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

  1. #101
    Team Member Gene East's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Master Oil Racing Team View Post
    It was the following Saturday I took our 15 cu. in. Merc/Quincy to Dan Waggoner's shop to diagnose why our dependable little motor wouldn't start after it was completely dry..had decent plugs and the fuel was fresh.

    I had called Dan to make sure it would be OK if I came over. He was ready. I brought the motor into his shop and he had me set it on a slanted 2X8 or 2X10 rack where he set motors. He had already made a space. Since Dan had just come from the race where our motor quit...and he apparently had watched or heard of the laps I was making, he had made a quick inspection and showed me something we never noticed.

    On the right side of the block (looking forward), there was a solid crack. It started at the top and ran through the tower housing until it quit where the lower unit was bolted on,

    All the science I had learned at that point about water, and hydraulic pressure didn't mean anything compared to what Dan showed me. He said I had the motor running and the carb open......yes!......and water came into the motor.........Yes!..........and the motor quit.......Yes! Then he traced with his finger, the crack running from the block, down to where it was so great it split the tower housing. Dan's explanation of how the water did all that in just a couple of minutes was more than I ever got in science class.

    I don't remember what happened next. I don't know if Baldy had Dan replace the busted parts and rebuild the motor and buy a new tower housing, or if we replaced the old powerhead with another used one. Some of these parts are not forgotten....but that Baldy did stuff that I didn't know about.
    While still working for Quincy Welding I donated a "D" deflector cylinder block to Quincy High School (Schools used to teach important things like mechanics years ago). The domes of all 4 cylinders were blown out due to water ingestion from a high speed flip. A classic example of the fact that fluids do not compress well!

    I'm sure that block has long since been recycled into "Budweiser" cans instead of being displayed in a museum honoring it's original owner, Gerry Waldman.

    I wish I had it back!

  2. #102
    Team Member Master Oil Racing Team's Avatar
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    How we look back and wish we could have had foresight instead of hindsight. I think about how many more things I could recall had I taken more notes and pictures Gene. At least we have experiences that a lot will never see, and your motive was laudable, and who knows what good might have come of it. Jerry would have done the same. Still...I understand your feelings.



  3. #103
    Team Member Master Oil Racing Team's Avatar
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    Joe Fuqua and his son David were from the Corpus Christi boat club, along with some of the others that raced at Nuevo Guerrero, Mexico. I don't know any details, but Joe was getting out of racing, and I suspect he approached Baldy about buying his B Merc/Quincy deflector. I don't know any facts about this....only that a few weeks later Dave Fugua showed up at our house in Alice, Texas with that B. There was no boat...no parts...no nothing except the motor and maybe a couple of sparkplugs. They were the biggest sparkplugs I have seen to this day. Russ Hill told me about them on another thread.

    After Dave set the motor down in our garage, he Baldy and myself started talking racing. This was my and Baldy's first BS session away from a race. Dave was really laying it on about the speed. I can clearly remember him saying that one of his dreams was to drive a D hydro. He then went on to talk about their speed, handling, etc. I was thinking to myself that there's NO WAY I will ever drive a D hydro. I thought to myself HOW could anyone ever drive something so powerful and so fast. To me....on that day....no driver ever started out driving an A runabout, a B hydro or anything. The D hydro drivers were just crazy...fearless....and....what?..........just knew how to drive!



  4. #104
    Team Member Danny Pigott's Avatar
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    Wayne, I never knew your dad Baldy, i may have meet him once but he would not have remembered me from Adam. I always thought he was one of the greatest people in Pro racing . He tryed very hard to put on professional races an put pro where it should have been at the top.. One of the best things i remember he did ,was give the pro drivers a little butt chewing for not attending the World Championship at Firebird Lake in AZ.. His thoughts were if you run pro, you should attend a World Championship in the USA if at all possible, an i agree. I went to a lot of races that i could not afford to go to, but made up for it in other ways

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    Team Member Master Oil Racing Team's Avatar
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    Thanks Danny...I appreciate that compliment of my Dad....Baldy. He was opinionated...he was boisterous....he was outspoken....and he didn't hesitate at all about his opinion on what he thought about what was going on. He studied the rule books. He even purposefully had me run an illegal lower unit and paid the protester's fee to get a ruling that had been languishing for most of the year. But anyone that knew him loved him. I wish sorely that we had gotten to know you and your family.

