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

[Master Oil Racing Team]

I found some key pieces to a puzzle that I had been trying to remember for several months. After talking to Clayton Elmer a few days ago, going back through some photos, and going back over my scrapbook, and letters I figured out what was missing regarding the Konigs. I knew the story about mixing up our C and D rotary valves were at a race Baldy put on, but I thought it was from the November race. Photos and race results didn't match though. Baldy had put in an ad also that we first ran the rotarys in March 1968, but I could not remember where, so I figured that was when we first tested them. We did get them in March according to info from Scott Smith, but I did not have any records of a race in March other than the one in Lake Charles. I had always thought that it took place in the spring of 1969 though. If I would have continued taking notes, I would not have botched this part. After talking to Clayton, I reread an article about him from the Corpus Christi Caller Times. It was from the fall of 1968 so I didn't scrutinize it carefully. When I did, it mentioned that Clayton did not move to Corpus until the fall, but then I found a clipping next to it that had been pasted in the wrong place. In fact both articles were, and I have overlooked the smaller one. It mentioned Joe Bowdler being red hot at the last couple of races with a new experimental motor built by Raymond Jefferies. The two races were Lake Mathis, and Neches River. So it appeared the April 7, 1968 race at Baldy's did come off and I didn't remember it. It turns out though that this is the race where Clayton and I mixed up our C and D Konigs. I had mentioned a few times previously where I was unsure of some of the timelines, but remembered certain things that took place around this time. I will now go back and try to put things back in order.

ADD: I added to post No. 558 on Page 56.

[Master Oil Racing Team]

The first race of the year at Baytown, now known at the Joe Bowdler Memorial race was scheduled for May 18 and 19. Bob Burnham was still pitting with us along with Mark and now Bud Turcotte and the girls of CB Racing Team.

We sold our FB Konig to Steve Jones to replace his aging and not so fast B deflector Merc. Steve had also picked up a hydro somewhere. He had replaced his old Ashburn with a DeSilva the year before, so now he was ready to mix it in with the competition better.

This was also about the time Dick Frye got better acquainted with us, having visited Baldy on several occassions and had a lot of interest in MX-237 The Master Oil. He told Baldy he worked in a lot of places that could use Master Oil. Baldy gave him some cases to pass out in his travels. Over the years Dick spent time all over the world, and it was somewhere about this time that he left some samples on a drilling rig in the North Sea. After Dick had left the rig, somebody wanted more and didn't know where to get it. They turned to one of the major worldwide oilfield suppliers Stewart & Stevenson. They are the Halliburton of oilfield supply. They tracked Baldy down and placed some orders. Over the years the business with them grew until we were sending fifty and one hundred case orders to a dozen regional warehouses where it was sold all over the U.S. and shipped overseas.

Dick raced A and B hydro and runabout, and would come and go during the season depending on where he was working. There were even stretches of some years between seeing him. During a lot of those times he didn't race, just came to watch and pit. He was one of the most amazing guys I ever knew. We wouldn't see him for a long time, then he would be there. I can remember rigging up at Alex in 1979 I believe, and I looked up and took a double take. There was Dick Frye. He told me he had been in Saudia Arabia. I never knew how he could know when and where a race would be and just show up. At the Lone Star Reunion when I last saw him I accused him of working for the CIA.

Anyway...we were back at Baytown pitted toward the far right of the judges stand with Steve Jones on our left and Clayton Elmer and Jack Chance on our right. Steve took delivery of the FB Konig that Saturday morning. Baldy told Steve that the lower unit was only hand tight and that he needed to tighten up up. Steve said he would. Baldy told him that he should do it now or he might forget. Steve told Baldy he would get to it. A couple of times more Baldy asked if he had tightened it. Steve said "Not yet, but I will in a minute." After the races got started, Baldy turned his attention to our team.

[Master Oil Racing Team]

We had two good days of racing. It was the first of many good days I had racing in the Joe Bowdler Memorial. I don't know exactly why, except maybe I tried harder because of the loss of my friend Joe, and somehow things always seemed to go right for us except in 1975 when I nearly broke my neck.

