Have you taken a drive around ur neighborhood lately? Ummmmm... that is if you can afford it. Let's see. Here in Northern Ohio: Norwalk Furniture Co., Donato's Pizza, Fazoli's, TGIFriday's, Circuit City, Rego's Fresh Food Market, Tony Roma's Ribs, Value City Department Stores, new and used car dealers, Big Lots, Smokey Bones Restaurant, Conneaut Lake Park, Maui Indoor Waterpark Resort, Geauga Lake Park, potential plant closings at Ford, GM and Chrysler, thousands of home foreclosures, National City Bank and so on all have either closed are are on the brink of closing.

Now let's turn back the clock to the 1970's for a moment and talk about those east coast modifieds. I attended the USAC Silver Crown race at the NY State Farigrounds in the 70's that included the modifieds on the racing card. OMG... when they came out on the track, I thought the grandstand with 12,000 people was going to collapse with the thunderous enthusiasm of the large crowd in attendance. Hold the phone race fans... NSSN on Nov. 26, 2008 featured a big article on these machines. Apparently things have gone downhill. What used to be 18,000 fans for DIRT week appears to be about half that now. A new Syracuse car runs $30,000, motor $35-40,000, $2500 for tires, $1,000 for fuel plus motel rooms and food. And the TV deals have all dried up.

Now let's go back to 1991. OPEN WHEEL Mag. August issue. Former ace USAC driver Steve Butler's article: "LET'S DO SOMETHING" (about the cost of racing). Are you kidding me?? Gosh, I hate to tell you Steve that 17 years later, nobody is doing anything about it including the organization that you used to race for. Yeah, Steve, instead they're chasing quarter.... pardon me... .25 midgets.

Now in that Butler article ( remember this is 1991, 17 years ago) Steve interviewed, of all people, Earl Gaerte, famed engine builder. Earl gave four suggestions to limit the costs of racing. Here are the four:

1. Inmplement a compression-ratio limit. He recommends 11:1 ( I think he's referring to sprint car engines in this case).

2. Use restrictor inserts in the fuel injection ram tubes.

3. Reduce wing size (obviously for winged sprint cars)

4.REGULATE TIRES!!!!! Earl says harder compounds would unhook the rear wheels of the race cars, thereby reducing the need for high-horsepower motors.

OPEN WHEEL MAG, 2001, February issue. BIG MONEY, LITTLE CARS. WHAT EFFECT IS SKYROCKETING COST HAVING ON MIDGET RACING? Written by Dave Argabright and Mike O'Leary. Ralph Potter, former long time USAC car owner says "The cost of racing is so astronimical, I just don't want to put the money into it anymore. I don't know who wants to spend $100,000 (on a midget team) to win $2,000."

Apparently, though, despite what you've read here so far, the 2008 midget community is immune to all of this. It's business as usual with all the midget orgs with the exception of ARDC which recently voted down the Esslinger engine and previously outlawed the new generation Fontana also. By the way, a recent ad in NSSN says that Fontana costs $37,000 and Fontana says you need this engine to win!!! Even the Wisconsin midget org membership keeps voting in the tire monopoly. And I just read a press release that a Tulsa midget office is being "flooded" with entries for a midget show.

So... does anybody have the phone number of the financial advisor of the midget community??