Hot Rods Racing in the 60's dirt track

Doug, I see that you list your location as "Pennock, MN" which, quite frankly, is out in the "Boondocks" towards Willmar. Perchance, were you living close to Jackson or Fairmont" in those days? If so, I'd really like to share some stuff I have accumulated from back then

BTW : I have never heard anything about a "F I Setup", but I did hear that one of the Thurmer Brothers took an airplane flight out to LA to meet with Ed Iskendarian (himself) to find a cam that would beat the 327 Chevrolets that were dominating the tracks then. Alas, it was not to be.

 

Just remembered something that happened at West Liberty. One night in late model a car went head on into the first turn wall, car was destroyed. One of the worst looking wrecks I ever saw. Ambulance goes screaming over, pit crews are all running over to help, absolute silence in the stands. One of the ambulance crew reaches into the car and pulls out a leg. People scream, women faint, general mayhem in the stands. Then the driver climbs out, puts his artificial leg back on, and walks back to the pits.

 

My 70 year old buddy I mentioned earlier just sold his backup car to another buddy, Scott. Scott lives in Florida, so they made some mods to suit Florida rules, and a couple extra to suit his particular predicament. He also is missing a leg, so they changed the manual trans to auto, and added a hand brake. Seems his artificial leg falls off when the weather is hot (all the time in Florida) and the car throws sideways.

 

Hi-I got interested in the cars from southern Minn. 'cause a lot of them ran with the old Minnesota State Stock car****ociation out of St. Peter.George Trimbo headed it at the time and some of the locals would run it.Our promoter at Willmar was originally from Jackson and we followed a lot of how they did things-we never ran the overhead valve motors-Flatheads and any inline motor-Jackson and Fairmont were ahead of us-there wasn't any money around here-Igrew up here and currently a friend and I are gathering any stuff we can about early racin around here-we can start a conversation about it. Thanks Doug

 

Yes......the driver with the wooden leg was Walt Carney. We raced against him in 1965 at Tipton Iowa. We won the Season Championship race with driver Blackie Lyons in a 1955 Chev. We beat Roger Dolan in his pink early Chev coupe with a GMC 302 six. We ran the top side for 50 laps and Roger ran the bottom with the high torque GMC and we stayed wound up on the top with our 283 V/8. We won the season finale race......but Walt Carney won the season point championship......and prize......the keys to the 1965 Chev Impala pace car !!! Those were the days

 

Wow ! What a prize for a points champion in 1965 for local track racing. I was BMARA car owner champion, Midgets, Sun Prairie, Wi.) 1979 and got $180. repeated 1980, received $ 260. point fund money. There was no money in Midget racing back then to be won with some exceptions. I never made a any money in racing ever, 1 year broke even due to a $10000. sponsor in 1980 that my driver (Stan Fox) scored for us, as a driver money wise was 1974 for me, 8 pretty successful years as an owner, 13 years of fun as a driver, 21 total years (1970 through 1991) of Fun, Memories Priceless and never did it for the money, Hobby/Passion. A Darrell Waltrip comment "How to make a million dollars racing, Start out with 2 Million" A huge positive taken away from racing for me, Anything/Everything I've done before/since seems so reasonable money wise/work wise. LOL, the HAMB gets my old brain running this AM with my coffee.

 

Yea, I remembered his name eventually, hadn't gotten back to edit it. Johnny Moss, Mel Morris, Darrell Dake, Roger Dolan. I remember those guys but can't tell you what I had for lunch.