Something happened to our VB Konig in the first heat. I don't remember what it was, but I clearly remember standing on the bank next to Baldy when Steve Jones came in from the first heat of B Hydro. I've never seen anything like it. The FB that we sold Steve had that Chrome exhaust and can that Louis Williams "admired" so much. The rubber bose was melted off the can and the chrome was bubbling like a thick sauce in a skillet. Steve took off his helmet and was looking up at Baldy like a possum after pulling his head out of a hole he had eaten in a canteloup. Baldy asked him "Did you ever tighten up that lower unit?" Suddenly Steve turned around to look at his motor and his jaw dropped. The bubbling was just about over, and the can was still pinging as it cooled off. Some of the chrome hardened in different sized bubbles and it cooled to a blotched blue, green, yellow, silver color.

We helped Steve get his hydro out of the water and we looked at the lower unit. How it remained on we never knew, but it wasn't tight enough to keep some of the water from spraying out around the unit and bottom of the tower housing. There was apparently enough water to cool the upper cylinder, but not enough to keep the can cool and the rubber hose melted off at the connection. Steve tightened the lower unit up good then, and the motor started up and he was able to race the next heat. That was the toughest motor we ever had. It was reliable, and helped me learn how to race because it wasn't as temperamental as the A and didn't drown out in roostertails as easily. It proved to be a very good motor for Steve. He was very excited about the speed in that first heat and he raced it until a year or two later when he moved up to C and D hydro and runabout.

It also became one of Baldy's Steve Jones stories that he told many times, especially in the presence of Steve. Steve always laughed about it too. It also was the seed that was planted for a saying Baldy later came up with. "Give Steve a pound of gold and he would have it turned to lead by midnight."

I think Clayton's Mom Ouita submitted the stories to the Alice and Houston newspapers. She was very good about that.

ADD: The first picture is A runabout with Clayton Elmer in the lead and Wesley Taylor from Lake Charles on the inside, boat no. 1.

The Second is Steve Jones in boat 11 on the outside of Clayton Elmer running the FB Konig we sold him. You can't tell much about the scorched chrome can from this side. Most of the heat was on the outside where the small tube acted as a choke for the hot exhaust gas on the other side. Ouita didn't know who this driver was and did not write his name on the back. It was before Steve changed his number to 711 and I could tell by his red and white life jacket, the way he sat in a boat and of course the chrome canned FB Konig.

The third photo is me getting weighed at Baytown. This could be the Donald Duck motor, but I think it's the real C motor because of the exhausts Jack Chance had been playing with. The Donald Duck motor and the C were identically rigged out with those coils mounted on top of the front cylinders.

[Master Oil Racing Team]

School was about over and time devout to boat racing and summer sports. This was the time period I remember of several stories. First was the rotary valve motors.

These were new to not only myself, but Jack Chance also. Scott Smith had sent us details on timing and other specifications that Dieter Konig had provided. We ran the motors as per specifications, but it was about this time in the spring of 1968 that Jack began to take the motors apart and do what he did. Jack didn't do a bunch of polishing and porting, but he would clean up rough spots if he saw it. The main thing was to replace the labryinth seal on top with a seal that would withstand methanol and space out the rods and crankshaft. Sometimes he had to clean up the cylinders, and one big problem was to seal off the water in the water jacket from the exhaust port.

All that was still the same, and I helped Jack with that. One problem I worked on though that Jack didn't at that particular time was a rotary valve that hung up in the housing. I had Mark help me set the DeSilva A/B runabout up on stands in the driveway at Baldy's house in Alice. I can't say for certain that it was just after the Baytown race, but I remember it being very early in the 1968 racing season. The rotary valve problem could have happened at Beaumont and repeated at Baytown. Anyway...it was during this time period.

It was the B Konig, and the rotary valve disc had clipped the outside edge of the rotary valve housing and the belt broke. When I took the rotary valve housing apart, I saw a very small nick on the outside plate around the 9:00 mark. I smoothed over where the nick was and replaced the rotary valve disc. Everything ready with a tank with fuel and a charged battery, I cranked up the VB Konig on the stands and moved up to the throttle. I did not even rap it up before the thin rotary valve disc struck deeper into the aluminum outer housing. The belt snapped and I was both confused and frustrated.