    As I mentioned previously on another thread, Debbie and I were on our honeymoon when we went to Hinton, and it was the only time I never walked all the way down the pits. Most of the racers were down that way. I have kicked myself many times for not getting pit shots of the other areas. If I would...I would have some of you and your Dad for my collection.

    I go back from time to time to look at the pics you posted of me and my Dad at Hinton, and think about those days. I look forward to all your post's because I have the same sense of where we came from that you do.



  6. #106
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    Here are two pics of our deflector Merc-Quincy's in the room off our shop in Alice. The one on the right is the B we got from Joe and Dave Fuqua, and the other is the one from Curtis and Michael Mihalched after Dan Waggoner fixed it. I was a terrrible photographer back then. These were two I submitted for grading in my photography class. The instructor wrote on the back of the first one "No composition" and on the second "Too dark". Oh well....at least I saved them.
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  7. #107
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    The next race we went to was at Sunset Lake just north of Corpus Christi, Texas It was a little salt water lagoon cut off from Nueces Bay. The NOA World Championship was held there in 1957, and I believe it was during Dieter and Flo Konig's honeymoon that Dieter raced there at that event.

    All this time I remembered that we pitted just to the right of Freddie Goehl and Arlen Crouch. When I was getting these pictures ready to post, I realized that we were actually pitted to the right of Louis Williams, Jr. and that Freddie and Arlen were the next trailer to the left of Louis. To our right were Alex and Tommy Weatherbee. In several pics you can see the trailer of Freddie and his T 42 boats. In one pic Baldy is standing by the trailer of Freddie checking out the motors. At the two previous races we had attended the motors were all either Mercs, or Merc-Quincy's. Baldy was very curious about these Konig motors that had a very different look and sound.

    The last black and white photo is the Weatherbee's with Alex on the right, Tommy in the middle on the other side of the hydro, and Steve with his back to the camera. They had two Merc-Quincy loopers that could really fly. They were very impressive.

    ADD: In the 5th pic Dan Waggoner is in his runabout, the trailer in the foreground is ours, and to the far right Louis Williams is entering in the picture. I had previously thought the pit man on the left side of Louis Williams' boat in the third pic was Joe Rome. Now I'm not so sure. I think Joe would have been taller. But then in 1965, he might have still had a couple of inches to go. The pit man does have on a straw hat like Joe used to wear though.
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  8. #108
    Team Member Master Oil Racing Team's Avatar
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    Mark went out testing our A on the Mishey hydro, and he didn't drive it back into the pits. He made a right upon leaving the pits, and when he started through the first turn and tried to make the bend to go down the back straight, the little Mishey just kept sliding and sliding. Before he ran into the bank on the far side, Mark shut the motor off. He never tested much and just didn't use his throttle and body to bring it around. By the time a pickup boat bothered to retrieve him and tow him back to our pits, it was too late to switch motors and for me to test. B hydro must have been up first because that's what's hanging on the boat in the pictures. I can't totally recall all that happened that day, but I never got out on the race course.

    I think Mark was signed up for A hydro and I was going to run B hydro. I do remember suiting up in my Gentex and slipping on a white Bell helment, then sitting in the cockpit while Baldy pulled on the rope. He continued to pull on it until the one minute gun fired....both heats. The furthest I ever got was maybe ten or fifteen feet before the motor, firing on one cylinder, died.

    We watched the races in ernest. This weather was a little cold, and the water a little choppy, but there were more boats here than came to the first two races. And, the water was good enough that we saw some real speed. Freddy Goehl was the most consistent out there, if not winning almost everything he entered, he was second, or third. Also just as important, he was finishing all his heats, unlike some of the others whose electrical systems were shocked by the salt spray. Baldy, fascinated by the Konig motors, introduced himself to Freddie Goehl and Arlen Crouch from Bryan Marine in Bryan, Texas.

