UP FOR THE COUNT

My Uncle Glen was a lap counter at the old Legion Ascot Speedway, that treacherous motor racing oval in the hills east of Lincoln Heights that quenched Los Angeles’ thirst for racing in the 1920s and ‘30s.

He stood in the infield judges’ stand with other lap counters, their heads swiveling as they kept track of drivers circling the banked five-eighths-mile track. Each time Rex Mays or Lester Spangler or Ernie Triplett -- or any other driver they were assigned -- crossed the finish line, a lap counter marked it down.

When the race was over, the lap counters compared notes, and if there was a discrepancy -- and often there was -- they argued it out. Sometimes with their fists.

In today’s racing world, where cars are timed to the thousandths of a second by computers, having laps charted by hand seems as old-fashioned as buggy whips.

My Uncle Glen -- “He’s not your uncle,” my mother would hiss when I called him that. “He and your Aunt Mabel are not married. They are living in sin.” -- took me with him to the races and, as a naive 11-year-old, I thought he was a great guy. It seemed to me that he and my aunt were the happiest people in the family -- sin or not.

To her credit, though, my mother trusted her only son with this sinful man. “He’s a good provider,” she would grudgingly say.

(She didn’t have a comment about five years later when she ran off to Las Vegas with the married man next door to get matching divorces.)

Personal mores were not the only things different in the era of the Great Depression. Then, a pound of chocolates cost 49 cents, a pack of cigarettes 15 cents. Farmhands earned $1.25 a day. Skippy peanut butter, Fritos corn chips and Zippo lighters made their debuts.

During the formative years of the Indianapolis 500, scoring was a show in itself.

Each car had a scorer and they stood on a platform, car numbers on their backs. When cars changed position on the track, the scorers switched positions as well. It sounds confusing but back then, cars were much slower, there were no yellow caution laps unless the track was completely blocked by a wreck and then it was stopped. And there were few lead changes.

In 1930, for instance, Billy Arnold passed Louis Meyer for the lead on the third lap and led the remaining 197 laps in a race of 4 hours 58 minutes. Not much movement on the scorers’ platform.

By contrast, the 500 last May had 27 lead changes among seven drivers and was over in 3 hours 10 minutes.

There were also memorable occasions when the counts didn’t match. One famous mix-up happened in a 500-lap midget race in the Coliseum on a third-mile oval in 1947.

After about three hours of spinning around the football field, the race ended and Johnnie Parsons was declared the winner. Danny Oakes protested, claiming that he had won, and officials agreed, giving him the winner’s trophy. Four days later, another review gave Duane Carter the win.

“I had no idea where they came up with Carter’s name,” Oakes recalled years later, proudly displaying the trophy he’d taken home that night. “He was never in front of me, he never passed me. I never even saw him.”

Legion Ascot Speedway, so named because for a number of years its races were promoted by American Legion Post 127 of Glendale, was near the intersection of Soto and Valley Boulevard.

“This is a great way to get into the races free,” Uncle Glen once said about his once-a-week hobby. “After the race starts, it’s like being in a poker game. There’s lots of kidding going on, but we’re serious about how our guy is doing.”

While Uncle Glen counted laps, I roamed around the grandstands. One night, I noticed empty seats in the first turn so I headed that way, figuring I would get a good look at how “the Knights of the Roaring Road,” as they were called, would get through the exciting south turn.

I soon learned why the seats were empty. Rocks, pebbles and dirt clods came flying over the steel railing as the drivers fought for traction, their skinny tires carving ruts into the clay surface. Before I could get away, I was covered with dirt and battered by flying stones.

My first race at Legion Ascot was in the spring of 1932. Los Angeles was gearing up for the Olympic Games and what I remember most is not the daredevil heroes on the track, but the introduction of Paavo Nurmi, the legendary Finnish distance runner who was here to run in the Olympics.

After racing into the stands to get his autograph, I talked my parents into buying tickets for the 10,000-meter run at the Coliseum in July so I could watch the peerless Flying Finn run.

However, the International Olympic Committee ruled that Nurmi had accepted money for running and declared him ineligible for the Games. I do remember, though, watching Jan Kusocinski of Poland win the 10,000.

Perhaps it was just as well that I did not get attached to the popular drivers of the day. It seemed that no sooner were they favorites than they were gone. The headliners at Legion Ascot that year were Spangler, Triplett and Al Gordon.

Spangler was killed during the 1933 Indianapolis 500, along with mechanic G.L. Gordon. Triplett lost his life racing at El Centro in 1934, and after the deaths of Al Gordon and riding mechanic Spider Matlock on Jan. 26, 1936, Legion Ascot was closed down.

“Ascot was a killer,” John Lucero wrote in his book, “Legion Ascot Speedway.” “Crash bars did not exist. Roll bars, seat belts and shoulder harnesses were unheard of, yet the drivers possessed the iron will to win on a track that played no favorites when it rang the ‘death bell.’ ”

When Wilbur Shaw showed up in 1932, wearing a helmet, he was booed and called a sissy. Later, when he survived an end-over-end spill and walked away unhurt, other drivers took note and helmets eventually became mandatory.

The writing of the era was as colorful as the driving. When Barney Oldfield, on the track by himself, set a world speed record by racing a mile in 59 seconds, the lead story in The Times started:

“Barney Oldfield’s attempt to commit suicide yesterday only resulted in a compound fracture of the world’s automobile record. It would seem simpler and easier for him to hire someone to brain him with an ax than suffer this lingering destruction.”

They don’t write ‘em like that anymore.