Depending on the day, he could be stubborn or sentimental, combative or charming, feisty or friendly. Sometimes when I saw our paths converging in his pit area, I wondered which Jack Arute I was about to encounter. He could keep you guessing.

But about this, there will never be any doubt: Jack Arute, who died on Monday, loved his race track. The Stafford Motor Speedway was his baby. Whether he was swaggering across the infield in 1975, full of vision and vinegar, or puttering along in his golf cart in 2005, trying his best to mask the discomforts of age and illness, there was no mistaking his pride in the place.

“Racing here for these guys,” he told me once, sweeping his arm across the pit area, “is like playing Broadway.” It doesn’t matter much today whether you believe that, or even whether I believed it at the time. What matters is that Jack Arute damn sure believed it. To him, there wasn’t a speedway in his little corner of the world more important than Stafford.

There was plenty of evidence for his argument. The biggest news of any period in Modified racing’s various “golden ages” – the early ’70s and its Pinto Revolution, the New England vs. New York battles with Bodine, Evans and Troyer taking on Stevens, Flemke and Bouchard – always seemed to center around Stafford.

Hell, the Pinto Revolution might never have gotten off the ground had not Jack Arute gone to bat with NASCAR in favor of the modern Modified being built in the Berlin Turnpike gas station of his old friend, Bob Judkins. And think about this: the two fiercest rivals in that New England vs. New York war, Bugsy Stevens and Geoff Bodine, fought tooth and nail at Thompson, Seekonk, Monadnock, Star, Waterford, New Smyrna and Martinsville … and yet whenever their names are mentioned in the same breath, it is probably a Stafford race which first comes to mind.

Across a generation of weekend nights – Saturdays up until 1977, and then Fridays – no Modified track created a bigger buzz. There was Stafford, and there was everyplace else.

The credit for all that starts with Arute. He bought the property from Mal Barlow – on the suggestion of the great Bill Slater – when the track was on the skids. Owning a speedway, Jack joked forever, was the last thing he needed in 1970; he and his brother Chuck owned a large and successful construction outfit in New Britain, CT, and Arute was already up to his eyeballs in Modified racing as the co-owner (with Ray and Richie Garuti) of two prominent coupes, the Garuti & Arute #14 and #28. But when Slater told him that Stafford was in danger of getting plowed under if a new owner wasn’t found, Arute got out his checkbook.

First he saved the old girl, and then he dressed her up. Arute oversaw a long string of Stafford improvements, including a paved pit area (behind the main grandstands, so spectators could watch their heroes at work), a fan-friendly midway, clean concessions, modern restrooms and various other creature comforts. To see Stafford in 1977 or 1982 was to see what every other short track in the Northeast aspired to be.

Arute didn’t do all this on his own, of course. In the early ’70s, Pete Zanardi was the best public relations man in the game, and later on came John McMullin, other PR pro; Ed Yerrington, himself an ex-Stafford Modified driver, proved to be a rock-solid general manager; crack announcers like Mike Joy, Russ Dowd, Ben Dodge Jr. and the dean of them all, the late Bill Welch, kept Stafford’s fans informed and entertained; and a string of officials, from Fran Grote to Bruce Watt to Danny Pardi and others, worked hard to keep Stafford running the way Jack Arute wanted it to run, which was, in a word, orderly.

And, yes, there was always a troupe of Arute sons working hard, sometimes in the background and sometimes right out front: Jack Jr., or Jackie, whose talents ranged from promotion to announcing; Mark, who for years now has been the day-to-day managerial mind in the front office; and young Rob, who, just like Dad, can be seen at other tracks, quietly taking on board any new ideas which might be implemented at Stafford.

But you know something? No matter who was running things in any of the track’s various departments, I always looked at Stafford as Jack Arute’s joint. In a few weeks, when I wander into the pit area for another Spring Sizzler, that’s just how I’ll see the place: as Jack’s joint, even now.

This was a towering figure on the short-track landscape. Sure, he occasionally tilted at windmills; as pointed out earlier, he could be as stubborn as a mule, and some of his battles seemed ill advised. Tires were a particular preoccupation of Jack’s, and in both 1975 and ’82 he implemented rules which, in hindsight, proved divisive and distracting in periods when Modified racing was otherwise healthy. But it must be said that Arute believed with all his heart – and would argue with all his volume – that over time his rules would improve the racing for his fans, and save money for his car owners. You could disagree with the rules themselves, but you could not find fault with his intent.

He leaves behind seven children and a large extended family, and Lord knows how many friends and associates. And he leaves behind the Stafford Motor Speedway, which he loved and nurtured with a passion that was nothing short of paternal.

All those different Jack Arutes I mentioned at the beginning of this piece? I’ll miss them all.

Godspeed, Jack.