On Saturday nights, a familiar sound rides the wind, blanketing the east side of Barberton as it has for nearly 70 years.
Follow the soft buzz across the city’s northwest border into neighboring Norton, and you’ll find its source.
After a two-year hiatus, the Barberton Speedway is back in business.
Last weekend’s opening night drew more than 2,500 fans who had been missing their weekly fix.
They poured in off Clark Mill Road, parked in neat rows on a large adjacent field, and settled into long lines at the gate.
Ticket sellers worked quickly to move the crowd inside, where new bleachers, renovated bathrooms, a newly designated family seating section and freshly painted concession stands awaited.
“Oh yes, I’ve missed this,” race fan Geri Reidenbach shouted above roaring engines making laps on the quarter-mile oval below.
She remembers when her parents first started bringing her to the track as a 4-year-old, sporting bright red Christmas ear muffs to dampen the noise.
“It was bigger than anything else I knew,” she said. “It was loud, and fast, and exciting.”
For her and companion Rex Tierney, the two-year wait has been too long.
It might have been even longer if not for a pair of New Franklin brothers who rescued the track.
Mike and Pat Mazzagatti know something about turning around doomed businesses. They’ve done it several times before, and now have a stable of six different enterprises, mostly of the salvage/recycling variety.
So when the speedway was shuttered two years ago, they figured why not put that experience toward something they were passionate about.
The speedway is in the Mazzagatti blood. Their uncles raced here in the 1960s. Dad Anthony raced here in the 1970s. Mike, now 41, started racing here right out of high school in the 1990s — still would if he didn’t now own the place.
“We grew up here,” Pat, 37, said.
Thinking back on his humble beginnings, Mike said he could never have guessed he would own the speedway one day.
He’d bought his first business when he was 21, an auto wrecking yard that was closing the day he showed up to buy a part. The yard paid his bills, but any spare change went into racing.
“Saturday at 1 o’clock we closed our doors, and if there was any money left in the cash register, me and the guy who worked for me, we’d go racing. If we didn’t have money in the cash register we didn’t go racing,” Mike said. “We were lucky to get here, just to get in the gate or afford a tire or buy fuel.”
For most of their adult lives, the speedway had been owned by Richard Lushes, who operated the track for 15 years until his death in 2011.
The owner who replaced him, however, couldn’t keep the lights on.
When the Mazzagatti brothers learned the track would not be opening for the 2014 season, they did the math, assessed the risk and talked a Florida woman who held the note on the property into letting it go for $260,000.
It took two years of court dates to untangle the paper mess, and when it was over, the Mazzagattis celebrated with a single racing night last September, “just to prove to fans that we were serious,” Pat said.
Since then, family members, friends and employees have worked furiously to get the track in shape, applying their talents to everything from carpentry to electric to concrete.
The personal investment has been so great, the brothers shook off a temporary notion that they would get the track ready and hand it to someone else to operate.
“Now that we’ve put so much work into it, we’re not ready to turn over the keys,” Pat said. “We’re not letting it go.”
The track has become one more tie that bonds these inseparable brothers. The pair live on the same street and carpool to work every day. They’re both married, each with two children under the age of 8, and vacation together in the Outer Banks every year.
As if operating six businesses together isn’t enough, they also recently bought a farm that stretches between their two homes, with plans to farm it.
“We spread ourselves thin, but I think we work better under pressure,” said Mike, who also still races in a traveling series that takes him out of state just about every week.
Yet there is a golden rule: “We go home at 5:30 with our kids,” Mike said. “We came to that conclusion when we had our second round of kids [each brother has a 1-year-old] that we weren’t going to miss them growing up. Of course, that doesn’t mean we’re not back at it after 10 when they go to bed.”
The Mazzagattis have ambitious plans for the Barberton Speedway.
They plan to tear up the inner turf for a rodeo show on June 17 and a Monster Truck rally sometime in August. Other events are under discussion, including a demolition derby. They also tripled the usual budget for a traditional July 2 fireworks show.
“The idea of it is to bring in people who have never been to the racetrack,” Pat said.
Among the new amenities on regular race nights is a loge with a $1,500 evening price tag, which includes a catered party for up to 50 people and indoor/outdoor seating, and a nonalcohol, nonsmoking bleachers section for families.
The track is also adding a new class this year: Bandolero, which features miniature stock cars for drivers as young as 8 years old. Pat said his 8-year-old daughter will race, and Mike is counting the days until his 5-year-old daughter is old enough.
Bandolero will join the usual offering that includes the Legends class for drivers 13 and up, and the faster classes of Late Models, Modifieds, Detroit Irons and Front Wheel Drive. The closest venues with a similar lineup are in Sandusky and New Philadelphia.
Whatever the class, drivers will see Steve Brookens at Turn 4 waving the flag, just as he has for 41 years.
“I told them the only way they’ll get me off there is if I croak or God forbid I can’t walk, and even then they’d better get me a wheelchair with a motor on it,” said Brookens, a former WCW wrestler known as the Green Hornet.
The Mazzagattis “have made a great place for people to come,” Brookens said. “My hat’s off to them.”
He pointed to a sponsor wall featuring 70 businesses as proof of broad community support.
Brookens also loves promoting Barberton Speedway for its family appeal, an affordable option for sports lovers since parking is free, adult general admission is $12 and kids 5 and under are admitted free.
A typical Saturday night is a four-hour event featuring 12 races lasting 25 laps each. The final heats begin at 6:30 p.m., starting out in daylight and finishing under the lights. Diehard fans can clock in as early as 3 p.m. to watch the qualifying heats.
Carl Wise, who grew up in Norton but has recently been stationed at Travis Air Force Base in California, couldn’t believe his luck when he was home on leave last weekend: Opening night at the speedway, and perfect weather to boot.
He couldn’t wait to introduce his children — 4-year-old Carl III and 8-month-old Cameron — to a family tradition.
The new family section abuts a fenced-in lawn with playground equipment, but young Carl — he and his little brother both wearing the kind of ear protection used at rifle ranges — only had eyes for the stock cars circling the track.
“We used to come here several times a year,” Wise said, naming various relatives who were always part of the contingent. “It was a special time for us to be together.”
Paula Schleis can be reached at 330-996-3741 or pschleis@thebeaconjournal.com. Follow her on Twitter at http://twitter.com/paulaschleis.