eaglewon

When at the age of about 11, I met Trigger Watson, he rented a garage for him and a friend to keep, & work on their cars. At that time Trigger was still running "THE Thing", the pink sedan with a head of an old Emmet Kelly doll mounted on the cowl, (because it looked SOOO much like Trigger). His co-renter of the garage was Andy Smith with his #99 car, driven by Fred Luchesi.
I towed, & pushed the 8 car with my red '56 ford p/u with the big white push bumper on it & REAL loud exhaust, at many a track, & quite often after the car started & pulled away I still had to complete the lap to get back to the pit gate,.....& blew off more than a few race cars while doing it, the old Ford 312" was long gone & my truck had the same engine in it as the #8,...a 377" Chevy stroker.
I was walking by the judge's stand at Groveland Pines Speedway, one night & Oscar Ridlin was doing the p.a. announcing/color, & I yelled up to him he should keep his day job, because he sucked as an announcer. He very promptly yelled back,..."If you think you can do any better come up here & take the mic."....to which I said, "O.K., we were about 1/2 way through the "connsie", when Oscar asked me if I wanted a job every Sat., & Sun. at Hudson. Well I took the job & for the next several years I was Lenny Tadpole, "the Voice of the Pines Hudson Circuit".(it was Trigger that gave me that name)
Also during that time I met a man from Canada who owned a track up there. I enlisted the help of Maurice "Big Moe" Farmer, & together we put together a caravan trip to Bathurst New Brunswick with enough A cars to put on a show. I regret, I can't remember the names of all, the drivers & cars on that trip, but a few were, #297 Big Moe Farmer, #49 Shiela Hayes, #22 (Norwood coupe) Jimmy Martel, (I was taken quite aback of late to read Jimmy's obit. of my mentor, & dear friend of 50 years, Trigger Watson).
I've seen a few thing on a few sites while googling around & have seen Jimmy Martel pop up a bunch of times, so you folk have my permission, & urging, to give my email address to Jimmy Martel, would love to hear more about the Pines reunions.
I hope the above is sufficient bio for now.
&...BTW...That is indeed Don "the Flying Fatman", (before he was fat BTW) MacClaren standing by Forest Dame"s last frame #3 the rail cars came next.
The 44x is Ed Santisi from Salem Ma., & the #213 is Brice Haskell, you might remember Brice always wearing the straw boater hat when he didn't have his helmet on.