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Sadly, another short-track racing venue is gone.
While NASCAR revels in its extraordinary success, its huge television contracts, its multi-million dollar sponsorships and a captive audience who love their favorite drivers and buy all their merchandise, racing at the grassroots level is unable to survive competing for the entertainment dollar.
Who is to blame?
NASCAR.
It was fine when short tracks raced on Saturday nights, as Wall Stadium, then Wall Township Speedway, did for so many years. It was the much-anticipated weekly show which drew the big names of the sport — such as John Blewett Jr. of Howell and the late Richie Evans, a nine-time NASCAR champion.
Blewett and Evans rubbing fenders was a sight to behold, bringing fans to feet.
Short-track racing was wonderful: exciting, colorful and sometimes a bitter rivalry between racers and racing fans who would chose up sides in the grandstand.
It was all good for racing and owner/promoter Jennie J. Nicol, the First Lady of Short Track Racing, recognized the need for speed.
She was well ahead of her time, smarter than most men in a man's game, always eager to put the best show on her third-of-a-mile banked oval.
Rumor has it, though never confirmed by her, that she paid drivers $50 each to start a fight on the track to get the crowd reved up.
She could do that and get away with it. She had that kind of savvy, that kind of charisma.
She used to pull an advertising sign at the back of her Cadillac up and down Ocean Avenue to get everyone's attention. When she saw a family at the corner, crossing the street, she'd hand them free tickets to the track.
Mrs. Nicol did the same when she saw a youngster at the gate without enough money to get in. She let him in for free.
That's what short-track racing once was.
She made racing great at her beloved track.
Like us all, she had her favorites. I had mine, still do.
She was so good for racing, and now we have this tragic news.
Everyone is saddened by this development (and I don't mean building town houses and offices). New Jersey could ill afford to lose Wall Township Speedway.
Now, what do we have left?
Dirt-track racing at New Egypt Speedway, sold last year, then reduced its schedule because he faced the same challenges as Wall Township Speedway.
There's drag racing (stay off the streets, please) at Old Bridge Township Raceway Park. While the racing is as good as anywhere else, oval racing isn't the same.
Sometime next year there will be racing in Millville, but what would you rather do, drive around the block as the Blewett family did from their complex on Herbertsville Road, or trek off to Millville on a summer's day with all the traffic?
If zipping in and out of traffic is your fancy, you can head north to Stafford Motor Speedway in Stafford Springs, Conn., or Thompson International Speedway, also in Connecticut.
Ask Jimmy Blewett how much fun he had on the roads to Riverhead (N.Y.) Speedway or Chemung Speedrome in a New York town called Chemung.
Racing at your "home" track was always the most fun; getting your start there was pretty neat, too. Just ask Ray Evernham and Martin Truex Jr., who made it to the big-time circuit.
So many great names of racing had their start at Wall. If you could race the tight turns at Wall, you could race any track anywhere, anytime.
I hate the thought of it sitting there, on Route 34, without race-cars on it this summer. I hate the thought that there will be no Turkey Derby this Thanksgiving.
I'll never forgive NASCAR, with all its money, for not helping the short tracks of America, so many of which have closed.
The owners who followed Mrs. Nicol came at the wrong time. It was impossible for them to make a go of it, and they never had the right people running it, either.
The shame of it is, there are no second chances in this race game. Wall is gone, and I don't ever think we will see race-cars on it again.
I cry for Mrs. Nicol's track.
Were she alive today, I think she'd cry with me.
It's a sad day for racing.
Don Wilno is an Asbury Park Press staff writer.