Return to those days of yesteryear when kids used to hang out at the soda shops, pool halls, and slot car racing parlors.

Slot cars racing parlors? Huh?Well, if you weren't so lucky as to grow up with a slot car parlor in your town, Lane's Pocono Slot Car Raceway in Jim Thorpe is offering you a second chance.At Lane's, you and up to six of your friends can race a 1/24th or 2nd scale NASCAR around a15-foot by 24-foot tri-oval slot car track. Bring you own equipment or rent one of Lane's stock cars and controllers.Slot cars began their history as an automotive version of a model railroad train, with the earliest ones made by Lionel between 1912 and 1915. These cars were track-mounted like trains.In the 1950s, one company tried replacing the track with a slot in the track surface and a guide, designed to loosely fit into the slot, onto the bottom of the car. Conductive tape was laid on each side of the slot-one side for positive, the other side for negative.A 12-volt battery or power supply was connected between the tapes, a voltage controller was placed into the circuit, and a miniature car with a D.C. motor placed in the slot. Together, they formed an indoor racing system.Freed of the track, the cars could realistically swivel as they made turns at speeds of up to 120 mph. On Lane's track, cars make the loop in under four seconds. The skill is in knowing when to go fast and when to slow down - and to make these decisions in fractions of a second."I like the competition and the camaraderie," said owner, Montie Lane, Sr. "We plan to run it like a bowling league. We will find racers who want to come-weekends in off season, every day in the tourist season."Lane remembers the dawn of slot car racing in the 1950s."Guys got together and started building cars and racing," he noted. "It became a fad. In the 1960s, there were slot car racing places on just about every corner."But then, the slot car racing parlors, which made money selling the slot cars to the growing number of serious competitors, began facing competition when retail stores began selling slot cars at lower prices."That started hurting the guys who owned the tracks and they had to close," Lane said.By the 1980s, the track owners, who persuaded the slot car wholesalers to only sell cars to track owners, started making a comeback.Around 1966, as a 12-year-old boy, every Sunday, Lane's parents dropped him off at Spotty's near where he lived in Langhorne. At the time, he had his own Indie slot car.In 1992, he opened Lane's Slot Car Raceway, a three-track slot car parlor in Levittown. Three years after moving to Jim Thorpe in 2002, Lane decided to open a slot car parlor in the borough.All he needed was a track, which he purchased in February from Minnesota, and a shop, which he rented at 46 West Broadway.Lane's track has seven lanes. Each heat in a race runs about six minutes.After each heat, all cars change lanes to compensate for the difference in length of each lane, the inside lanes being shorter than the outside lanes.The outside lane has one advantage.Cars that go too fast into the turn are apt to it the wall which often keeps the car from jumping out of the slot.If a slot car enthusiast came to Lane's, would they discover any changes from what it was like in the 1950s?For one thing, the cars are made better with faster motors and flexible drive trains.The biggest change is the introduction of the computer."The computer allows the program to keep track of laps and speeds and displays it on a monitor," Lane said.How much competition is there?"In 1993, one guy won every race," Lane said. "His car had a legal stock motor, but it was a one-percenter."That competitor learned that the manufacturer tested every motor and would select the fastest one percent from their production run and sell it at a higher price. After that, Lane noted, "Everyone wanted a one-percenter."Lane's Pocono Slot Car Raceway is located at 46 West Broadway in Jim Thorpe. Telephone: 570-952-1124. E-mail:

montielane@gmail.com.