Thread: Wayne Baldwin's Amazing Story: Baldy's Eual Eldred Baldwin

  1. #331
    Team Member Gene East's Avatar
    Join Date
    Dec 2004
    Location
    Quincy, IL
    Posts
    593
    Post Thanks / Like

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by Master Oil Racing Team View Post
    It could be Gene.

    I like your story about Evan Noyes. When did he quit racing?
    Sorry Wayne I don't remember. I had nearly forgotten about Evan until you mentioned him on this tread. It seems like he only raced 2-3 years. Maybe a little longer.

    I do remember Evan drove the sharpest looking pickup I ever saw on the street.

    Show car quality, bucket seats, custom wheels, custom interior, the whole ball of wax!

  2. #332
    Team Member Master Oil Racing Team's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jan 2005
    Location
    Sandia, Texas
    Posts
    3,831
    Post Thanks / Like

    Default

    He must have been a natural to finish second in B hydro just behind Bob Hering and one spot ahead of Jerry Waldman with only a few years experience. Seems like he would have been a fun guy to hang around with. Sounds like a wealthy Hans Krage. It might be that RCA decided boat racing was too dangerous for the pilot of a Lear Jet.



  3. #333
    BoatRacingFacts VIP John Schubert T*A*R*T's Avatar
    Join Date
    Dec 2004
    Location
    East Galesburg, IL
    Posts
    504
    Post Thanks / Like

    Default Picture #1

    Quote Originally Posted by bill boyes View Post
    The guy sitting with the ladies and has the Binoculars really looks like Ralph De Silva. Except the wedding ring. Ralph did not remarry after his divorce from Armel. also the pocket on the shirt looks like a pack of Cigarettes. Ralph detested smoking. Another item look at the left hand. Missing two finger tips. Ralph has all his digits.
    Up top towards the right is Bob Henry talking to Melvin Cooper

  4. #334
    BoatRacingFacts VIP John Schubert T*A*R*T's Avatar
    Join Date
    Dec 2004
    Location
    East Galesburg, IL
    Posts
    504
    Post Thanks / Like

    Default oops!

    Quote Originally Posted by John Schubert T*A*R*T View Post
    Up top towards the right is Bob Henry talking to Melvin Cooper
    Picture #2

  5. #335
    Team Member F-12's Avatar
    Join Date
    Dec 2004
    Location
    USTS, FL
    Posts
    299
    Post Thanks / Like

    Default Picture #2......

    Upper right corner behind fence.......Jim Schoch.
    Charley Bradley


  6. #336
    Composite Specialties
    Guest

    Default Descriptions

    Quote Originally Posted by Master Oil Racing Team View Post

    ADD: Describe the pics where your Dad and Grandpa are Marc. Is that him helping carry a wood deck hydro?

    ADD I'm in our study now where the screen is larger, lighter and I can see better. In that B&W photo below the one where you are carrying fuel, the guy lifting the left side of the runabout looks like Marshall Grants brother in law Jerry Pennington. The guy in the foreground is too dark and face partially turned away, but I think that very well could be Marshall Grant. Is that correct?
    The all wood deck hydro was built by Frank Pearson, standing to the right in the pic with the hat on. The pic was taken at lakeland, Florida where we tested the boat that morning. That is my dad on the left with the life jacket on and on the right with the glass was my grandfather Hassell Johnson.

    On the other pic, that is Marshall Grant in the forground.

  7. #337
    Team Member Master Oil Racing Team's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jan 2005
    Location
    Sandia, Texas
    Posts
    3,831
    Post Thanks / Like

    Default

    Thanks Marc. It wasn't your Dad that I met when I picked up the boats and trailers, but it might have been your Grandfather Hassell. I like that name.

    ADD: I've been thinking you have been holding out on us Marc. You see how much interest has been generated by a few photos that you could have posted awhile back, but maybe because they were not boats racing, they would not be interesting. Just the opposite for me. Everyone takes pictures of boats on the water, but there are not enough pictures taken in the pits. If you have any more pictures in the pits, please post them on Random Shots, or create your own thread. It's fun to look back at the people, the boats and motors, the cars, the clothes and hairstyles, and then get the input from BRF members. John Schubert was right on target.



