Independance Days Racing at Lodi

What a great day is the annual 4th celebration. Every such day for 35 years I used to race and later spectate at Lodi Lake. It was real Americana. Community outdoors pancake breakfast, live dixieland music, throngs of spectators, fireworks over the lake at night and the best spectator course I have ever experienced, plus robust fields of alky boats to make the sweetest holiday symphony. The water fowl did not seem to mind. They came out and entertained between heats. It was always hot but those beautiful trees on that idyllic park grassy lake shore offered good shelter. Where else in CA other than Lodi and perhaps Oakland Estuary could a spectator be so close to the action that he/she could smell, hear and feel what it was like in the cockpit?

Lots of folks rooted for the champion and local hero - the Parsons FRR. There now stands a Parsons memorial on the lake shore kiosk but no more racing. The short course really tested driving skill. Also remembering Art Nunes from Newman CA; an antique of a man with his antique C alky OMCs with the hand crane hoist on his trailer. And how Ernie Rose made folks breathless as his BRR inboard porpoised, pranced and sped on the edge around that edgy tight-turn course.

So many good drivers were there, close-in from the surrounding central valley. The town had adequate food, shopping and other amenities including vineyards and of course the cereal plant was always silent witness to the regatta.

Lodi has become more successful than it was then. New homes, good shopping wineries and suburbanites. But it has come of a price: less farms, less rural valley folks and no boat racing. Never-the-less, God bless Lodi for having been a reliable and amenable host with a history of more than 60 years of our sport.

Going to and participating in that celebration of racing and the good old USA was always the best way I knew to to mark the day. Now I celebrate in part by recalling and reminding about one of the greatest, yet little-known pageants that tapped the vein of what is American Independence Day.

Well said Seacow.:cool:

I have also enjoyed watching racing under the Trees at Lodi.
and at Ellis Lake in Marysville in the past on the 4th of July a small lake as-well to celebrate the summer and Independance, sad I did not make the trip to see the Ellis Lake races this weekend.
Galen




R11 July 3-4 NCOA O Ellis Lake Marysville CA

Lodi lake, 1976 was my first race! I ran FEH and rode deck for Jim Schoenfeldt in 1100ccR (FRR in those days!). Jim had a side by side boat, so the deck rider had to scoot out on the deck and help get the boat around the corners ! Fun times !

After race fireworks and BBQ's made that race one my all time favorite places to go to !

I can remember a few years later running a DSH Jones cab-over for one of the Morris boys (He was too young to run the boat !) and finished 2nd or 3rd., gave him the trophy ! Made his day, and I had a blast running a piece of history !

I never ran at Marysville, but I remember going there in 74 or 75 and watching some "kids" from Stockton running a Scott 3 cyl. in FRR , turns out those "kids" were Terry Klemm and his brother ! My brother brought his camera to that race, took some great pictures (They are somewhere at my parents house, need to go down there and dig them out!), missed the best shot though ! He was watching the DSH race through his viewfinder when one of them blew over ! He watched the whole thing through the camera and never shot the picture ! :D

John Biagio

Brings back a lot of memories. I first raced there in 1957. Chuck Parsons lived right across the street from the park. We arrived late the night before and slept in the grass in Chuck's front yard the first time I was there. I only raced there a few Fourths. It really wan't that great of a course, but everybody loved racing there. It was the high point of the Region 11's racing season.

I watched a few heats on SATURDAY. I have passed by the lake literally HUNDREDS of times in the past, on my way to Oroville(visiting my late wife's family) ; had never attended a RACE there . What a surprise !!! A FABULOUS place to watch racing . Shade , park benches to sit on , and a WONDERFUL day - temperature was just right. normally ,one would get sun burned to a crisp. I also noticed the novel way they were launching the race boats . Two BRAND new John Deere farm tractors were launching the race boats . seemed to work good , I thought . Made me wish I was healthy enough to race( my sport C) -it's been ready for a year. MAYBE I can find out why I'M anemic, the doc sez i'm low on blood - that an old goat my size should contain 14-15 pints of blood ; &that I only have about 8 or 9 pints in me . I don't know how they can know how much i have in me ?