    Baldy wanted to know where he could buy some Konig motors. As Baldy would tell this story many times over the years Freddie offered to sell them his. Baldy's reply..."I'm through buying second hand junk. I want to buy some brand new motors." Freddie quickly responded "We're Konig dealers. We can sell you new motors, and we have all the parts and we carry all the parts you need in stock." He made the deal then and there for a brand new FA and FB Konig. I'm not sure when Baldy ordered the DeSilva runabout, but it was probably watching the races and determined there would probably be more racing in Texas if you had a runabout than a hydro. Texas was a hotbed of runabouts in those days. The DeSilva, in any case, also was ordered through Bryan Marine.

    His is a pic of Freddie Goehl in his T 42 hydro with I think an FB Konig with open pipes, although it may have been an FC.
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  9. #109
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    Since Baldy did all the ordering, negotiating, and paying....I did not have much to do with buying the DeSilva...except I wanted it white with black trim like our Mishey hydro. To this day I do not know why I wanted that paint scheme. I remember sitting in the deer stand though for hours upon hours waiting for javelina's, turkey's or a whitetail buck to show up dreaming about the beautiful white and black DeSilva. I really liked the lines of that boat, and it was a newer slimmer line according to Freddie. I couldn't wait until our boat was delivered to Bryan in January or February 1966 when we would pick it up along with two bright and shiny new Konig motors.



  10. #110
    Team Member Gene East's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Master Oil Racing Team View Post
    Mark went out testing our A on the Mishey hydro, and he didn't drive it back into the pits. He made a right upon leaving the pits, and when he started through the first turn and tried to make the bend to go down the back straight, the little Mishey just kept sliding and sliding. Before he ran into the bank on the far side, Mark shut the motor off. He never tested much and just didn't use his throttle and body to bring it around. By the time a pickup boat bothered to retrieve him and tow him back to our pits, it was too late to switch motors and for me to test. B hydro must have been up first because that's what's hanging on the boat in the pictures. I can't totally recall all that happened that day, but I never got out on the race course.

    I think Mark was signed up for A hydro and I was going to run B hydro. I do remember suiting up in my Gentex and slipping on a white Bell helment, then sitting in the cockpit while Baldy pulled on the rope. He continued to pull on it until the one minute gun fired....both heats. The furthest I ever got was maybe ten or fifteen feet before the motor, firing on one cylinder, died.

    We watched the races in ernest. This weather was a little cold, and the water a little choppy, but there were more boats here than came to the first two races. And, the water was good enough that we saw some real speed. Freddy Goehl was the most consistent out there, if not winning almost everything he entered, he was second, or third. Also just as important, he was finishing all his heats, unlike some of the others whose electrical systems were shocked by the salt spray. Baldy, fascinated by the Konig motors, introduced himself to Freddie Goehl and Arlen Crouch from Bryan Marine in Bryan, Texas.

    Baldy wanted to know where he could buy some Konig motors. As Baldy would tell this story many times over the years Freddie offered to sell them his. Baldy's reply..."I'm through buying second hand junk. I want to buy some brand new motors." Freddie quickly responded "We're Konig dealers. We can sell you new motors, and we have all the parts and we carry all the parts you need in stock." He made the deal then and there for a brand new FA and FB Konig. I'm not sure when Baldy ordered the DeSilva runabout, but it was probably watching the races and determined there would probably be more racing in Texas if you had a runabout than a hydro. Texas was a hotbed of runabouts in those days. The DeSilva, in any case, also was ordered through Bryan Marine.

    His is a pic of Freddie Goehl in his T 42 hydro with I think an FB Konig with open pipes, although it may have been an FC.
    What a sad story!

    Just think, if that deflector had not been so hard to start, you may have progressed to a Looper before you switched to "Brand K" and we would have gotten to know each other much better.

    Never the less, I'm proud to call you my friend. Just keep keep sharing your memories with all of us.

    I check BRF daily to see if you have posted anything new. I'm sure I'm not alone!

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