I thought people might be interested in the last column I wrote for Shorttrack Magazine, for the issue that never made it out of the printer’s alive. It’s tough for me to read, if only I knew just how prescient I was, but here it is.

Have you noticed times are kind of tough? Have you noticed my talent for stating the bleedingly obvious?

Every one of us involved in motor racing is worried about the future of our sport. We realize that even at its lowest levels it’s a cost-intensive pursuit. Almost invariably the amount of success a racer experiences is directly influenced by how much the racer spends.

It goes without saying that racers are looking to tighten their belts. So are tracks and promoters. Fans, too, even if that means packing a lunch instead of hitting the concessions. But it’s worrisome that many of us simply will pack it in. How far might car-counts drop? And attendance? And how many racetracks might simply lock their gates if the answers to these two questions become too depressing?

We all have to do our part to sustain racing through these difficult times (Now, there’s a couple of cliches packed into one sentence, eh?). At Shorttrack we’re doing what we can. We’ve offered a couple of deals to advertisers who might find it difficult to maintain their traditional ad budgets. Indeed, some advertisers have begun to realize that high-value in advertising increasingly is being found not in racing’s stratosphere but down here close to the roots of racing. Good for them, and good for us.

We also, with this issue, have lowered our standard subscription-rate to 14 bucks. We think that’s a pretty good deal and an inexpensive way to keep up with racing around the region. Hey, we’re committed to racing in New England and the Northeast, and we want to help you maintain your commitment, too.

Editorially we’re offering plenty of examples of how expense can be controlled. Walt Scadden offers some insightful suggestions in his column in this issue. Bill DeButler provides a forward-thinking example of what two Maine tracks are doing in his. And our Dirt, Cheap midget project is all about having a great racing experience for – well – dirt cheap.

It’s frustrating that Congress is falling all over itself to bail out the rich greedy fools who got us into this mess but have dragged their feet to assist folks of more modest means. C’mon, how can money from that humongous bailout go to NASCAR for track-development? Give me a break. Those who know have said for years that the Cup Series was growing way too fast. Now NASCAR sees the well drying out, with teams booting workers faster than GM. We’re just trying to have a little fun. Your guys probably work for free. They just want to make their mortgage payments. The nerve.

I do worry that NASCAR-style short-sightedness among shorttrack racing’s “haves” could hurt the efforts of shorttracks and promoters trying to make racing more affordable for the have-nots. For years I’ve witnessed race-teams with big budgets fight tooth-and-nail to maintain their right to outspend competitors or undermine any creative tinkerer who came up with a cheap way to be even almost competitive. Heaven help the guy who comes up with cheap power in a group where the top teams spend more for one motor than they make in a season of winning. That guy risks being run out of town on rails. Or maybe the back of his flatbed “transporter.”

Yet these are the guys who can do the most to sustain shorttrack racing. They’re the ones who stick around through thick and thin. No one would devote so much time and energy to such a hopeless pursuit if they could be scared away by economic concerns. Besides, there are five, maybe ten have-nots for every have in any division. The same is true of the country, by the way.

And yet in racing as in America, it’s the haves who have the power.

So here’s an appeal to all you haves. Have a heart. Take a look at your own operation, and compare it to the guys who fill your fields. If one of your motors costs more than everything the guy next to you just towed into the pits behind his clapped-out pick-up, maybe it’s time to write some more equality into the rules. If guys line up to buy tires you just peeled off your chrome rims, maybe the playing field is a bit tilted.

A level playing field is supposed to be the point, ain’t it? You can outspend your competition, but is that really what winning is about? Maybe, in these times, it could become the very definition of losing, for your whole club.

Who will you beat then?

Of all the struggling racetracks in New England – and that’s most of them, I worry more about Waterford than any.

Terry Eames has now put himself back at the helm of the track he bought only a few years ago. That by itself creates a real uphill climb. It’s hard to justify (or afford) a modern mortgage on a shorttrack. The ones that seem to hang in there are the ones that have been in the family (whether personal or corporate) long enough to pay off their own notes. But Eames bought in at a particularly rough time – both for shorttrack racing and for the mortgage market.

Multiply all that with the mess he’s been left with after leasing the place off the last couple of years. There may not be a shovel big enough to pick up the garbage he’s left with.

I’ll give Terry the benefit of the doubt – he means well, even if he has promoter’s miopia when viewing the challenges he faces. So he better have a big benefactor up his sleeve, because the business will hit the fan in about five minutes, as measured when you don’t have enough time.  Believe me, I know of what I speak, and I won’t ever criticize anyone for not keeping a going concern going these days – not with my track record.

But I wish him well.

It’s been a particularly disasterous  the last few months, but it seems that  the smoke finally has cleared from the devastation that was the demise of Shorttrack Magazine. And the personal shock from the whole sordid affair has disappated as well.

We have dome our best to inform subscribers, advertisers and others within the racing community of what happened. If you’re not aware, the jist of what was said in a mailing to all parties can be found on this website’s main page. Put simply – we ran out of money  – after the majority of our advertisers stopped paying for their ads. And as is typical in this business, without ad revenue we were dead in the water.

We know that many of you paid for subscriptions in good faith. We apologize again that we can’t reimburse you, but of course if we could afford that we’d have paid the printer. We’ve done what we could to offset the subscribers’ investments. Subscribers were offered substantial discounts on subscriptions to Late Model Racer, Dirt Late Model, Flat-Out Illustrated  and Dirt Mod magazines.  National Speed Sport News also is working to fulfill at least the spirit of our agreements. Our thanks to these worthy publications.

In the meantime, we plan to maintain the Shorttrack blog as well as doing the same and even expanding the Shorttrack website. While I still believe in the power of the press, it’s time to acknowledge the role of the net and sign on in a more active way as an online voice of racing.

To those of you who have asked, we are blessed (Okay, “I” am blessed) to be able to continue the plan to build and race a midget in Whip City’s Quad 4 division. Car owner Don Douville is letting us keep the grizzled old Gennerton chassis he loaned for the magazine’s “Dirt, Cheap” project, and my brother Ward is continuing to provide financing and sweat-equity as part of the youth-training porgram offered by his MTTI tech school.

For my effort I’ll plan now to try to pick up where we left off with the construction of the car here on the blog as well as continue to relate our effort campaigning the car in 2009. I’ve admittedly dropped the ball in that effort, but I’ll be getting back at it by the end of February and going from there.

What the future otherwise holds for me I won’t even venture to guess. But who among us would dare to speculate on their own prospects in these outragously horrible times?