Circle M Ranch Speedway: a trip back in racing time

Sep. 25—AUBURN — Call it the Brigadoon of race tracks.

The Circle M Ranch Speedway, which hasn't held a competitive race in 64 years, comes alive with the roar of powerful race cars one day of the year.

On Saturday, as if the clock had been turned back, vintage race cars circled the track as they had in the years immediately after World War II.

Emerging from a cloud of dust, jalopies, stocks, sprints and modifies cast a panorama of dirt track racing deeply embedded in the culture of the coal region and eastern Pennsylvania.

"The really great thing about it is that you get to see all the different eras of racing," said Scott Kerschner, a veteran Berks County racer who drove a 1962 open cockpit sprint car of the type once driven by racing legends A.J. Foyt, Mario Andretti and Bobby Unser.

As they had from 1955 to 1958, when the track closed, several hundred racing fans took in the spectacle from lawn chairs on the slope of a hill overlooking the track.

Etched into a hillside west of Auburn, the track never had a grandstand.

"This is the biggest crowd I've ever seen," said Edward Johnson Jr., who drove in from the Poconos for the show.

"The cars are special," Johnson said. "They're vintage, nostalgic."

Robbin Lee, of Newton, N.J., celebrated her 62nd birthday at the speedway.

"Every year, this is my birthday present," said Lee, who's been around dirt track racing since she was 10 years old.

Taking the checkered flag from Galen Koller, groups of a half-dozen or so cars did 20 laps around the track at speeds far below what they would race in competitions.

Koller is president of the Reading Fairgrounds Racing Historical Society, which sponsored the event at Circle M Ranch Speedway.

In somewhat of a family affair, Kerschner's vintage sprint car was also driven by his grandsons, Haden Long, 18, and Connor Long, 17, of Berks County.

"It's instant power; it's definitely thrilling," said Haden, who occasionally gunned the 650 horsepower Chevy-powered racer on the backstretch.

On the other end of the speed spectrum, Lee Reading piloted a 1937 Ford stock car around the track in third gear.

The unofficial historian of Coal Region Racing, a historical society, Reading said the car was an exact replica of one driven by Drick Hendrick in the 1960s and 1970s.

Veteran driver Dick Maberry, who also took a spin in the '37 Ford, relived the days when he won six features at Big Diamond Speedway in 1976. At the time, he fielded a Ford Pinto with a Boss Mustang 302 cubic inch power plant.

Paging through a scrapbook, the Pottsville driver came across a photo of his father, Wilbur "Ears" Maberry, of Schuylkill Haven, who drove during the era when racers were powered by Ford flatheads.

Dirt track racing was immensely popular after World War II, but its history goes back almost to the advent of the automobile.

Frank Walka did a few laps in a 1915 Ford Model T racer at Circle M Ranch.

"Cars like this ran on horse race tracks at fairgrounds," said Walka, 74, a Reading collector who bought the 107-year-old vehicle on eBay.

As if raging out of the past, the No. 63 White Phantom streaked around the track with the same verve when Sam Alperti campaigned in it from 1933 to 1938 at Flemington, N.J.

"It had no starter, which meant a street vehicle had to pull it until the engine fired," said Artie Conk, the New Jersey enthusiast who restored the vintage midget racer.

Marcie Barker drove a Model A Ford-powered jalopy on Saturday, a dramatic departure from her days at the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah, home of the world land speed record.

In 2006, Barker drove a 1976 Corvette to 193 mph on the flats. Again, in 2008, she piloted a competition 1934 Ford to 173 mph there.

Barker, 67, a Berks County resident, said she has driven cars over 200 mph at Bonneville.

Asked what attracts her to race cars, Barker replied, "the horsepower, the noise, the speed and pushing it to the limit."

Contact the writer: rdevlin@republicanherald.com; 570-628-6007