  8. #338
    Team Member Master Oil Racing Team's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jan 2005
    Location
    Sandia, Texas
    Posts
    3,831
    Post Thanks / Like

    Default

    I could be wrong here, but since this was our first trip into that kind of country, and I remember so strongly about Baldy pointing out things, that it was the first time I had ever seen tobacco in the fields. I was very surprised to see that the fields were so small. They were ten, twenty..and maybe some were forty or fifty acres. They were planted on hillsides where tall trees had been cleared for the planting In those days tobacco growers, cigarette companies and oil companies carried lots of ads on the television. I still remember the buyer folding over leaves of tobacco then the auctioneer setting off in his statacco bid then pointing "Sold...American!". Until then I always thought all tobacco was grown on large level tracts like in Texas. These tracts were the family plots that had to work hard to grow good crops to sell at the auctions. It may be that I saw this on another boat racing trip, but I'm almost positive that it was on the way to and from the North South Championships.

    One thing I do know, however, is that's the first time I ever heard Baldy tell us that Mules in Tennessee had two legs shorter than the other two. While we were confused as to what he meant, he pointed to the hills that had crops planted on the slopes and said the mules could only plow one direction. They had to plow with the long legs on the downhill side. They would be able to plow back in the other direction, but they would have to cross the road first. This was typical of Baldy. He could tell us kids a corny joke, and laugh just as hard as when he got a friend in a setup.



  9. #339
    Team Member Master Oil Racing Team's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jan 2005
    Location
    Sandia, Texas
    Posts
    3,831
    Post Thanks / Like

    Default

    I think Monday was time trials after the races and I saw in the September issue of Roostertail that Jan Schoonover was the first pleasure boat to officially clock over 100 mph. He set the record at 102.857 with a dual Merc powered Switzer Wing. It only said that the record was at the Knoxville Boat Club, but not the date. I wonder if that was right after the North South race. I would have loved to have seen that historic run.

    We got back on Tuesday. We had to get busy the next three days to clean everything up and mix new fuel and recharge the batteries because we would head out Saturday for Baytown. It was the second race at the Highlands race course on the San Jacinto River at Baytown Boat Club. We were all looking forward to the kettle fried chicken and french fries.

    We stopped off first at Jack Chance's as we always did. Coming out of the Baytown Tunnell on Highway 146, it was only a few miles to the turnoff to Jack's house. The Holiday Inn where we stayed was only about a block before the turn to Jack's house, so it was only 4 or 5 miles from Jack's to the Holiday Inn.

    Jack had fixed the 2 cylinder FC Konig while we were gone, and we put that back in the trailer, and if there was anything to do to any of the motors after the Knoxville race, Jack would have done it then. Somewhere along the way, we had picked up a used FA Konig. I don't know where we got it, but I suspect somebody at Knoxville gave Baldy a special deal on a used motor. So now we had a used FA and FC for our stable.

    I must have learned something, got inspired or suddenly we got our act together after a year and a half of racing. For the first time, we finished in the money in every class we entered. A, B and C Hydro and Runabout. We only had that one Marchetti for all three classes, but the FC Konig wasn't all that fast. It had pretty good punch, but it was good enough to learn with. Baldy had been talking to Scott Smith quite a bit, and I'm sure they had a lot of discussion at Knoxville. Scott more than likely informed Baldy that Konig would be shipping 4 cylinder rotary valve motors over for the 1968 season, and Baldy wanted me to get some more driving experience before the 1967 season ended.

    I ran into Marsha Wetherbee and her cousin LeeAnn (Alex Wetherbee's daughter) at Baytown and we more or less hung out together along with Marsha's younger brother Steve. There were not many drivers my age then, and at that time I didn't know Denny Henderson very well. He couldn't get away to make all our races in the gulf coast area at that time. Joe Bowdler was from San Antonio and pitted with Artie and Lucky Lund,( Artie having recently gotten our of the army), and Raymond Jeffries. Joe was only about a year older than me, but having been a seasoned racer and running CDF hydro and runabout, I didn't compete with him on the race course. My shyness kept me from approaching him, as he was a very talented driver, and at six foot two, three or maybe four, I figured he never even saw me.

    I think I wrote these results down in my notebook in the same order that the heats were run.I got two forths in C runabout, a second in A hydro, a third in B hydro, a third in C hydro, a second in A runabout, and two seconds in B runabout. That equaled a grand total of $65.00 in prize money. I was walking on cloud nine. You could imagine how Baldy felt. We were pumped up, and were looking forward to the next race. Since there was no press to get back to school, we stayed overnight and stopped off at Jack's before we left for home.

    ADD: This was our only hydro at the time. When I had a bunch of pictures hanging in my office in Alice in the 80's and 90's I wrote the date and place on them. I mistakenly wrote 1966. It was Baytown, but the year was 1967. I didn't realize this until I found BRF, and in dredging through time in tired old brain, I remembered that we had the Sid-Craft in 1966. This was our "Big" Marchetti according to Bob Hering. I don't remember the exact length. But for a short while we ran two cylinder A, B, and C Konigs on it. I'm being towed in at one of the three races we ran at the Baytown Boat Club in 1967. The FB Konig with the chrome exhaust can is hanging on the transom. The guy taking the picture is Mr. Tiporino. His friends called him Tippy. He took lots of pictures at Baytown over the years, and his Son fried chicken and fries.

