For this group, the restaurants and hotels all seem to run together, but there's an intangible that separates one town from another.

It's a kind of built-in sixth sense for these high plains drifters of the late model touring world. When the Deery Brothers Summer Series tour hit town last Wednesday, I thought it might be interesting to head out to Quincy Raceways well ahead of the scheduled 7 p.m. starting time and sit down and talk with some of these heroes of the high banks.

I wondered what they thought of Quincy, and why come to this far south? Most are from southeastern, central and northeastern Iowa.

I wanted to hear from a mixture of the drivers who travel with this series, which is made up of the sport's "semi-pro" types. They don't drive those ground-pounding, sheet-metal behemoths for a living, but they might as well. Many own their own businesses and can set their own schedules. Others use vacation days or simply miss work to chase that checkered flag at the end of the dirt-track rainbow.

They are guys like veterans Darrel DeFrance and Terry Neal. They are also drivers like T.J. Criss, in only his second year of late model racing and following the Deery circuit for the first time.

Surprisingly, in three separate conversations I received virtually the same answers.

"It's a town like Quincy that makes this thing (racing) special," DeFrance said. "You make a lot of friends along the way, and this is a racing community."

DeFrance, who lives seven hours away in Marshalltown, Iowa, makes the long haul to Quincy twice a year for Deery shows.

"I've made a lot of friends in Quincy," he said. "Guys like Terry Schlipman, Denny Woodworth, Mark Burgtorf ... now, it's neat to come here and see that Terry's kid, Jared, has started racing."

It's all about the community, they said. They can sense they are welcome here, and that means a lot to someone from the outside. Imagine life on the other side of the fish bowl.

"You can tell people here in Quincy like racing by how well they support this track," Criss said. "You can tell the community is behind this thing with the effort they put into it."

That old television commercial about some product that has left me seems to ring true: You don't get a second chance to make a first impression. Obviously, people in Quincy have made guys like these -- and others -- feel mighty welcome when they visit.

To fully understand Quincy's popularity among the Tri-State racing community, know that the car counts in Quincy are among the highest for the Deery series, despite it being the southern-most track in the IMCA and a long, long way from most other outposts within that affiliation.

Kevin Yoder, one of the directors of the IMCA, repeatedly tells me how much the organization values Quincy. Yoder says Quincy's facilities are among the best, but of equal importance is the hospitality found here. The drivers and their fans come a long way when they come to Quincy, and apparently they like what they find here.

"I always enjoy coming to Quincy," Neal said.

That says a lot about where you and I live.

-- seighinger@whig.com/221-3377