Old School Racin', Baby!

No cards here, just a blog post that came out of a comment by Commishbob.

Ya know, Upstate NY has a pretty rich racing history. I'm surprised NO never caught the bug.

You might be asking yourself, how can a blog post be born of that drivel?  I wondered myself.

I was born and raised in Upstate New York.  The real Upstate NY.  The North Country.  Plattsburgh.  Clinton County.  I'm rather proud of that.  Yes, it does toss a thorn under the saddle when I hear a newscaster say, "Crime spree in upstate NY.  We'll talk to the police chief of Poughkeepsie to see what he's doing about it."  That isn't upstate.  Can I get an 'Amen'?

Now I'm beginning to sound like Commishbob in his most recent curmudgeonly blog post.

A pretty rich racing history.  Let's look at a time when the big boys came to race in Plattsburgh.

Bench Racing from the Volunteer State has a nice overview of the events of June 19, 1955, but they didn't have any newspaper articles.  I do.

Plattsburgh Press-Republican - June 18, 1955
(edited version)

I call this the edited version because I edited the story.  Not for content but for layout.  Below is what the original looks like.  A bit unwieldy for a blog post.

Plattsburgh Press-Republican - June 18, 1955
(original version)

Plattsburgh Press-Republican - June 18, 1955

Plattsburgh Press-Republican - June 20, 1955

Does any of this really matter?  Probably not, but it is a bit of a nostalgia trip for me.  A few times each summer my dad would drag my brother and I to the Airborne Park.  Drag wasn't really the word.  We willingly went.  I think that it was called PIR, Plattsburgh International Raceway, in the late 1960s and early 1970s.  We saw Jack Kochman's Hell Drivers, an auto stunt team, a few times.  And racing.  Plenty of racing.  Local boys mixing it up on the track.  Good times.

Credit where credit is due: The newspaper images came from the NYS Historic Newspapers site.

We'll return to baseball soon.  Really.