No Air Conditioning And 100 Degree-Plus Weather Didn’t Stop In 1966!

  No Air Conditioning And 100 Degree-Plus Weather Didn’t Stop 4th Of July Racing In 1966!
By EARL KRAUSE
Independence Day news stories on TV, radio and in print proclaimed… “New Jersey has experienced a historic heatwave that set massive 4th of July weekend temperature records. Highs reached well into the triple digits, including at Atlantic City (103 degrees at the airport), Toms River (103) and Freehold (100).”
However, those words are not in reference to the recent record-breaking hot weather. Rather they’re from 60 years ago, from a news story covering the 4th of July weekend 1966 which had the same weather… and when air conditioning wasn’t common.
I was age 15 then, and our entire ranch style home in Milltown, N.J., had one small window air conditioner. And our car, an otherwise nicely-outfitted gold 1964 Mercury Marquis, didn’t have AC as an option. When I or a family member told my dad Earl Sr. during summer vacation trips that… “the seat is too hot”, he would laughingly suggest… “roll down all of the windows!”
It led me to research what became the topic of this week’s Commentary column… how despite the hot weather in that era, race fans, Dad and I included, faithfully left non-air conditioned homes in 90-100-degree weather, got into sweltering hot non-AC vehicles, and rode hot miles to their favorite tracks. Once there, we would sweat some more while still enjoying a night at the races. I remember the wooden covered grandstand at Flemington  Speedway held the heat of the day under its roof long after sunset!
What I also noticed while researching this story was that during the Independence Day 1966 weekend none of the local N.J and Eastern Pa. tracks took off. In fact, most had “special” events or extra-distance features for the Modifieds… and that on the average qualifying at all of them started no earlier than 8 p.m. Thus, by the time cars hit the track and fans entered the grandstand it would be somewhat “cooler” as the sun set. Also the post-race stories about that weekend in Area Auto Racing News noted “packed pit areas and grandstands” from that Friday July 1 through Monday July 4.
In that “nostalgic” time, especially as race fans we didn’t sit around the house but were overall outside no matter what the weather. And, there wasn’t the “streaming” of today or cell phones with “instant results” or “highlights” … an option now that leads to the temptation to “just stay home and watch racing on the TV or laptop.” No, race fans of another time were at the track as long as it wasn’t raining, or if there was a storm we’d wait it out, even if it was 100 degrees. That’s how my dad and I looked at it!
And so it was on a scorching Independence Day weekend 1966,  then celebrating the 190th birthday of America, when N.J and Eastern Pa. fans had a choice of events from Friday through Monday!