I had nothing else to do. College was over until fall. My job was to race with Baldy and promote MX 237 The Master OIl. So I pulled the belt through and tossed it, removed the carbs, and took the rotary valve housing off. It was easy. Four ten millimeter nuts. No gaskets, no alignment, no mess. A very simple procedure.

After taking the rotary valve housing off the motor again, I separated the two halves, trashed the bent rotary valve disc and inspected the damage. I decided I didn't clean up the previous gouge enough and filed away at some of the aluminum and finished with some wet or dry sandpaper. I put everything back together again and cranked up the Konig for a bank test. AAAGGHHH....the new disc hung up and the belt broke just like before. I didn't know what to do then.

It was still before noon. I took a break then went back to work. Having broken everything down, I concentrated on where the disc kept hanging up. We didn't have another housing to change out so I started filing and cleared out the area where the leading edge of the disc would cut into the housing. I filed back very slightly leading to the problem area, then I filed the edge past the carb opening of the housing about another inch. I tapered the clearance from the hang up area down to zero in that inch, then I took a lot of time to polish everything with a 200 then 400 grit wet or dry sandpaper.

I had the Channeloks holding pressure on the rotary valve belt via the eccentric ball bearing rotary valve shaft and stripped out the threads on the right side of the shaft. Man...was nothing going to be right on such a nice summer day?

I took another break. A frustrated break. I hated helicoils. They seemed so unconsolidated compared to real original threads. But I had to do it, and after awhile I drilled, tapped and inserted s helicoil into the ball bearing shaft for the rotary valve. It was not 5mm but 1/4".

Ready to try again, and this time I got the B fired up and running on the stands. I was very reluctant to burp the motor a couple of times, but I did and the rotary valve didn't hang up. It did again, but not that day. It could have been at Beaumont, Baytown, or another race, I don't recall, but we did have to replace that housing. That was not the only time we had trouble with the original Konig rotary valve discs.

[Master Oil Racing Team]

It was shortly after school was over too that the steel radius buoy for the first turn sunk. It apparently had a small pinhole. Most likely where the cap was welded to the cylinder. Over the several months it had apparently been shipping tiny amounts of water, then without anyone paying attention because we weren't looking at it every day, it got low enough to start filling and went down.

Baldy had me go over to Emmord's and pick up one of those OMC compressors that fit inside a tube and floated on the surface. It was really a clever device, with an exhaust tube that stuck up about thirty inches above the motor and was fitted with two thirty foot hoses and masks. You are supposed to dive with a partner, but it was a week day and no one else was around. It was a perfect morning with absolutely no breeze and the water had warmed up to a comfortable temperature.

I got a big flashlight with brand new batteries and put it in a clear plastic bag, wrapped it tight with tape and made sure I could switch it on and off without any problem. I then motored our little MFG trihull outfitted with a 9.9 hp Evinrude over to what I thought was the original spot the buoy was placed. I dropped anchor, set the floating compressor station in the water,fired it up, pulled the fins on, grabbed the flashlight and slipped over the side of the boat.

Lake Corpus Christi is murky like most Texas lakes in other than limestone, or granite hills, and so visibilty was only a few inches. The water also quickly blocks out sunlight. That part of the lake where the buoy went down is only ten to fifteen feet, but it gets dark at around four feet, and colder at around five.

I went down and had my hands out in front to feel where the bottom of the lake was. Not being able to see, it was unnerving. I didn't know what I would be running into. Being that I had never done that before, and was not a diver, I didn't think to bring any weights and I had to constantly use my fins to keep going down. I couldn't drift. So I was cautious to go slowly, but with enough pressure to overcome buoyancy, and also fight to stay what I thought was in more or less an inclined path, but my body level wingspan wise. That is, not tilted left or right.

I felt the silty bottom before I saw it. It was spooky. I had the light in front of me, but its glare only reached out only six inches or so before it's light was absorbed by the murky grayish water. I went round and round in circles, and didn't really have a plan. I actually thought I was close to on top of it and would only be down at most ten minutes. I continued to just meander around though in no particular pattern while my mind thought of all kinds of big fish or snakes, or alligators I could run into before I knew it.

The compressor/buoy was not tied to anything and would follow a diver wherever he went up to the depth limit of the compressor air hose feed. It was about twenty minutes or so, I was fighting against buoyancy, and I was just about to give up when I ran headlong into the buoy dome. It scared the living daylights out of me even though I knew what I was looking for. I didn't see it until it was three or four inches in front of my mask.

