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

  1. #511
    Team Member Master Oil Racing Team's Avatar
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    ¢. Wow! how in the world did you know that Joe?.



  2. #512
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    Default Hazard of the job.....

    I have to stare at this thing all day, I guess you pick up a few things over time. Go to the "start" button and select "run" and type in "charmap.exe" and it will show you tons of imbedded characters that you can use and it tells you the keystroke.
    55°
    ¢
    §
    ©
    «
    **®
    ±

    etc.....

    My wife says I'm a fountain of useless information................

  3. #513
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    Tell her it's not always useless Joe. For instance out of curiosity I did the same thing and upped the digit one number, and it gave the the £ symbol in case I wanted to sell some pictures to someone in England, and as I went on I found the © symbol (which I had to hunt for this time) and I could have used this for pictures have sent that I didn't want someone else to profit from. Other than that.....I have a lot of useless information that we might could share someday over a beer.



  4. #514
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    It was during the winter that we added onto the box on the trailer to add more motors and parts. Now was when we finally got a smaller Marchetti hydro for the A. I don't remember where it came from, but Baldy probably bought it from Freddie Goehl and Arlen Crouch at Bryan Marine. I think it was 10-6.

    At the same time some modifications were also made to slip another runabout into the mix. The rail for the hydros on top would work out easily, but the runabouts needed to be carried and stored upside down. Baldy designed a couple of pads that would swivel out of the way to remove the bottom and second from the bottom runabouts. When all were in place, the smallest runabout, our original A/B Desilva was on bottom. The next one above it was our jumbo DeSilva that could span all the way to the padded crossmember for a padded rest that the deck lay on. The small DeSilva could be slipped out underneath, but with another DeSilva on top of the Jumbo, we had to get a way to get it out without having to unbolt the crossmember pad the deck rested on.

    Baldy had another padded crossmember added for the transom, but then had some tubes welded to the forward uprights, and angle iron with padded pads on removable supports installed. These angle iron supports had 5/8ths rods that slipped into the tubes that would allow the pads to be swiveled out of the way to get the middle runabout out, or they could be taken out altogether.

    I do not to this day remember what size that runabout was, but I think it was between the A/B DeSilva and the CDF DeSilva we had been running, and was for the new rotary valve Konig. We were working on all this as the new shop was being put together in the back yard in Alice, and I started my second semester in college at Texas A&I in Kingsville, Texas.



  5. #515
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    Default Baldy's Vision

    One of the things that has always amazed me about Baldy was his vision to see a way to stop problems before they happened. After being on the Stafford City Planning Commission for 25 years I know alot about problems and platting. What Baldy did on platting a race course is unheard of. He is probably the only person in the United States that has ever done that. As a young man, Baldy always impressed me on what he called "skinning cats." Baldy was one of a very few men that had a positive influence on my life. Baldy helped mold me into the man I am today. I feel so fortunate to have been in a place to have learned so much from Baldy and having his son as my life long friend, I am blessed.

  6. #516
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    There were a lot of things Baldy envisioned, and many he got done. In the early 1980's he told me that someday we would be able to follow and communicate with our trucks by satellite. Although he believed in the power of aloe vera and put his money up to invest in it, one thing he could not do was be patient with bureaucrats. Time has proven him right here also. The Master Oil was the first of its kind in extreme heat lubricants that was also environmentally safe on not harmful to human tissue. Our company recieved the first permit to haul hazardous waste withing Texas. Prior to Baldy presenting his case of illegal hauling and dumping throughout the state, wastes coming from refinieries, plating industry, etc. was not regulated nor tracked. Baldy had invented a safety venturi device that diluted vapors within a vacuum tank being loaded to the point they were non flammable and a reduced hazard. We sold these all over the United States and Canada. The solution before was to run a hose 30 feet downwind so hazardous, undiluted fumes would be a little further away from personnel. I could go on and on about some of his ideas, but I don't want to get to far away from this thread.

    Thanks Joe. And I have to say that I have been more places and done more things with my Dad and Joe, than with any other persons. What tales come out of those days.

