2015 summer

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LLC

CIRCLE TRACK RACING By Autumn Giles

“I take it you’re not from around here,” Patsy Fodera asks me with a smile because she knows I needed directions. “Everyone from here knows where the track was.” “The track,” is the Globe-Miami Speedway, built in the midfifties by her husband Louis Fodera’s father on the family’s property in Wheatfields. By all accounts, the track was a cultural and social institution in the Globe-Miami area until it closed in 1994. Dennis Gates, 65, who began racing in 1967 and still races at every chance he gets says, “That’s what you did on Saturday night. You went to the races. It kept you out of the bars and from partying in the Pinals.” Gates’ father Franklin helped build the Globe-Miami Speedway and later raced there as well. “We had people from everywhere. It was packed,” said Louis Fodera. “I think what your readers will remember most are Pat’s hamburgers,” says Fodera of his wife’s famous burgers, which she served up on race nights from the concession stand along with their

Prickly Pear Festival Page 32

1989 view of the track. Photos courtesy of the Foderas

daughters Valerie, Vicki, and Vonda. Louis Fodera recalls people from the neighborhood who weren’t even staying for the races, coming by for burgers on Saturday nights. “People would skip supper to come out and eat her hamburgers,” Fodera remembers. “It was something for the family to do,” said Wayne Wampole,

Local Bands Take Stage

Racing, Continued on page 46

A Mescal Called Tequila

Housing Development Page 34

It all starts from a succulent plant known as the agave By Kim Stone of Boyce Arboretum

During my college drinking years in the mid-1970s, Jimmy Buffet led me and many others down a dark path with gradelowering favorites like “God’s Own Drunk” and the anthem, “Why Don’t We Get Drunk and…” By the time he released his smash hit song “Margaritaville” in 1977, I had dropped out of school and was living with my parents. I eventually graduated, and though my mom and dad still harbor some ill will towards Mr. Buffet, there is no question that he helped raise the margarita–and its main ingredient, tequila – to superstar status in the U.S. But where, exactly, does tequila come from?

Summer Youth Theater Page 12

Tequila, Continued on page 40

Story and Photos By Andrea Justice

It’s Saturday night! The moon is above and the streetlights are glowing in downtown Globe. From a distance, local walkers can hear a song. A young voice takes the mic at Farleys Pub for the first time and pours his heart out for a small crowd of music lovers. More musicians line up at the door waiting patiently to sing an original song or a classic cover they spent hours learning the night before. It’s open mic night and everyone is welcome. For those that perform it’s more than a chord, a note, or a lyric, it’s a true form of expression. It’s local music practiced in basements, garages, on back porches and living rooms. It’s played with the radio until committed to memory then revealed for family and friends. It’s real music in its’ rawest form; honest and powerful.

Local bands, Continued on page 44

Purveyors of Information Since 2006

Area Walking Maps Photo by Thomass in Mickael CC BY 2.0, via Flickr

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2015 summer by Globe Miami Times - Issuu