PETROLIA — The Osmer family races on.

It’s been 56 years since Petrolia resident Art Osmer, 73, got behind the wheel of a race car for the first time at Tri-City Speedway.

Now his son, Dan, a Butler resident, is entering his third year of competition in the Pennsylvania Vintage Dirt Modified Series. He finished third in points in 2013 and is challenging for the points title this season.

“They haven’t been tabulated yet, but I know I’m close,” Dan said.

His older brother, Wes, serves as his crew chief And his sons, Wesley, 10, and Dash, 6, help work on the car.

And Art can still be found at the tracks and in the pits, too.

“You’re not gonna keep me away from this stuff,” he said.

And so it goes.

This family has been a part of dirt track racing for decades and likely has a few decades left in it.

“Both of my boys love it,” Dan Osmer said. “Wesley has picked up a lot of knowledge the past couple of years. He runs parts and tools for us, records the races, checks tire pressure ... He helps in a number of ways.”

Wes has been crew chief of Osmer race machines for the past 30 years despite being involved in an automobile accident in 1986 that nearly left him paralyzed.

The wreck happened during his return home from a race at Marion Center Speedway.

“I was five miles from home, fell asleep and wrecked,” Wes said. “I woke up with a spinal cord injury, couldn’t walk andwas sent to Harmarville for rehab.

“I was there about six weeks, but wound up walking again.”

He walks today with the assistance of two canes, but rides a motorized cart around pit areas “because they’re a little too tough for me to get around anymore.”

“Three or four kidney transplants ... Wes has been through a lot,” his brother said. “But he’s always been the brains of the operation when it comes to these cars.”

Art Osmer grew up in the same neighborhood as then-successful dirt track racers John McGinley and Yip Robinson. His love for racing began right there.

“I was always climbing all over their cars, getting in the road when they were trying to work on them,” he recalled, laughing.

Art raced cars himself, primarily Modifieds and Late Models, from 1958 through 2000, winning approximately five features.

“We didn’t win much, but we were always com petitive,” he said. “I won a points championship at Marion Center one year without winning a feature. I finished no worse than fourth in a race all year.

“I raced three nights a week and took Wes and a couple of neighbor boys with me when they were 14. They were my crew.”

Because each track required a different gear set-up, Osmer left Wes and the others to make the necessary adjustments on the race car once they returned home each night.

“It’d be around midnight. I’d go to bed and they’d go to work,” Art said.

“We’d tear out the back end, adjust the gears and put it back together,” Wes said. “We’d get done about 2 a.m. We were kids. We loved it.”

The car Dan’s racing in the vintage series was originally Art’s car in the 1980’s. The first time Art ever climbed in it, he won the dash, heat race and feature.

Eventually, the car was sold off and the family lost track of it.

While showing another car at Lernerville Speedway’s Nostalgia Night a few years ago, the car was rediscovered.

“We had a collage of pictures of some of our former cars on display and someone pointed to that one and said he knew where it was,” Wes Osmer said. “It was sitting in an automotive shop in the area.

“We went down and checked it out. Mom wound up buying the car back for Dad as a Christmas present four years ago.”

The Osmers took two years to restore the car. The lettering was redone by the same man — Ron Libecco of Karns City — who did the original lettering more than 30 years ago.

“His wife is our barber,” Wes said. “When we asked him to do the lettering, he said he still had his paint brush.”

The car is No. 6. Osmer bought one of his first race cars from longtime Modified racer Carl Murdick of Butler.

“I learned a lot about racing when I was a kid, hanging around that car,” Dan Osmer said. “Now I feel like it’s being passed on to me and my sons are learning the sport with that same car.”

The Pa. Vintage Modified Series is quickly growing in popularity. There were 31 cars competing on the circuit this year from Pennsylvania, New York, Maryland, Ohio and Canada.

The 2015 series schedule features more races than there were this year and “older cars are coming out of the woodwork now,” Wes said.

“It’s a cheaper form of racing and people enjoy seeing what those older cars were like on the track. And the fact we travel around to different tracks keeps the series fresh all the time.”

It keeps the Osmer racing family fresh as well.

“Our passion for this hasn’t slowed down ... not at all,” Dan said.