By ED HEDES

It was late spring 1973 when I started to pen stories foR THE TIMES NEWS.Two years prior, an aspiring Philadelphia dentist who haled from the Wyoming Valley, began his attempt to turn what once was a spinach farm into one of the most recognizable race tracks.Two years prior, Dr. Joseph Mattioli's dream became reality when the inaugural Schaefer 500 Indy-car race took place. Groundbreaking actually took place back in 1965.This past weekend, as I journeyed into the media center to cover yet another NASCAR Sprint Cup series race on the tri-oval, I bumped into an old friend, who back then was the sports editor of the Pocono Record and covered many of those early races with me before it became such a big event.Joe Miegoc had attended then East Stroudsburg State College when I did and was member of a two-man sports department just as I was with THE TIMES NEWS.With Lehighton, Palmerton, Northern Lehigh and Northwestern Lehigh competing in the Centennial League, Joe and I became pretty good friends.He left the Pocono Record to go to work with the United State Golf Association as manager of media relations and then returned to the newspaper industry as a sportswriter for The Times Leader in Wilkes Barre. Miegoc currently is a news reporter at the Scranton Times. He hadn't been at Pocono in over 20 years since he left the Times Leader, but returned two years ago as a spectator.In turn it brought back some memories of the good and the bad we both saw at Pocono in the more than 15 years of covering races there and he decided to write a book called "Pocono: NASCAR's Northern Invasion."The Raceway hosted a press conference to introduce Miegoc and his book and he gave me one to read.As I started to get into the thick of things in the opening chapter, it brought back a lot of memories for me that made me just sit back and dream about the almost 40 years I have spent in Long Pond at least twice each summer.He talks about the early days when NASCAR used the tri-oval to spread itself north of the Mason-Dixon Line. It also reveals how NASCAR and Bill France, who became quite good friends to Rose and Joe Mattioli, played a big part in helping Pocono survive when USAC and CART started their Indy car war and the likes of Mario Andretti, A.J. Foyt and others became just a memory.Miegoc has interviews with many of the NASCAR and Indy car drivers of that era in Richard Petty, David Pearson, Darrell Waltrip, Bobby Allison, Rusty Wallace, Foyt, Janet Guthrie, Bill Elliott, Geoff Bodine and more.He also talks about how Allison's career ended and how a guy by the name of Tim Richmond really made a name for himself there.He also talks about Pocono's role in rock history with a 1972 event that drew more than 200,000 people. You can probably give the 1969 Woodstock concert credit for the Pocono try. So on came Emerson, Lake and Palmer, Rod Steward, Humble Pie, the J. Geils Band, Three Dog Night, to name a few.Miegoc takes you through Pocono to the present days where the economy has hit the NASCAR circuit a bit, how Pocono has kept up with all of the safety standards and how it will host its second straight Craftsman Truck Series race this August.For more information on the book, you can log on to

www.Xlibris.com or

www.pocononascarbook.comIf you're a NASCAR reader and remember the good Ol'Boys of Pocono, this is a must.