After my heart settled down, I started to inspect it. Having a little hook to hold on with my fingers, I could get a better look, and I played the light around it while having to be right on top of the buoy. I discovered it was laying on its side with the bottom angling down at about a forty five degree angle. I swam about three feet deeper and realized that when the buoy sunk, the bottom hit the edge of the Pernitas Creek creekbed and slid down the embankment. Pleased to have found it, I headed for the surface as straight up as I could. I took my mask off after surfacing and kicked my fins to stay in place while I got in my mind several prominent landmarks with which to triangulate and come back to this spot.

The boat was anchored about thirty yards from where I came up, so I was a little off on my original calculation. But I think the anchor buoy must have landed right on the edge of the creek, and they were very heavy anchors. Probably it started sliding down the embankment, pulling the buoy lower in the water and causing water to enter from a small hole. Had the weight not pulled it into the creekbed, I would have most likely have come across the buoy or line laying flat on the bottom much earlier.

When Baldy came home that evening, I told him I had found it and he wanted to go retrieve it in the next day or two. I told him I'm not going back down there. It was too spooky, and I added that it might be best to take the other buoy out of the water too, because someone could get hurt skiing into it or hitting it with a boat and pitching someone overboard. I think he had always had the same thing in the back of his mind and he agreed with me with no argument. The only reason Baldy had gone to so much trouble in the first place was that he wanted his one mile race course to be the most accurate and consistent one that would be possible.

I went back the next day with cable cutters and cut the stainless steel anchor cable. I had to go back into the water with the OMC compressor to do that, but I only had to go about four feet deep, and I easily found the line and guided the shears to the cable by feel and cut it easily. I towed it back to shore, and don't remember where it went from there. The one that sunk is still on bottom, and probably covered with silt by now.

[Master Oil Racing Team]

It was along about this same time that the road in Barbon was paved. It was once again during a weekday and I had headed over to Barbon to do something and found that Sosa the contractor had completed all preparations and was now paving the road. He had started at the far end and was working backwards toward the entrance. I had driven only as far as the Teddy Kennedy Causeway when he spotted me. They had paved everything down to the Causeway on the other side of Barbon Creek, and were beginning to lay down a pass of oil in this side of it. Sosa did not have but the minimum amount of men he needed to operate the equipment and used no flaggers. He asked me if I would stand guard at the entrance to Barbon and keep any cars or trucks out until they got it paved. I said I would, and turned around and drove back up to the entrance about three tenths of a mile.

I parked my Dodge on the side of the road and waited in the pleasant late morning to watch them lay down the oil. That done, they had switched over to the gravel truck and Sosa himself was standing on a little platform by the tail gate operating a lever that regulated the flow of gravel spilling from the dump bed. It was an eight yard dump truck with a spreader bar and the dump bed was lifted. The driver was backing up about ten or twelve miles per hour as Sosa kept his eyes on the gravel flow and was expert and gauging the proper amount and getting complete and even coverage over the oil they had just sprayed over the caliche.

A cattle guard marked the entrance to Barbon, and the road leading off toward the Teddy Kennedy Causeway made an immediate thirty degree left from the cattle guard. That meant they couldn't spread the gravel to a square ending at the cattle guard. Sosa wanted to get a good solid layer of gravel so he was not going to shut off the flow until he got right to the cattleguard. The driver was good, and kept a straight and steady speed as he backed up and kept checking Sosa in his mirror and an eye on the road. But he wasn't Sosa' regular gravel spreader.

When the truck just reached the cattleguard Sosa quickly raised his left arm he was holding on with and hollered very loudly "WHOA." The driver slammed on the brakes instead of letting Sosa close the tailgate and slowly come to a stop as the crossed over the cattle guard. Instead, when he hit the brakes, the truck came to a full stop and Sosa fell off the back of the truck. He was looking down at the cattle guard and trying to figure out how to land without breaking one or both of his legs. I think he must have jumped to get a better angle than just fall off.

