The Guy's Name was Paul Drake...
Margarite Woods.....That's, Mrs. Barry Woods, mentioned Ted May and Paul (Drake) being the original Odd Couple....She is so right...I once drove to Miami with these two and came within an inch of my life of going crazy....I did NOT ride back with them even though they were in my car. I rode to Waukegan with Rich McKinley....
Maragrite, what's funny, you've never met my brother, but my brother owns telescopes on the Seal Beach pier...Paul Drake rides his bike everyday in Seal Beach and has since the 1960's...my brother still sees Paul now and then, in fact, the last time I ate dinner with my brother and his wife, in Seal Beach, Russ parked the car, and when he came into Walt's Wharf...He said, "Was that Paul Drake on his bike when you guys got out of the car?" I guess Paul is still around....
You got me thinking about Ted May stories....
Seems I recall the last race Ted took his '55 T-Bird to... I think it was March of 1969. The 9 Hour was always the first week of March, but they usually scheduled a KNEELDOWN race, at Parker about two weeks later...
I knew there wouldn't be C, D or F Runabout and probably no D or F hydro, and I didn't have a girl friend that liked boat races, and I'd worn out all my other friends at the NINE HOUR two weeks earlier...
So, it seems, I had Dave Mayer's OLD SID CRAFT A-B hydro that I'd borrowed about a year earlier, so I threw the Sid on top of the car, put my C an D Merc in '68 wagon, and headed for Parker, Friday afternoon...by myself.
Seems, at the Enduro, OMC paid for a nice motel, but on my budget, I slept in my wagon, Friday and Saturday night. Seems I ran B, C and D Stock hydro...(Dave Mayer had a load of boats in those days, and two good RUSS HIIL 20-H's. So, I borrowed one of Dave's 20-H's. I bet him a case of beer I'd beat him...and race B Hydro...I wrote this before, but I never bought Dave a beer from our bets...)...
I ran C ALKY hydro with my C Stock and recall beating Ted May running his 20-H with a kit, because I could hear him over the noise of my 30-H...And I drove like a wildman but never looked back, and Ted was afraid to pass me becasue I kept blocking him...
Anyway, I was driving home, having raced two days, and four classes each day, ,48 laps a of kneeldown racing...Sleeping in my car.....Going home without a trailer, sleeping in my own bed and going to work on Monday seemed like a great idea...I was crusing at about 80, when the traffic slowed to about 30...
I'm going up Chiroaco Summit just before Indio....There is some much white smoke, everyone is going about 30 miles an hour, it looks like FOG or a WILD FIRE........Just about the summit, I pass this "SMOKE BOMB"....I break through this cloud of white smoke and realize my windshield has an oil film on it....I look again and see this T-Bird with three boats on the trailer blowing smoke out of both exhaust pipes....
I figure, FLOOR IT, if I make EYE CONTACT with Ted, he'll want me to pull those damn boats home...When I saw Ted later in the week...He said, "He'd broke a rocker or something, and decided that putting about ten gallons of outboard fuel would be good...So, two quarts of oil to five gallons of gas, push pumping oil from the crank case...Ted said he added 10 quarts getting home...but you never know if that was Ted May numbers...
It just was a funny sight seeing all that smoke, Ted sitting there with both hands on the wheel, as if he was going 80.......I don't think Ted ever ran KNEELDOWNERS again...He bought a Ford Ranchero, but only ran OPC after that....Later, when he worked for Nordskog, he helped Don Johnson and the Nordskog grand kids build some boats....for kneeldown racing...But this was Ted's last kneeldown race......The trip that finished off the T-Bird...
Ted May Would Cheat If...
Ted would cheat if he knew he'd get away with it. He's found this Francisco fuel called "Spunk"...He didn't know what it was, but did know that if he put it in his Go-Kart, his kart would go like hell until it threw a rod...
During this ear of Ted's life, he was very close to Champion Spark Plug Company employees, Dick Jones and Bobby Strallman... Ted call Bobby, Bobby Stallman. They gave Ted thousands of spark plugs...
About this time, I noticed that Ted would get out front, real fast, and by the fourth or fifth lap, he'd sometimes "FADE" to third or fourth....I also noticed that his plugs that he FREQUENTLY CHANGED BETWEEN heats would be WHITE...and melted...Now, I'd raced stocks for years and never melted a plug...
At about this time, Ted started always voting for THREE LAP heats...Saying he ran A, B and D Hydro and got "tired" running five laps....After one weekend, where Ted won three firsts, with three lap heats..."WE" decided that the rest of the season would be five lap heats...
I think Ted took the "HINT" as he didn't BITCH.....and he quit burning up plugs....No real proof that he ran "SPUNK" in his race boat...but I do know that when JIMBO and I were driving his Go-Kart, we "FOUND" some "Spunk" in the garage, and we didn't make a lap before we broke a rod...Ted asked us if we'd put "SKUNK" in his kart...We said, "No"... He said, "Hmm, damn thing never throw a rod unless you put "Spunk" in it...
As Maragrite said, "The boys loved Ted becasue he was just a boy himself..."
Ted May Signature Edition Fire Extinguisher
After hearing the story from Ron, Ted was asked to display the fire extinguisher in the "Hell Cat...What do ya supposed he called his fire extinguisher??