6/22/2025
Postman 68
A 7:30 Start Time
It was a summer Friday night in the late 80's, I was the track announcer at Penn Can Speedway in Susquehanna, Pa. I worked for a promoter named Seward Rice, affectionately known as "Ricey" -- a man with amazing common-sense-wisdom.
I was in my first year announcing and part of the job was making sure that promptly at 7:30 the grandstand side of the track was ready for racing. Ricey ran a tight ship with time.
We had one of those nights where, in my mind, there was too much to do (announcements, a bounty, greeting sponsors, etc.) before 7:30. At 7:36 the National Anthem was being sung.
Ricey was standing in turn two, put his right hand over his heart and looked at the watch on his left wrist. I saw it -- because I knew we were late -- and thought to myself there was no way he was going to say anything about it. Afterall, I had important things that needed to be done.
He looked at his watch again, and then a third time; I was a little less certain by the end of the song that my little six-minute delay was going to just be forgotten.
The first heat rolled onto the track, Ricey made his way across the infield. But that was his normal routine, and I worked to convince myself everything was fine. Between heats he crossed the track into the grandstand where he greeted fans as I called the second heat.
Between heats two and three he made it to the tower and invited me to follow him to the track office. I was now terrified. My dream job, my career in front of me and I was done before even getting started.
"What time do we start here," he asked as we walked in.
"7;30", I replied.
"What time did we start tonight," was his next question.
I started to give a list of things I had to do, and he calmly asked me to stop.
He replied, "it was six minutes late."
By now he was sitting at his desk, I was across from him, and he slid a calculator in front of me. Then the employee list, he asked me to count the employee list.
I did and there were 46 employees, he told me to multiply 46 times six.
"276", I said.
"If every employee here costs us six minutes, which is how late we would be," he replied.
I was stunned.
"We have a nice crowd here tonight,” he said. "Let's say we have a thousand people here, multiply your six minutes times a thousand Steve. You wasted 6,000 minutes of our customers valuable time."
I went from stunned to shocked.
Ricey leaned back in his chair and in his deep baritone voice described the five types of people at the track:
--Those with kids
--those who wanted to go to the pits after the races to see their favorite driver and have a beer or two there.
--those who wanted to go out to the bars and party or stop at a diner after the races
-- those who worked all week and wanted to go home and to bed.
--those who had plans (work, honey-dos, kids event, etc.) on Saturday morning.
"If we get done around 10 o'clock every week they will keep coming back," he said. "If we run late, we will lose some of them each week."
I had moved from stunned, to shocked, to enlightened. And I was a bit relieved that my career was not over.
He looked at me and said, "let me repeat my first question; what time do we start here?"
"7:30 Ricey," I said as we stood up and walked out of that office.
In my remaining years at Penn Can; wind, rain, heat, cold, wrecks in hot Laps, sponsors to welcome -- nothing stopped me. At 7:25 on every Friday night Millard Hall (the singing voice of Penn Can) was singing the National Anthem.
-Postman
Submitted By: Steve Post
