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

  1. #131
    Team Member Master Oil Racing Team's Avatar
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    No Bill Van. The UIM 350 was at Dayton. I will look at the dates. It may be 1979 that your video was. No matter...get it done, then we'll figure out when it was taken.

    ADD: There was a race at Alex in 1978, but no foreign drivers. I can't remember if it was 1978 or 79 that Neil Bauknight collided with Dan Kirts. Neil was driving our old 350 hydro which he still had the Master Oil colors and logo paint scheme.



  2. #132
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    Photos of our new DeSilva and FA and FB Konigs with newly chromed exhaust systems. And Snap-on tools neatly in place. No exhaust rings on the Gentex life jackets. Took these pics in January 1966 while waiting for my National Outboard Association number to be confirmed.

    ADD: In the second pic you can see the door to the workshop above the nose of the deck. It was all the way to the left where the little motor room and tack room was that this picture was tacked to the wall.
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  3. #133
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    Baldy was 44 when we started racing. If you go to post #5 on this thread you will see a picture of Baldy when he was 42. It was taken probably after he just got back or was heading out to our hunting lease about 20 minutes away. I looked for this photo when I started the thread, but only just found it. Then I had to learn how to add photos again since the updates. But it was very simple. No more advanced step.

    The colt is my horse Nikki and his mother the mare Smokey who was also my horse. They were penned in a thirty acre pasture Baldy bought just across the road from our lake house. It was very easy to take care of them then.



  4. #134
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    Our class assignment was studio lighting for copying. All the classmates threw something from their wallet into the pile. For me it was my brand new National Outboard Association card. You just can't take a laid back attitude with your SS card like you could back in 1966.
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  5. #135
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    Baldy knew the Mishey hydro wouldn't work with our Konigs and Freddie and Arlen found us a used Sidcraft. We made another trip up to Bryan to pick that up. Two songs I hear on the radio always remind me of going to Bryan. It was a six hour drive from Alice, Texas We made several trips in a short period of time when Bob Dylan's "Rainy Day Women (I forget the numbers)", and The Bobby Fuller Four's "I fought the Law" were topping the charts. Bobby Fuller had enough songs for an album, but he disappeared off the face of the earth when he was on top. Some people suspected a so called "friend" killed him and buried him, but no body was ever found. I heard an album was produced several years ago of his songs, but I've never found it.

    I don't recall ever having taken any pictures of that Sidcraft. It was used. I think it was 10-6 or 10-8. I may not have ever raced it. I can't remember whatever happened to it, but it may be that I couldn't handle it with that FB Konig on it. The Konigs were so much more powerful than the A Merc deflector I had been practicing with, that I needed much more practice before we were ready to race. I have to do a little more thinking about that Sidcraft.

    ADD: Not having any photos I could find (we lost a lot of stuff during Hurricane Celia in 1970), I looked at some 8mm films Baldy took when we first started racing. There were some races from Baytown where we first started and also from July 3rd and 4th races at Dallas and Fort Worth where we ran the Sid-Craft. I'm guessing that we probably ran it most if not all through 1966. When I saw the movie of me returning to the pits at our first race at Baytown, the smell of very find sand from sanding the cowling triggered my brain. I remember refinishing it. The cloth bow, fortunately did not have any tears. We had a painter repaint the deck of the bow, and paint the combing white. Then do the ugly brown T-73 on the cloth deck.



  6. #136
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    This is the first issue of ROOSTERTAIL we received. It was the February 1966 issue with a laughing Mama Smith on the cover. The first article inside was about the numbers. I guess that's why they made it so clear to a new member from the get go. I was never called about my numbers either being too small, not contrasting enough or being ineligible. We had a signpainter across from the Buckhorn Theater (one of the outdoor theaters so common back then) paint them. After he did I measured the length and width of them.

    Papa Smith was one you learned about even when you first start. No matter how long it took before you ever came face to face, you knew he was one of the grand and celebrated members of alky racing. We had a run in with him, or should I say Baldy and Walt Blankenstein did, regarding one of our motors, but Baldy and he got along with, and respected one another.

    I saw Mama Smith at the races, but I never talked to her. Louis Williams was one of her favorites. Louis ran a lot of Papa's props and it wasn't that far from Beaumont to Shreveport so sometimes Louis would drive up. For people new to this thread that don't know....Louis Williams was an undertaker. Louis called up to let Papa know he was headed to Shreveport one day. Mama answered the phone and was delighted that Louis was coming. She told him "Louis....come in your hearse.....and be sure to back it in the driveway. We want something for the old biddies to talk about."
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  7. #137
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    Default True statement

    Wayne is telling the truth about Mama Smith. It happened many times. Louis would call me and tell me he was going to see mama and papa . We would laugh and [I] would tell Louis dont forget back in.

  8. #138
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    Here is an ad from that very first Roostertail. Little did I know at that time we would become Konig dealers within a year, and buy directly from Scott Smith at Overseas Dealers, become friends, and have many great times together. At that time I was in total awe of what my Dad Baldy and I had embarked upon. We started getting circulars on alky racing printed in a light blue, green, or yellow. There was information on everything we needed from the race course and how to get there to the classes, payout and other information. We had not gotten any printed circulars before....only word of mouth.

    I digested every word of that first Roostertail, not once, but many times over. I desperately wanted to be accepted in this crowd and Baldy was very enthused also. He got the rule book to go through, and told me to read it through and learn about it also. This National Outboard Association was a dream come true. There were races scheduled all over the place.

    ADD: It may have been the part of getting "new blood" into racing that got Baldy's attention, and at some point he called or wrote Scott Smith about becoming a Konig dealer.
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  9. #139
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    In the meantime, we had the brand new A/B DeSilva runabout and a used canvas deck Sid-Craft boat. I was very disheartened about the Sid-Craft ad in our very first Roostertail that Sid made the announcement of the introduction of a new line of stock and alky hydros under the name of SidSon Boats. I just had a let down feeling that something was not right.

    However, we were testing, learning, and having a great deal of fun. At first it was just Baldy my brother Mark and myself when we went testing. But it was clear at that time, Mark had no interest in racing the boats. He became a pit man. But although he did not want to race competitively, he still loved going fast on the water.

    Here is a cover of a spiral tablet I bought to take notes and the first of a number of entries I wrote down to help us get on the right track to race. I carried this inside the motor box of our trailer for the first year.
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  10. #140
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    Default Thank heavens for number 12

    What a treasure of information and pictures we would be without, of alky and other boat racing history in the 60's, 70's and 80's, if not for number 12 on that page one list of the spiral bound notebook.

    The notation about the "aloe 99" brings to mind the stories your Dad used to tell Eileen and I about his foray into the aloe vera plant raising business. Be sure and touch on that story if you had not planned to, as that is a perfect example of how government handcuffs small business.

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