I was walking down the hall last Friday, my usual path to the coffee machine, and saw Chery Cirigliano, who works in Inside Sales. I asked her what her plans were for the weekend. She smiled, chuckled and said she and Ron Schmidt, who is an Opto Electrical Engineer, would be attending the Perris Fair, like they have for the last two years, because Ron was going to be racing.
"Racing what?" I was curious. "A tractor," she explained. I was intrigued. "How often do you guys race?" I found out they had been participating for the last 15 years. I just moved to Temecula about 3 months ago and I'm not familiar with the area, let alone its history, so this was really interesting. Chery and Ron have worked with Opto for over 24 years and have lived in Temecula for the past 18 years--since 1989. So they've seen the city grow and change. I wanted to find out more.
"What kind of tractor do you race and how fast does it go? How big an event was tractor racing? What's it like?" I had never seen a tractor race. Apparently, the tractor races actually began here in Temecula, and the tradition goes back long before most people even lived in Temecula. Chery explained that Ron took his normal garden tractor and fixed it up so it could get a lot more speed.
I did a little more research and found out that the Temecula tractor races, formally named "The Great Temecula Tractor Race," was extremely popular in its heyday in the late 1980s and early 1990s. There were crowds of up to 30,000 people and often 130 tractors racing. There was entertainment with famous performers such as Joan Jett, Juice Newton, and the Marshall Tucker Band. It was originally held a few miles north of Opto's location on vacant land with plenty of mud. There were tons of food and drinks, entertainment, and even mud volleyball.
Unfortunately, after 2005 "The Great Temecula Tractor Race" was discontinued. But that didn't stop Ron and Chery from keeping the tradition alive. The Perris Fair, held northeast of Temecula, now holds a smaller tractor race where Ron continues to keep winning with Chery cheering him on.
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