    ADD: Note how I just made a half loop (can't see it, but that's what I did) around the steering wheel, and the tow rope is taught against the top of the cowling? I was used to being towed in at Baytown. I knew they weren't going to start pulling soon as I made a few loops around my hand, or before the boat was straight. These guys had been towing boats for years and knew exactly how to pull alongside, toss the tow rope, give time to tie off, or like I did in the pic, just make a loop and hold taught against it. They would not tow fast so you couldn't hold on, or make a wake. If they did have to get you back in the pits quick for a speeded up tow, I would tell them and they would let me do a quick release on the bow handle. The picture reminded me of when I conked out at a course that didn't put on two or three races a year and did not have pickup boats that lived to watch and work the races. The guys knew how to drive boats, but they were vounteers, and didn't have experience. I did the half loop on one race course, and as soon as I pulled the loose end taught and nodded, the driver gunned it. Not to get on a plane...but to speed up the operation. The rope split the cowling of my Marchetti down to the "dashboard" batten. I reached over the cowling to grasp the tow rope to hoist it back and about the same time he slacked off. He learned, but I had to do some patching. I learned from that also. After wooden decks, I always tied the half loop around the bow handle.
    Attached Images Attached Images



  10. #340
    Team Member Master Oil Racing Team's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jan 2005
    Location
    Sandia, Texas
    Posts
    3,831
    Post Thanks / Like

    Default

    The next race we planned to attend was way up on North Texas close to the Oklahoma border. It was a July 4th race in Nacona, Texas.....home of one of the largest boot manufacturers in the world.

    We only had a short time to get home, make repairs, clean equipment, charge batteries and fuel up before it was time to head out again. We were ready though. Our Baldwin Racing Team success at Baytown had proved that we were getting our act together, and I was learning not only how to make better starts, and not get wet down in the turns, but also how to anticipate what a driver was going to do. I had been racing against most of these guys and had gotten to learn their style of racing.

    Louis Williams would start on the inside. Bruce Nicholson would start on the outside. Clayton Elmer was one who could take advantage of any position that looked good, I always tried to get to the outside because I was too scared to get in the middle of all the racers crammed sponson to sponson, or chine to chine at the start. It didn't matter if we didn't have a good wide open run at the clock start. If someone made the move, most followed and we were crowded together, whether at speed or not...whether legal or not.....most, especially B Hydro, were at the line when the cannon fired.

    Most of our races for our first year and a half had been along the coast with the Lone Star Boat Racing Association. However, early in our first year we had also race in North and East Texas with different clubs, but also with NOA sanctions. Lone Star was an association, but sanctioned races through the National Outboard Association.

    There must have been more racing down at the Gulf Coast region when I first started because North Texas racers Jim Wilkins, Ed Harrison, Joe and Denny Henderson, Denny Montgomery, Phil Crown, James Fizgibbon and several others whose faces I can see (but not names) raced quite often at Baytown and Beaumont. However, Clayton Elmer, Freddie Goehl, Bruce Nicholson and ourselves usually raced up north unless it was a big event when the guys from the Gulf Coast and San Antonio area would come up.

    I think the timing of July 4th kept some of the racers away, but Baldy had been calling around. It's the only way I can explain it, because like a lot of us old time racers, we don't exactly remember the way things are, but this I can remember because it was ingrained in my memory from when Baldy told me.

    It was a long haul from Alice, Texas to Nacona, Texas. We stopped somewhere along the way. I'm not sure where it was, but we arrived in Nacona around 4 pm. We drove past the Nacona Boot Factory on the way to the pits to spot the boats. It was right after we passed the Nacona Boots factory that Baldy told me "There's a good boat racer you're going to have to beat. He's the best one around here. His name is Bobby Wilson." That's all I remember about the conversation on the way to the pits. Other than that I recall that Baldy had particularly named Bobby as the one to beat. As far as I know, we had not competed against him previously because I remembered most of the guys in the North Texas area we raced against. So I was quite concerned about my first meeting with this guy "Bobby Wilson".



Thread Information

Users Browsing this Thread

There are currently 13 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 13 guests)

Similar Threads

  1. An Amazing Story: Part 2
    By Mark75H in forum Outboard Racing History
    Replies: 555
    Last Post: 10-13-2008, 05:44 PM

Tags for this Thread

Bookmarks

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •