POLAND — Ten dollars today will buy you one ticket to your local speedway on a Saturday night.

Or maybe, if you’re wheeling a vehicle that sips fuel instead of swallowing it, enough gas to make the round trip.

Back when Bob Greeley was graduating from high school and plotting a strategy for life in the real world, that same $10 bought him an entire race car.

At least that’s all Greeley saw from the original purchase. But it was a little bit like the movie character Forrest Gump investing in his friend’s shrimp boat, or buying stock in Apple computers.

“From that $10, I got an education and a hobby for the rest of my life,” Greeley said. “I don’t regret any of it. All I’ve got today, I owe to racing.”

Greeley is retired from the sport. The pictures and news clippings in his basement have yellowing, dog-eared corners. Trophies occasionally need polishing.

This weekend, however, racing will offer Greeley one last prize that won’t rust or fade.

He’s one of six new members in the Maine Motorsports Hall of Fame. Greeley and his fellow competitors will be enshrined by the Maine Vintage Race Car Association in Saturday’s annual banquet at Augusta Civic Center.

“I never dreamed that I’d ever be nominated,” Greeley said. “It’s quite an honor. Of course, that and $2 might buy you a cup of coffee anywhere in town.”

Greeley had his cup of coffee at some of motorsports’ most hallowed grounds, ranging from his home tracks of Beech Ridge and Oxford to the high banks of Daytona International Speedway.

The history books show that Greeley even made one appearance in what is now the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series. He started 28th and finished 13th on July 16, 1972.

Bobby Allison won that 300-mile race at a track in Trenton, N.J.

Together with longtime OPS owner Bob Bahre’s brother, Richard, Greeley ran multiple sportsman races at Daytona, driving his trademark purple Plymouth.

“I met Richard and Maurice Petty, Bobby Allison, (country singer and racer) Marty Robbins. Conway Twitty and Loretta Lynn were performing together down there one year,” Greeley said. “I had a lot of good times and met a lot of nice people. I don’t have a bad word to say about any of it.”

Today, an 18-year-old racer might have 13 years experience driving go-karts and full-bodied cars on a variety of courses.

In school, he or she might learn how to weld or build an engine in vocational classes.

Greeley had none of those luxuries. He bought his first race car, in part, for the purpose of learning how to turn a wrench.

Along with a friend, Maurice Dube, he rented an Amoco station on Court Street in Auburn.

“All I knew how to do when we started was pump gas and wash cars,” Greeley said. “We bought a race car. We figured out how to do light mechanical work. We kept buying a few tools here and there. We were making $28 to $33 a week. We worked all day until 9 o’clock and then went and worked on the race car. We didn’t have time to get in any trouble.”

Another obstacle was the community’s perception of racing and those who engaged in it as a hobby.

Think of the reaction a young snowboarder with long hair, tattoos and piercings might receive today. Now multiply it by a hundred.

“We had to keep the car in Lisbon Falls,” Greeley said. “If you owned a filling station, people wouldn’t trade with you or even buy gas from you if you had a jalopy in your yard, as they called it. They treated you worse than (a criminal).”

Undaunted, Greeley continued to grow in his vocation and his recreation.

In the late 1950s, Greeley’s Garage — the self-proclaimed “best damn garage in town” — opened on Washington Avenue. Dube christened his own shop on Sabattus Street in Lewiston. Both businesses prospered.

“All that,” Greeley reiterated, “came out of a $10 race car.”

The race team campaigned a Modified on the hard-packed clay at Beech Ridge, eventually transitioning to the Oxford asphalt.

After seeing an advertisement in the paper seeking construction workers for a new interstate highway north of Augusta, Greeley took a course and a test at Lewiston Welding.

“I bet I worked on half the bridges from Waterville to Houlton,” Greeley said. “We’d work three or four days, take a break, then come back and do a few more.”

Greeley, now 76, worked with cars on and off the track for 56 years. He has since turned over the business to family members.

After his team stopped touring the Eastern seaboard, Greeley competed in NASCAR North Series events and in late model races at Oxford. In later years, he was best known as a car owner and mechanic for Bruce Haley.

When OPS disbanded its Pro Stock division in 2006, Greeley gave Haley the racing equipment.

“I spent all my life in the trenches, never on the podium,” Greeley said.

That will change Saturday night.

koakes@sunjournal.com

Class of 2011

Brian Batchelder — Drag racer; owns 18 national records

Dave Dion — Three-time Oxford 250 champion; won open competition races at almost every track in Maine

Bob Greeley — Local racer and mechanic; one of the few Mainers to compete in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series

Jim McClure — Championship driver in three divisions at BeechRidge

Larry Reno — Won three consecutive championships at Wiscasset in the 1970s

Jeff Stevens — Famed “outlaw” driver who competed in modified and late model touring races throughout New England

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