In my race report from Beatrice last Saturday I mentioned how much the weather forecast had changed from Thursday until race day. In that case it was for the better as while the temperatures stayed about the same, the chance of rain was eliminated from the forecast. This week however I think that I just witnessed one of the most dramatic changes in a weather forecast ever as in a manner of a few hours the outlook for this coming Friday in Memphis, Missouri, went from being sunny and warm with a high of 62, to cloudy, windy and rainy with a high of 41. And that is only three days out folks!
With the change, the Scotland County Speedway has canceled their races for the weekend, but they will be back to try it again with another special event that was already on the schedule for March 30th and 31st. That now means that I will be watching March Madness on Friday night before enjoying some family time on Saturday as I was only planning to spend night number one in northeast Missouri anyway. Others though, including our own Ed Reichert, will be making their way down to the Humboldt Speedway in southeast Kansas where they will host their second big event of the season already with the King of America Modified special. There are other events in the region as well that for now are going to take on Mother Nature and hope to come out ahead so if you don't just want to settle for basketball, hit the road!
That is what several Iowa Modified drivers did last weekend as the Southern Oklahoma Speedway in Ardmore hosted a two-day special for IMCA sanctioned cars. In Friday's action Mike VanGenderen finished ninth , Denny Pittman was twelfth while Randy Havlik and Nick Roberts were 18th and 19th. On Saturday night Roberts was the runner-up to winner Jeff Taylor, VanGenderen repeated his ninth place run and Havlik finished 13th. Russ Dickerson and Tony Hofbauer also made the long pull south.
It was sad to hear that the Chateau Raceway in Lansing, Minnesota, will not open this year and is up for sale. I first learned of this from a post on Facebook by Todd Narveson who has announced there and at several other tracks in the region. Todd was basically saying farewell for now and asking that fans be mindful of their social media use should someone new come along and try to open it once again. A couple of well meaning people made comments stating what needs to be done to make the track successful and for whatever reason it just irritated me a bit. The two comments that did essentially said that whoever opens it needs to go out and get corporate sponsorship to make the place successful. Really? Have we come to the point where we believe that this will be a "new" idea for someone who makes the investment in a race track? For that moment I guess that I put myself in the place of a promoter and just wondered how I would feel about anybody implying that I was not bright enough to realize that I needed to go out and try to get corporate sponsorship to make my track successful. Especially after I had tried and tried to bring in such sponsorship only to come up a bit short of what I would have wanted. Perhaps because that prospective sponsor chose not to be involved due to things that he had "heard" about the place on.......well you know?
As I typed out my own comment I realized that something that I had always dreamt of doing, owning my own race track, was no longer a dream of mine. I couldn't take the constant drumbeat from people who had no real stake in my operation telling me what I should, or shouldn't do in order to make it better. Perhaps that's why the alter ego Myron Pembleton appeared a few weeks ago. I am sick of the stupidity that I see from some on Facebook when it comes to racing.
Myron had some nice feedback from several people that I respect very much in the sport, so I got a little cocky with him making some flippant comments myself referencing WWMPS....that would be What Would Myron Pembleton Say.....and I did it one too many times on Sunday. Somehow I became the person who did not want kids to become involved in racing, proof of how off the tracks a Facebook/Racing conversation can quickly become, and let's just say that I learned my lesson. By the way I have written some of my thoughts on how we handle kids at the races now compared to the past in earlier editions of the Back Stretch so if you want to go hunting, be my guest, they are not popular opinions with some.
In summary I take great pride in being a cheerleader for the sport here, something that certain others have even criticized me for in the past. I will do my best to continue to do that once I get out of this funk, a state of mind that I must still be in because I really wasn't that disappointed when I found out today that I would be watching basketball instead on Friday night.
Hope to see you at the Lee County Speedway in Donnellson on Friday March 23rd!
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