Sosa's legs luckily went between the iron crossbars and he landed more or less straight down instead of continuing to fall with forward momentum which could have broken his legs. At the same time the tailgate opened up as far as the gravel could push it and it flowed in an avalanche into the hole underneath the cattle guard and around Sosa pinning him where he stood. With no one manning the lever all the gravel ran out until the top of the pile was level with the bottom of the bed. All the while Sosa was cussing in Spanish at the top of his lungs calling the driver every spanish curse word that had been invented. This all played out in less than a minute.

I was afraid Sosa had broken something at first, but when I realized he was not hurt and nothing would stop the gravel until it was mostly out, it was everything I could do to keep from busting out laughing. I was only ten or fifteen feet away and he could have heard me, but I had enough respect for him to hold my laughing down until I told Baldy what had happened.

The driver was very sorry and very embarrassed and grabbed a shovel to start moving gravel. I helped dig down between the iron bars with my hand once the surface gravel was removed, and it took about ten minutes to get enough cleared away so Sosa could wriggle his legs and feet free. I left it up to them to hand dig the rest of the gravel out of the cattle guard and pave the little strip left. Sosa didn't break anything, but I am sure he started cussing his driver again the next morning when he started to get out of bed.

[Master Oil Racing Team]

My brother Mark got in trouble with Baldy a couple of times in the summer of 1968.

The first time was in the early part of June, and I believe on a Friday. Susan Turcotte and Jean Marie Huff were home from St Mary's for the summer, and mostly we stayed at the Lake. It was sometime mid morning when the girls announced they we should all go to Hemisphere '68. The World's Fair was in San Antonio and only two hours north. We didn't take much time to think it over. We all agreed. Mark and I had to go back to Alice first, and Mark told me to take off first.....he would be there before I was. I was still driving my red and white Dodge Polara and Mark had the white 440 TNT Chrysler New Yorker that Tommy Albert and I took on the road trip to North Carolina the previous summer.

I got maybe up to five minutes head start. Orange Grove and Alfred were the only town's between Baldy's house at Pernitas Point and the one in Alice, but we only had to slow down in Orange Grove as Alfred only had Uncle Jut's Texaco station and a couple of houses on Texas Highway 359.

My Dodge topped out at 108 and at that time of day there was not much traffic. I was cautious going through Orange Grove, but they didn't even have a single city policeman then. It was either a constable or deputy sheriff that patrolled northern Jim Wells county including the city of Orange Grove. Texas Department of Public Safety was also on patrol, but not so numerous back then. I was about two miles from a sweeping left hand curve and seven or eight miles from Alice when Mark blew by me. He slowed down as he approached the curve, but coming out of it he wasn't accelerating. In fact, he continued to slow down. As I came into the curve I saw him coasting over to the shoulder, then I could smell engines smells that aren't too good. Burning oil, and other unpleasant smells.

I pulled in behind Mark, and when I got out of my Dodge I knew there was trouble. Mark got out with a grin and said "I guess you're gonna beat me.". Mark didn't like to race like a knee jockey with a hand throttle, but he seemed to be fearless with a steering wheel and foot pedal. He blew that powerful 440 motor.

We left the Chrysler on the side of the road and drove to our home in Alice where Mark called Baldy. He didn't tell him what happened. Only that his car broke down and I picked him up. Baldy was at work at Alice Specialty so he called up Jim Yawn and had him send his wrecker out to tow the car in and find out what was wrong with it. Mark also told Baldy we were planning to go to San Antonio by noon and be home that night. He told us to go ahead, so we did.

There were about eight or ten of whatever group of lake kids were there (except the youngest) and we took off. Mainly it was the CB Racing Team. We sampled many of the different types of foods, wandered all over, including down by the river walk, then at night went to a place called "Love Street" a couple of blocks over. That was the main reason the girls wanted to go, but it turned out not to be much of a dance place, but where people mostly laid down on matts and watched someone with an overhead projector dab at different colors of water and oil while psychedelic music was blasted out of speakers. We listened to Cream, Jimi Hendrix, vanilla fudge, iron butterfly and the like. We got home sometime after midnight.

After we got up the next day Baldy called us down to the kitchen. Baldy asked Mark "How fast were you going yesterday?" Mark said "A little over a hundred." "How little over a hundred?" Baldy wanted to know. Mark said "About twenty miles." Looking Mark straight in the eye he asked "Were you boys racing?" Mark instantly denied it saying "No." Knowing he'd better not lie to Baldy he hesitantly added "There was no race to it".

