My little muse, a 17 year old Italian girl sent me a 45 and the song was ' My Little Town '.But everything is NOT the same in my little town and for the people of Nazareth things are not the same there either.
My brother and I went to the track when the Dirt Track was popular and the larger track was breathing life into the community almost concurrently.Some of the younger drivers of the day still race like Danny Johnson #27, Jack Johnson #12 and Alan Johnson #14 not to mention Brett Hearn #20 and the list goes on and on.
The racing was awesome and the action of the track was some of the best racing in the entire country. From the big blocks, to the various Sportsman class of dirt modifieds, you will know when you see this racing that it is special,has history and NASCAR drivers like Stewart and Bobby Allison know this too.
The feel of the tracks like Nazareth is earthy and I am not making a pun there but like that the bathrooms that, well maybe not so good,and the food maybe a little greasy but the stands like the food were made for racing so it is horrible when these arenas of auto-racing drama are felled by cranes and replaced by non-descript parking lots, shopping centers and strip malls, not to mention an apartment complex with it vagaries and audacity.
People with T-Shirts with racing cars and tour dates were quite common and today some of those shirts are as much collectibles as any sound track of any movie. At least to the racing fan.
One of the saddest moments of any track and kind of especially hard since the life around the track was beginning to wind down of it's own since it neighbored Allentown and we all know the song by Billy Joel. The sadness of jobs lost, tracks closed and the weeds that threaten the permanence of end. With race fan and driver praying for a miracle and ruthless potential owners more concerned with their own greed and the people who hate racing and the noise.
But that noise most notably were the revenue to the towns and many tracks predated the droves of people who populate the tiny lanes, roads and parkways near the track. At East Bay Raceway Park a huge sandstone mountain lays behind the backstretch, an artificial noise dampening system.
At Nazareth we had luminaries like AJ Foyt and the Andrettis. The big track was a kind of large Tri-Oval surface which featured a pavement that was pretty fast considering the size was 1.125 miles in 1986. The track was laid to rest in 2004 with the grandstands now a distant memory. Two great racing monoliths, pretty much side by side are now gone.
Talks of revival are pretty much crushed by owners who see no feasibility in auto racing in a world going virtual and green crazy.
Let's hope some money and some inspiration comes back to the hearts of the many Scrooges who could care less and who keep the power of big block engines from filling the air with thunder of the racing kind.
