END OF THE ROAD : For Racing Community, Saying Goodby to Ascot Park Won’t Be Easy

Late Thanksgiving night, from behind the retaining wall on the back straightaway, Ed Green will rise from the seat of his old Ford pickup and close the mud-splattered pit gate at Ascot Raceway for the final time.

Darlene Maher, who celebrated her 21st birthday in the pits five years ago, will shut down the grill of the infield snack bar about the time the last sprint car is towed out that gate. And pit steward Evelyn Pratt, a spunky 72 years old, will pack up her famous bullhorn and walk away.

Thirty-four years of racing--from motorcycles to demolition derbies--roars to an end Thursday with the 100-lap Turkey Night Grand Prix for sprint cars.

The aging racing facility is scheduled to be razed in January to make way for a business center. But the legacy of the famous track, popularized locally in radio commercials as the place “where the 110, 405 and 91 freeways collide,” will never be forgotten by the people who shared its intimate appeal. Ascot was mud-stained shoes and roaring engines. The smells of motor oil and hot dogs.

Cowboys boots sometimes outnumbered tennis shoes, yet regulars in the pits learned quickly that it was never wise to wear a good pair of shoes. That’s because the famed dirt, according to General Manager Rico Hawkes, “could suck the shoes right off your feet.”

That dirt often wound up on the carpet in their homes.

Ascot had some of the best food of any Los Angeles-area stadium, better than Dodger Dogs, fans often claimed, although not as famous. Beer, some of international quality, could be purchased in cans at reasonable prices and drivers usually found pit showers and lockers clean and safe.

“I’ve been all over the world,” said sprint car driver Ron Schuman, a native of Arizona who nevertheless referred to the Raceway as his home track. “You won’t find a better place than Ascot.”

Romances and racing flourished. Couples met, married and raised children there. Kids went on to racing careers or worked on pit crews. Fathers turned the driving over to their sons and, in rare cases, daughters.

Loyalty reigned supreme with people like Green, who called Ascot his second home. Public relations director Ben Foote, 70, said that attitude was part of “the mystique of Ascot.”

“You’ll see a lot of these guys down in the pits who are more bald and gray than I am,” Foote said. “That’s how long they’ve been here.”

Fans, owners and employees will share a few tears when the last burst of a spectacular fireworks show fades into the sky Thursday, signaling the end of an era.

Said Hawkes, a 15-year employee: “Racing people that come here are as religious about (this place) as they are about going to church on Sunday.”

Run by three sons of the late founder J. C. Agajanian, Ascot was built on 36 acres at Vermont and 183rd Street in the Harbor Gateway. The site was originally a dump but in 1957 motorcycle racing started there. A year later Agajanian began to promote motorcycle races and eventually took over the lease. The current 15-year lease expires Dec. 31 and Howard Mann and Andrex Development Co. of Torrance, the new leaseholder, feels the land is too valuable for a race track.

Rumors that the track will get a last-minute reprieve are not true according to Cary Agajanian, a lawyer and J. C.’s oldest son. He’ll watch the final night of action from a seat in the press box, turn out the lights and then “run out the back door.”

About a possible reprieve, he said: “I spoke to the developer the other day. He wanted to know how soon we could be out after the last race.”

Said Hawkes about the rumors the track would survive: “I’d like to see them happen, but I’m not a rich man and I wouldn’t bet on it.”

Green, a native of San Pedro now living in Paramount, has worked at the track since 1957.

“I’m going to lose a piece of myself, that’s for sure,” he said. “I was born up to racing. I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

Former California Racing Assn. executive Leonard Faas, whose son will drive in the final race, said this is the end.

“There will be a lot of lost souls,” he said. “This is a way of life for a whole lot of people.”

Maher, 26, a concession supervisor who has worked at the track for over five years, said: “This place, it’s like family. I’m not sure what I’ll do, maybe get back to office work.”

T-shirt vendor Jim Bartosh said: “The racing community is very close knit. Very honest, nice people. I’ve made a lot of good friends over the years.”

Pratt, who wore orange earrings in the shape of racing cones and a CRA cap over graying hair, has been a fixture in the pits for 15 seasons. She and her bullhorn are well-known, having been featured in many newspaper and magazine articles in her 22 years at the track. Her husband Bill raced sprint car No. 22 at Ascot.

“I’m going to go with my suitcase wherever they race, but there will never be another Ascot,” she said. “It has a tradition that everyone loves.”

Pit announcer Chris Holt, who ends eight seasons at Ascot, first attended races at the track as a fan.

“This (place) is an addiction, “ he said.

Part of the tradition comes from the condition of the mud track, which the bearded Hawkes said was cultivated differently for each type of race. He pointed proudly to the fact that four years ago a racing magazine named Ascot one of the top four managed tracks in the country.

“This track is so unique,” he said. “It’s a drivers’ track. It has long straightaways and short turns with not too much of a bank.”

The track offered motorcycle racing on Thursdays and Fridays, sprint cars on Saturdays and stock cars on Sundays. Ascot often provided racers with a different challenge from week to week.

“Look at these sprint-car racers,” Hawkes said during one of the final events at the track. “We had motorcycles here last night and they pit right in the area where these cars race. These guys will be running over spark plugs and wrenches, you name it.”

But Schuman, a six-time Turkey Night champion, said he would take the mud at Ascot over any track in the country because of the pride he witnessed from its attendants.

“I came here once from a track the night before that was full of holes and here were the guys at Ascot . . . working out a little bitty hole about the size of a tire that was down near turn one,” he said. “I told them just to put some chalk around it. Hell, we could have steered around it, but they just kept working it.”

Had he left the hole, Hawkes said, the “crazies” in the bleachers above Turn No. 1, would have complained. The first turn, where drivers “back it in,” to the turns, is a place where cars have been known to enter by their front ends and exit by their rears. It was a spectator’s delight.

J. C. Agajanian Jr., who grew up at the track in the 1950s and 60s and did radio broadcasts from the track, said: “To many, this was their Coliseum, their football, their social life.”

Saying goodby to this place won’t be easy for its owners. About 50 drivers who have raced in the Indianapolis 500 have also raced at Ascot. The dirt track was informally known as the busiest in the nation.

J. C. Jr., 44, can’t believe it’s over.

“I’ve been living in denial,” he said.

A resident of Hermosa Beach, it was J. C.’s husky voice that was the Ascot radio mouthpiece for nearly two decades. He plans to continue announcing, but the chances of his voice promoting another race track are slim.

Cary, 49, a solemn-looking figure who said he has ignored his law practice to concentrate on the track since his father died in 1984, holds some hope that he, J. C. Jr. and brother Chris, 40, can open a dirt track in the area. Recently he held discussions with a county fairground, but he refused to name it.

What would the new track be called if it opened?

“Ascot,” he said.

Green summed up the feelings of he and others who will lose their jobs when the track closes.

“I’ll follow (the Agajanians), wherever they go, as long as they want me,” he said.

But the new Ascot, if it ever comes to pass, won’t be quite the same.