Mark was grounded while the engine was either repaired or replaced, but it became another story Baldy entertained boat racers and other friends alike around his bar over the years.

[Master Oil Racing Team]

I made the corrections to the April 7 races at Baldy's place at Barbon, what I could piece together. It is page 56 post # 552. Then I added some pictures I found to page number 57 post #567. I had looked everywhere for the picture of the rotary valve motor with open exhausts when I finally looked at some pictures mounted on the wall, and there it was.

[Master Oil Racing Team]

Without notes from those days I have had to find scattered out information and I found in a 1968 Roostertail that I had jumped the gun on the last few posts. I had thought we raced in Clarendon, Texas in the middle of June, but it was actually at the first. Sorry.

Since college usually ended a week or two before high school, depending on the classes, the story about paving the road and searching for the bouy could have been right before Clarendon, but not right after. It was all about the same time frame though.

I was looking for a Texas map from the old days before the new highways were named and routes changed. I happened to find one from 1968. I love maps and have several boxes of maps from around the world and including the maps Baldy bought while we traveled to races around the U.S. When we stopped to gas up in a state we had not been in, he would buy a map. Texas was always one map by itself, but in other areas several states together. I still have all those. When I opened the 1968 Texas Map to get an idea of the route we took back then, it started tearing at the folds so I had to be careful. It was the only time we ever went to the Texas panhandle to race. I searched with my magnifying glass all around where I thought Clarendon to be, but I finally had to Google it. It was in the Panhandle section in a part of the map by itself, near Amarillo. Texas doesn't fit on a standard map so the part where Clarendon is, was in the northwest corner of the map, the tip separated, but still the same scale.

[Master Oil Racing Team]

The race on Greenbelt Lake near Clarendon, Texas was a Pro race. It was a long way from any boat racers, including Oklahoma. Bobby Wilson from Graham, Texas was the one promoting it I believe. It was way west of Graham, but the cove in a big lake was well suited for racing. Bobby must have scouted it out and set the race up, because the pits were a perfect slope with lots of pit room and a good long front straight. Excellent viewing for spectators, and a perfectly laid out one mile course. I suspect it was Bobby because he was the ringleader when we got there. The site was not something chosen randomly by a civic group. It was perfect for racing.

It was a very long haul. Jack Chance or Clayton Elmer didn't have the time to take off to go that distance for a Sunday race. Baldy called Alex Wetherbee and asked if his son Steve wanted to go up with us to help in the pits. Alex has a ranch west of Fort Worth, and it may be that him and his brother Tommy had considered going up there to race also, but since they weren't, Alex said his son Steve could pit for us, and of course, he was very happy to do so. The race date was Sunday June 2nd, 1968. I don't remember the details on the way up, but we most likely had fueled up, batteries charged, and boats tied down by Friday evening and left at first light Saturday morning. It was a long drive, but it could be done in ten or twelve hours.

We would have gone up U.S. Highway 281 to San Antonio, then caught U.S. 290 west and gone on to Junction where we would turn north on U.S. 83 and gone up through Abilene and beyond. When we came to the junction with 277, we would have gone left and northwest and up to Clarendon.

I don't remember the trip up, but it was Baldyy, Mark, Steve Wetherbee and myself. I'm not sure we would have gone all that way except number one, I was ready to race, but more importantly, I think Bobby Wilson called Baldy. Bobby asked us to come up and race. When I won my first race beating Bobby, and he came to our pits and congratulated me, he and Baldy became friends. Bobby wanted us to come up and race, so Baldy made sure it was on our schedule.

It was a different landscape than we normally travelled to races. There were lots of limestone hills north of San Antonio abundant with cedar, Live Oak, White Oak, and other trees, but no pine like we were used to travelling through in the southeast. Out of Junction, it was scrub brush, rocks, cactus and hills and mesa's. It flattened out some before we got to Clarendon, but it was semi arid and rolling hills. I can't remember any memorable places we stopped to eat.

Baldy found a nice clean motel to spend the night in at Clarendon and we had a meal and shut down for the night.