ORWIN — Dick Clark sat at a table in the Orwin Fire Company holding copies of perhaps the iconic image of a speedway gone by.
“The steering broke. A guy welded it for me, but it broke and I couldn’t do anything,” Clark said, explaining the reason his out-of-control No. 77 was leaving Gold Mine Raceway.
The 1964 photo caught the moment just as the car launched over the guardrail.
“Down there, I guess that was about a 25-foot drop,” the Valley View resident said, pointing to a spot on the photograph. “Then there was water down there.
“I didn’t go in the water.”
Several former competitors at the speedway spent much of Sunday’s Coal Region Racing Reunion pondering another time when a driver did finish his race in a nearby pond.
Such stories were the reason for the gathering, including drivers who competed at other tracks such as Anthracite Raceway in Schoentown.
But Gold Mine, a quarter-mile oval open from 1950-53 and then from 1962-68, was the focus of the day.
“Everybody knew the Gold Mine Mountain. That’s how I believe it got the name,” former track co-owner Terry Watkins, 72, said, recalling father “Fuzz” Watkins’ construction.
“I was just a little guy watching the bulldozers.”
After the track’s original three-year run, Terry Watkins was a member of the promotional team when the track reopened in 1962.
He recalled perhaps the track’s largest crowd.
“We even had that Joie Chitwood there, that thrill show,” he said. “He did it on that little straightaway right in front of you, jump ramps. That was a big deal.”
The races themselves were the weekly attraction for Watkins’ sister, Carol.
“I loved the excitement. I couldn’t wait until Sundays,” she said about the afternoon programs.
The track was a staple for several drivers. While some made Gold Mine one of the many tracks they visited, Clarence Vidal was devoted to the small clay oval.
“It was real easy to drive there, one of the best tracks around,” the Schuylkill Haven resident said, adding, “To set up the car, you kept the left side (tires) low and the right side high.”
Clark said the sweeping turns posed a challenge.
“You had to throw it into the turn pretty good,” said the 74-year-old, who raced for three seasons. “You had to slide it in because all you could see was dust. Sometimes you couldn’t see what was in front of you, especially if you were in the back.”
In addition to the Joie Chitwood Thrill Show, Gold Mine was the venue for demolition derbies and the occasional powder puff race.
The trophies displayed at Sunday’s event included one won by Dolly Hendricks, who beat her sister, Kathryn Bretz, in a women’s race at Gold Mine that day.
“If it was still running when the guys were done, you drove it,” Hendricks said of the cars.
Several times, the point was stressed that it was a simpler time — when cars could be taken from junkyards and transformed into racing machines, often by the drivers themselves.
Roy Wiest said his first two race cars cost $175 each to buy. One was good enough to win his first-ever heat at Gold Mine.
“I didn’t know what I was doing,” he said.
Reading’s Russ Smith added: “I was my own mechanic. If it didn’t run, I gave myself hell.”
The cars were inexpensive, but the track’s payouts also were not nearly as much as today’s purses.
In the end, former co-promoter Bob Watkins said, drivers eventually left Gold Mine for other speedways, forcing the Porter Township track to close for good.
With the facility’s nine acres for sale by the Watkins family, the remnants of Gold Mine are hidden by trees and underbrush, though a sliver of the original oval is still passable.
Several former drivers such as Chicker Nelson got the chance after the reunion to circle that portion of the track again in a four-wheeler.
Nelson’s smile said it all.
“It’s starting to come back to me,” he said.
Not just the track, but the urge to race again.