    ADD: I'm not counting Debbie. We have been to more places together, but I mean all the out of the ordinary type places, circumstances, and things that happened. Fortunately after Debbie and I got married we were able to do a lot of those things I mentioned, but racing was on the verge of winding down for us.



  7. #517
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    This is a look at the middle of the race course, and the judges stand and Baldy's old house as it looks as of this morning May 4, 2012. The property on the other side is still undeveloped, and I suppose if the lake filled up and they built some roads in there, a race could still be run in this cove.

    The first picture includeds both straightaways and the near side iincludes most of the front straight from the safety bouy to the start. The second is a closer up view of the middle of the back straight. The middle of the back straight is now high and dry. The last picture is a view of the first structure built in Barbon Estates after Baldy and Joe Hendricks bought it. The only difference is the pier angling out to the left was not there yet. It was added after Baldy built his house and had a boat to tie up there as well as fish from.

    One more thing regarding the Jim Wells County Commissioners Court. For many years houseboats were legal on Lake Corpus Christi, I can remember going past a community of about thirty or so several miles up the lake toward the Nueces River.as late as around 1965. It was sometime in 1966 or 1967 they were banned. It had to do with dumping of raw sewage in the lake. I don't know who passed the law or ordinace to ban houseboats, but it could have been the city of Corpus Christi having a certain amount of jurisdiction over the water being impounded by a dam they put money in. I,m not sure if there was an outright ban on the houseboats, but included in this ordinance was a restriction on having a roof over a pier, or any structure that was over the water. I think this might have been to cover possible loopholes. The original intent had to do with reducing pollution in the water and health factors which was a good thing.

    Baldy's pier had a roof, and over the years many people including neighbors wanted to know why he could have a roof and no one else could. Baldy explained that it was a judges stand built for the purpose of conducting boat races on a course registered in Jim Wells County. Boat racing officials standing out there over the water all day for two and a half days sometimes need protection from the brutal South Texas sun. Everyone agreed that that was necessary, and once explained, he got no flak. At least to his face. But, once again, Baldy was able to accomplish this by some reason, and although there has not been a sanctioned race in front of Baldy's house in thirty four and a half years, the roof remains. When Baldy was asked about this later on he merely said it was grandfathered in. There are some boat lifts with roofs, and I think there may have been other structures now with some roofs in a few places, but they all have to go through an engineering design and permitting process. Baldy did it his way.

    ADD: Baldy's house is up the hill mostly hidden behind the branches of mesquite, anachua, and live oak trees.....and one of the posts on my pier I used for depth perception and framing.
    Attached Images Attached Images



  8. #518
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    There were three families that became an important and lasting part of our lives in these days. It all began when my brother Mark hooked up with some kids he found running around at night at Pernitas Point. If you go back to the very early parts of this thread you can read about them, and how we became acquainted. Now is the time to tie them in to Baldy's thread, and how they became involved in boat racing.

    Sorry...I planned to lay out a cast of characters in the upcoming segments of the story about Baldy, but I have to leave at 4 am to go on a multistage cement job. These take awhile...so maybe sometime Sunday I can resume. (This is the way the oilfield works...you get the call, and you have to go!)

    ADD: Sorry for the delay, but been eating sardines and crackers out in the boonies for twenty four hours. Got the job done providing energy for America despite lightning strikes all around at three a.m. Had to get some rest to clear the cobwebs.



  9. #519
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    I can't put any one of the families in order of importance, because the whole experience between Baldy, the parents of the other famililes and the kids involved were so intertwined, and mixed that it was just one great big bunch. No family stood above any other. All us kids were together every weekend, and the parents were increasingly mixing with Baldy because of all the interaction. All this had been evolving for the past couple of years. Baldy had become a part of the weekend mix of parents. He had known the original developer of Pernitas Point, and the person who bought that developer out, was Fred Flato, a good friend of all the other families who bought lakefront property at Pernitas Point.

    Because the Turcotte family was the largest group, I will start with them.

