keep warm. 4 cylinders ? Jap junk we called them. Power steering ? In a race car ? You were definitely a p*ssy.

[Raceready]

Remember when every crewman used 2 stopwatches during hotlaps!Thank God for the timing apps!

LOLOL ! Marlboro cigarettes had a promotion where you would get a free stop watch with each purchase. I was a slave back then to the death sticks so I accumulated a half dozen or so. They had flat sides so I had 4 of them glued together and I could time our car and a few others in the same session. I don't want to date myself but we actually ran at a few rinky dinky tracks where a hand held round mechanical stop watch was used by a track worker in the announcers booth to do the qualifications.

[dirty-white-boy]

Remember when anyone with the name Billy Moyer could do an interview without complaining about something? Nope, me neither!

[castone]

Remember is the early days of Dirt Track Racing the salvage yard (junk yard) was your parts house, and if you could afford a new part Western Auto might have it - simpler times, but good times back then !

[CIRF]

This "remember when" is dedicated to my Dad, who ceased attending DLM events when the generic cars took over.

He used to say "I remember the days when the late model feature was on their parade lap you could distinguish the make, model and year of every car on the track with no more than a passing glance".

He still misses those days and I wish I'd have experienced them!

[WisWildManFan]

remember when you could tell the make and model of a winged and non winged sprint car and/or midget... oh wait

[CIRF]

The fact that I'm followed around and everything I post triggers butthurt retorts from wit challenged cretin's (look it up, Einstein! LOL!) does nothing but amplify the satisfaction and elicits a brief but wry smile. LOL!

[dirtcrazy4u]

CIRF. So true. I remember those 24 car fields . Mostly GM products, you had the camaro, nova, chevelle's. There may have been the lone mustang or a Galaxie in the field. Let's not forget the road runner and duster out there on track.

The mods you had anything from the Vega and pintos. A 40 ford, Yea they looked fast standing still. Then let's not forget the 30 x 90 or the early 30's coupe bodies. They were and still are bada**.

Wild west fan, I've been around sprint car racing since I was 16. Whats changed ?

50 yrs. D*m I'm old

[Raceready]

Remember is the early days of Dirt Track Racing the salvage yard (junk yard) was your parts house, and if you could afford a new part Western Auto might have it - simpler times, but good times back then !

That was back in the day when we would value the worth of a part by how many seasons you could expect to get out of it. Now a days they measure how the value of parts by the number of laps it can be run before it has to be changed out.

[dirtcrazy4u]

Remember you had to pay a couple bucks weekly to the track welder.

[over4T]

Remember when pit passes were $2 (two) and you actually stood a chance of breaking even or even showing a profit for the night or season?

[Pennsboro32]

Remember when 50/50 women wore bikinis?

[Raceready]

Remember when you could just knock out the glass and weld the doors shut and go have fun.

Remember that well except we would shoot out the windows with a shotgun. We would always pull the trigger on the opposite side so that the glass would end up on the ground instead in the interior where we would have had to vacuum it out.

[kazual]

Couldn’t afford an annual subscription but used to grab a National Speed Sport News when I could find one and had enough money in my pocket. Pour through it front to back reading about distant tracks, races, and results.

[Raceready]

Also enjoyed grabbing on up a copy of Area Auto Racing News when they had them. We had 1 local tight wad track owner that wouldn't let any venders to sell any of the other reading material because he felt that fans would get their itch to read be fulfilled and therefore not buy one of his track programs.

[ZERO25]

Remember when tracks only had 2-3 classes and were packed!

[EvelB7]

I remember when the track would have a kid walk around selling programs and racing papers. My first taste of responsibility was selling the 'Hawkeye Racing News' at multiple tracks during the summer (they would send me like 100 copies, I would sell them and send payment for what I sold back the HRN)...

[rdcllk]

I still have a couple box of Mid American Racing papers
From the 80's and 90's. A lot of the tracks are long gone now

[AllenK]

I bought a National Speedway Directory at Eldora in 1995,and I still have it. With the advent of the internet and Google Maps I have looked in the book and then tried to find the tracks listed online. Needless to say, many of the tracks in the book aren't running anymore.

I can't imagine what another 25 years will bring.

[over4T]

Video might have killed the radio star but the internet sure killed the racing papers. Seemed like every time I renewed my subs to them they went bye bye; Hawkeye, Speed Sport, several others including my favorite, the west's Racing Wheels, out of Vancouver, WA.

Guy named Gary Sterner ran it but the guts of the paper was the indefatigable Gary Jacob. Based in Turlock, CA he personally covered over 100 events a year for decades, often showing up at a southern Cal track one night and one in OR,WA, AZ or NV the next night. He loved the stockers and they loved him. The west coast legend died in '06 and the paper a short time after.

The internet is ok but it doesn't come near touching the great coverage the weekly papers did.