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The other day someone asked me about a former entertainment venue that is now only a source of memories. Driven out of town by the "NIMBYs", now one must drive ten miles east to bombard your ear drums with VAROOM, VAROOMS.

Back around 1953, a place called Sara-Mana Speed Bowl was available to satisfy anyone's appetite for noisy, dusty, loud screeching tires and crashing sheet metal. I think it was an eighth-mile oval with asphalt pavement where hard-working local hot rod jockeys could spend a Saturday evening bashing and banging what they spent all week rebuilding.

Seems to me they ran ten heats of ten laps with 12 racers each and a twenty-five lap feature.

The track was located near 63rd Avenue and 14th St. W.  Kind of across from Bayshore Gardens area. While not an official minor league to NASCAR at least one name, prominent in NASCAR, traces back to Sara-Mana Speed Bowl; Emil Reutimann, from Zephyrhills, raced number double zero there and today his grandson, David, has that on his Sprint Cup car. Ironically, Emil was killed in a highway collision a few years ago.

Back in 1939 there was a small grass strip airport on the other side of 14th St.W. The Mystery Ship Airport was used for Jalopy races. Later it was a golf driving range. They also used the City Island air strip when available.

A popular Jalopy racer was Sherman Studer (see photo) who operated Studer's Small Engine Clinic in Sarasota for many years. His little known notoriety saved the U.S. Air Force millions of dollars and who knows how many pilots. When the North American P-51 fighters were assigned to the Sarasota Army Air Base in 1944, they began to experience in-flight fires. When one pilot refused to bail out and he returned to the base, on fire, Studer, on North American's payroll, discovered a faulty solder connection on a fuel pump booster. Inspection of the other P-51s showed a pattern which enabled a saboteur in the factory to be captured. Studer's mechanical acumen was also evidenced when you saw him running errands in his 1959 (?) Cadillac pick-up truck; home-made of course.  They were each one-of-a-kind.

Life was/is good.