I wanted to do this a few weeks ago, but to be honest, if I had put it up just after writing this, it would have had a short stint as page number 1 here on my blog. I thought it best that I wait and blog it when it had a chance to be out there on the front page where it deserved to be for a little while. My last blog about New Egypt’s Friends of Mike night would have relegated it to second page status after only a few days.

You literally have to go all the way back to my very first years of being a race fan to remember the name Al Becker. Back to the early sixties to be exact. And to be honest, being around five or six years old, well, I wasn’t much of a stat-head at that point, but I still loved my races. Anyhow, I can easily remember Al Becker racing at the Flemington Speedway and let me explain why. First of all, it was a thrill to read AARN columnist John Snyder’s column about Al a few weeks back. He planted the seed in my head to go back, remember Al Becker and pay him a little props. If you read Johns column, you will read what I am about to explain. You see, in the column, John writes about his growing up in Frenchtown, NJ, just down the road from Milford. Back in the day, and still to this day somewhat, this area was a hotbed of local stock car racing talent. Al Becker claimed Frenchtown as his boyhood hometown and upon high school graduation; he began to work at the Gulf gasoline station up in Milford as one of its owners. Leon Harrison, another racer from back in those hallowed days of raw racing and short tempers, also worked there so the place had its ties to the local racing.

But how does all of this relate to yours truly? Getting’ to it.

You see, my mom grew up just across the river from Milford in Upper Black Eddy, hard on the canal and just down the lane from Singleys store. Trust me ……. the local people of that area know where I’m talking about. Upper Black Eddy was yet just another extension of the local talent pool of drivers. In fact, my Grandparents were just across the corn field from where Hoop Schiable kept his #95 stock cars. In fact, the old classic coupe #95 is still in there and nowadays makes appearances at old timer shows. Well, my grandparents both worked for this small art supply company and specializing in the art of decoupage. The owner pass on and willed them the business and they ended up moving the business across the river to Carpenter street right in the middle of town and just about two blocks from Al Becker’s Gulf station. They bought an old VFW hall, tall darned building and they moved the business into the first floor and renovated the second floor to living space. My brother Dave and I used to go up to their home every summer for a week or so. They patronized Al Becker’s gas station and we would always get to talk to Al and being a young racing fan, that was pretty darned cool to speak with one of the guys you watched out on the track every week. If he was there at the time, he always took the time to come out and talk to me.

Al finished second in Sportsman points for two years straight. In ’67 he finished second to Les Farley and the following year, it was Jackie Hamilton who denied him the tracks Sportsman crown. Back in those days, they ran both the Sportsman and Modified division cars together, but kept separate points.

Les Farley and Jackie Hamilton……Jesus, there are two other names from back then. Really stirs up the brain cells remembering way back then! Thank you to John Snyder for the fine column and returning me to a time in the very, very early stages of my being a race fan….and the inspiration for this portion of the blog.
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Last night, the modifieds were not on the schedule at NES due to the Bridgeport Speedway having another one of their portions of the Tri-Track series. In my opinion, this Tri-Track series has just not worked out the way it should have and in all honesty, while I think it’s a wonderful idea in that it can help to promote harmony amongst the areas tracks, it just isn’t and hasn’t really ever gotten the driver support that it should and therefore, be abandoned….or at least be seriously revamped. Winning this title is not that big of a deal when you consider that only like four or five drivers bother to enter every event. It’s a hollow title.

I checked out the results of last night’s Bridgeport modified event and I see that the feature didn’t even start a complete field. I counted up twenty three competitors in the finish rundown, with one car listed as a DNS and one as a DNQ. Now, normally, “The Port” has been able, lately, to start their main events with full fields and having a few cars on the trailers loaded up due to not making the cut. So why, can I ask, is there not enough modifieds on hand for a complete field when you have two tracks contributing cars towards an event? Very disappointing!

Looking at the feature rundown, I see that Billy Pauch won in the Will Brown #1W, followed by Rick Laubach and Jimmy Horton. An aside – all three drivers are New Egypt Speedway competitors. But in looking at the remaining finishing field, I also notice that these three drivers are the ONLY drivers that bothered to make the trek to Bridgeport to compete. This is just what I mean by a lack of driver support for this series. It just isn’t happening.

I can remember back to the Flemington Speedway dirt track days and think of the great support that Flemington, Nazareth and Orange County drivers would give to the Tri-Track series of those times, no matter which of the three tracks that the event was being held at. They were some pretty decent fields and some great racing. It’s a shame that such support doesn’t exist these days.