It was always about this time of year, when the azaleas and dogwoods began to bloom and the temperatures began to rise and summer began to seem tantalizingly close, when the local short track used to open. It was a modest place set back among the pine trees, with wooden bleachers and a gravel infield and a concrete retaining wall that bore the scuff marks of accidents cleaned up long ago. But it was high-banked, and it was notoriously fast, and the drivers who sacrificed so much to converge on the place every Saturday night absolutely loved it.

It was a proud place populated by tough men who poured their entire savings into a late model car, or sacrificed their marriages for those Saturday nights, all for a shot at a trophy and a winner's check that wasn't nearly enough to pay the bills.

Ultimately, it became a victim of changing times -- struggling to get people into the grandstand, struggling to increase car counts as the price of racing escalated even at the lowest levels, struggling to keep up with the newer, publicly funded arenas that the other local sports teams called home. A few years ago the owner recognized the inevitable and sold the place to a real estate development firm, wisely cashing out before the market began to turn sour, making about 10 times what he had originally invested to buy the track decades earlier. What remains is a subdivision where residents sometimes turn up an old tire or an old piece of sheet metal when they dig a hole to plant a tree, reminders that the race track may be gone, but the memories still linger.

It wasn't famous, it didn't produce drivers who went on to compete at the sport's top levels, and very few except those who raced there would even recognize the facility's name. It was just a .4-mile track in rural part of a small state. But it was around for 39 years, 20 of those under NASCAR sanctioning, and it produced two national champions in the sport's weekly racing division. It was a proud place populated by tough men who poured their entire savings into a late model car, or sacrificed their marriages for those Saturday nights, all for a shot at a trophy and a winner's check that wasn't nearly enough to pay the bills. The track's final champion was a longshoreman who built cars with his father and gave up his inheritance to go racing. Nobody ever questioned why. They'd have all done the same thing.

There were always those old school buses parked behind Turn 4, lumbering vehicles that the track owner would roll out for a kind of celebrity race, putting local TV anchors behind the wheel. There was always a controversy or an argument or a claim that track management favored this guy or that guy, the kind of thing endemic at local tracks. There were always rumors of fistfights behind the grandstands, late in the night, competitors settling on-track incidents in their own way. There was the time one of the top drivers became so enraged at a ruling, he ran across the track while the cars were still circling to get to the scorer's booth. He was suspended for the rest of the season, an effective excommunication for someone who lived for Saturday nights under the lights.

There were special nights when the track owner would schedule a demolition derby or a visit by 700-horsepower, methanol-powered sprint cars, anything to generate a little publicity, and everybody would pray for rain to stay away. There were the days ages ago when some of the biggest names in NASCAR would appear at the track on a weekend that coincided with the closest Cup race, and the likes of Davey Allison and Rusty Wallace would thrill the crowd by taking spins in local cars. Local drivers would ask their superstar brethren for tips on car setup or handling. Legend has it that Dale Earnhardt once spent two hours in the pits chatting and signing autographs. Like the track itself, those days are gone. But no one who was there has forgotten them.

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You could see the end coming, with fewer and fewer people in the grandstands, and fewer and fewer cars in the pit area. Many of the track's former champions were in attendance on the night the place finally shut down; others couldn't bear to be there. Yes, it was only a race track, and an old and rickety one at that. But it was also something of a community touchstone, a place where tactics and passions had been handed down from one grease-stained generation to the next, where plumbers or construction workers or concrete mixers could revel in a little glory every once in a while. Some of the drivers kept on going, packing up their cars like always, but driving two or three hours to find someplace to race. Others just gave it up.

It's a story that, unfortunately, is far from unique. No question there are places where local racing still thrives, hotbeds where thousands pack the grandstands and the competition is strong enough to produce a select few who just might have a chance of getting to the top. And then there's Hialeah Speedway, a facility that had been the breeding ground for Bobby Allison and been in operation since 1954, shutting down a few years ago and leaving South Florida a short-track wasteland. There's historic Stockton 99 Speedway in California, the oldest paved quarter-mile oval west of the Mississippi River until it shut down in 2007. There are those old Truck Series stops, Mesa Marin in Bakersfield, Calif., and Mansfield (Ohio) Motorsports Park, one being turned into a development and the other sitting idle.

And now, it's Manzanita's turn. Phoenix International Raceway, site of Saturday night's Sprint Cup event, might not be the most famous race track in its own city. That title could belong to Manzanita Speedway, a legendary and beloved dirt track that opened in 1951 and saw drivers like Mario Andretti and A.J. Foyt grace its Victory Lane. Kurt Busch remembers being there as a kid, watching his dad compete in the dirt nationals. During NASCAR weekends, Tony Stewart would make regular side trips to Manzanita to watch his U.S. Auto Club cars race. It would be difficult to find a NASCAR driver who came from the USAC ranks who doesn't have a soft spot in his heart for Manzanita. Few dirt tracks in America are more revered.

Earlier this month, Manzanita held its final race. The property is being sold, reportedly because of drops in attendance and car count linked to the economy. There are rumors that one day, the owners might build a new facility somewhere else. If so, that would be a better fate than the one that befell my city's local track, whose asphalt was dug up and recycled. The only thing passing over it today are passenger cars.

The opinions expressed are solely those of the writer.