    Louis Edgar Turcotte was the patriarch, and was known far and wide as a practical joker. His wife Joyce put up with it, but was probably his greatest encourager. Baldy was in his element when socializing with them. Their oldest daughter was Katy followed by Besty, a son Bud, another daughter Susan, a younger son Andy, and the last, but not least Maria. The Turcottes were closely tied to the King Ranch, Louis Edgar having been a foreman of one of the divisions at one time, and also the family heirs to a fortune they were cheated out of by the Catholic Church and highly paid lawyers (and probably judges). They all hailed from the tiny community of Sarita, Texas south of Kingsville, Texas and in between King Ranch properties.

    Leonard, and Dorothy (Dot) Huff raised their kids up upon a large family farm northeast of the Turcottes near the gulf coast. The closest town was Riviera which was pronounced RiVEERa. Their oldest daughter was Jean Marie, followed by a son Lynn, another son David, and the twins Susan and Stephanie. Their home was very near the famed KING'S INN, known worldwide for fabulous seafood for more than seventy years. They also lived close to the Catholic Church in the midst of the farming community known as "Vattman" where the Huff, Turcotte, and other family friends worshipped.

    Both of these families kids went to high school at the "Fighting Seagulls" high school in Riviera, Texas.

    I'm not sure of how these families had gotten such close ties and friendships with the Sanford family thirty miles north of the Riviera school district, but at the time we first met them, all three families purchased lakefront property at Pernitas Point at the same approximate time from their mutual friend Fred Flato who had recently bought the development from Alex Cox and his brother.

    The Sanfords bought a speculative house on the other side of the point from the Turcottes. The Huff's were in the middle. Baldy's house was further west than all of them. None of the friends lakefront property was anywhere close to the other's.. Each was unique, and to visit required driving...not walking. Yet every weeked, they all got together, and Baldy became a part of them when we weren't racing. It was because all the kids began to hang out together as a group. The others knew each other. Baldy and our family were the outsiders in the group, but we were at Pernitas Point before them, and my brother Mark educated their kids on all the interesting places to explore at Pernitas Point.

    Tommy and Ann Sanford lived in Kingsville, Texas named for the famed rancher Richard King. Their oldest daughter was Mary Jean. Patty Ann was next followed by their son Jaime. They all went to school at Kingsville, Texas.

    There were more friends and relatives that came and went during these times, but this was the core of the families and kids that made up this part of the story. I still wonder about how it came about to this day. I was going to say "pull it off", but that would imply we were trying to accomplish something. We weren't. It just happend.



  10. #520
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    We all hung out together on the weekends during the winter, and on the water all day long during the summer (except we didn't when we were racing). The core group was seven boys and eight girls ranging in age,in 1968, from nineteen to thirteen, with Betsy Turcotte and myself being the oldest and my sister Jan and Marie Turcotte the youngest.

    While all the parents were gathered at one house, they had all combined to prepare meals for us kids left at another house where we could come and go as we pleased. It usually consisted of barbequed brisket, chicken, beef and or pork ribs, cabrito, and sausage, pinto beans, potato salad, cole slaw, roastin ears, macaroni salad, baked beans, green beans, and an assortment of pies, cakes and or cookies. It could be all or a part, but always plenty, and lots of variety. Barbeque was the most common, but sometimes it would be fried chicken, and or roast beef with mashed potatoes, gravy biscuits, green beans, corn and the deserts, and sometimes fried seafood with hushpuppies and all the trimmings. While we really enjoyed these two or three times a month weekend feasts I don't think any of us gave it the full appreciation then than we do now.

    Jack Chance had gotten to know the families well, by now too, so he was a part of the lake crowd whenever he was down for a weekend.

    They all knew my primary interests were boat racing and surfing, so a lot of times we would take a couple of cars and head to the beach. I didn't have a wet suit then, and it was to hard to catch waves all bundled up, so we started wake surfing at the lake where we used a rope from the boat to pull us up.

    In the meantime Bud Turcotte started helping me a little with our racing boats and motors. His younger brother Andy was interested in what we were doing, and didn't help, but tagged along. He was about fourteen then.



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