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

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    A few housekeeping matters for those who are following this thread. From time to time I come across something I had been looking for, but couldn't find at the time I was posting. I have just added today Nov 24, 2013) some new information and pictures. First is some old pictures of Baldy in post #5. Secondly I had intended to post this, but for the longest time I remembered it being in the fall of 1968. Just recently I realized I was driving home after the race, and not to school. I was going to A&I in Kingsville during the spring of 68. In the fall I would have been going to San Marcos after the race. Then after remembering the song Lady Madonna from that long drive home, I looked it up and it was on the charts in the spring of 1968, and that ties in with other things as well, including the right time of year for heavy fog. It was my one and only try at the Houston Ship Channel race. That can be found at the ADD: in post #552. I like to keep things in chronological order if I can.



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    Quote Originally Posted by Master Oil Racing Team View Post
    A few housekeeping matters for those who are following this thread. From time to time I come across something I had been looking for, but couldn't find at the time I was posting. I have just added today Nov 24, 2013) some new information and pictures. First is some old pictures of Baldy in post #5. Secondly I had intended to post this, but for the longest time I remembered it being in the fall of 1968. Just recently I realized I was driving home after the race, and not to school. I was going to A&I in Kingsville during the spring of 68. In the fall I would have been going to San Marcos after the race. Then after remembering the song Lady Madonna from that long drive home, I looked it up and it was on the charts in the spring of 1968, and that ties in with other things as well, including the right time of year for heavy fog. It was my one and only try at the Houston Ship Channel race. That can be found at the ADD: in post #552. I like to keep things in chronological order if I can.


    Wayne:

    In post #5 where you reference you are unsure of the year, if I am not mistaken, that is either a Kaiser or Frazier make automobile on the extreme left in the photo taken in front of ASCO. My family had several of the Kaiser make, one a '48 model and another the more modern styled '51 model. The Frazier was a "dolled up" model of the Kaiser make, similar to the relationship between Ford and Mercury during that time frame, and that car seems to be sort of a "plain jane" model without some of the extra chrome, etc., the Frazier model had so I think it is a Kaiser. Other cars in the line are either just prior to WWII models or within a year or so after. Hard to tell the exact makes other than one or two seem to be Chrysler makes and the others Chevy or other GM makes. For several years after WWII folks were lining up to buy cars and manufacturers did not have to be too particular about giving them what they wanted in the way of options.

    The first car my Dad got after WWII was a '46 Ford coupe for traveling and he had to wait three months on a waiting list for it. No specifying what you wanted in the way of a model or options, you took what came in when your name came to the top of the list. If you did not like it and refused for any reason, you went to the bottom of the list for maybe another 90 day wait. His new car had all the options available at the time which consisted of an AM radio, heater, and nylon seat covers over the cloth upholstery. Also he got a small credit when he let the dealer keep the back seats as he needed the room for samples as he took a job as a traveling salesman and with a coupe needed all the storage room he could get.

    I was in the 10-12 year age range at the time and very enthused about cars and prided myself by being able to tell my Dad what the different models were. I was also learning to drive during that time in the vacant parking lot at the football stadium in Little Rock. Like others of that age and that time frame, I am sure I took several years off my Dad's life learning how to use a clutch and manual transmission. It absolutely amazes me today that some of the Championship boat racers age thirty and younger have never driven a manual shift as I have maintained ownership of at least one model of that type since my first purchase of a car. Eileen is so used to a manual shift, when we purchased our last one I asked her if she wanted a four door model with an automatic transmission. She declined in favor of a sport coupe with a manual transmission and upgraded horsepower rating. Still frisky at almost age 65!

    Keep up the good work on the "Baldy" thread. It is just getting ready to get really interesting based on what I remember of the time.

  3. #683
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    Thanks Bill Van. Baldy went bankrupt as a building contractor when he couldn't find any nails to finish his work. When he borrowed money from a banker to buy a railcar load of nails, he sold them to people in the business and used the money to build that warehouse. That was in 1946. So your timing is right on the money. Judging by the number of customers with oil supply warehouse rental space and offices, It looks like he had all the spaces filled. I'm guessing that the picture was somewhere between 1948 and 1951 or 52. I do remember my Dad talking about a Kaiser he had. Don't know which of the cars is the oldest. That would tell us the latest year, since you already said how old some of the older models were, and I can remember seeing some of them in a great film with John Wayne, Henry Fonda, Kirk Douglas and other high caliber actors about the battle of Midway.

    I myself have always liked standards, and given a choice, that's what I would own today except Dodge's 4 wheel drive standards look like something you would find in Boscoe's car. You people under fifty would probably not know who Bosco is. The shift stick in a Dodge pickup looks like a toothpick with an olive on top. Apparently the engineers are too young to know low to layout a proper stick shift in a pickup. However, they did do a pretty good job on the Challenger. My Son Andrew finally traded in his Dodge with the big lift and big tires for a top of the line tricked out Dodge Challenger because the guy who bought it (military) traded it in when he was transferred and no one wanted to buy a six speed standard. Low milage and about 5,000 below blue book because they didn't know when somebody else might come along that liked standards.

    Tell Eileen that ya'll need to make a trip to Texas when they next run the Texas Mile. Debbie and Eileen can both test their cars out.



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    I will see if I can get mom over to Savannah and talk to Mr. Lastinger.normally we do Thanksgiving at HHI,this year in southwest ga.being holidays she will want to go over to home sometime and I will find out.

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    Thanks. BRF got a bunch of boat racers interested in their past racing, and around a dozen showed up at a reunion several weeks ago. Joe Rome was there and was appointed the official who would black flag them when they went over their allotted time to tell their story. Two were 90. So we would very much like to hear what he might remember about the 1968 NOA Nationals then would like to her what you and he both have regarding both your boat racing histories and times together, your Dad's engine building, etc.



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    Two more additions to the Forest Lake story. I added to the bottom of post #672 that I had forgotten about and Clayton Elmer reminded me. Also I added to the second paragraph of post # 680 regarding the B Runabout race.



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    Baldy, Velma and crew left early Monday morning to head back home, but Jack, Clayton and Doris weren't so lucky. That big bore Chrysler 440 hemi had burnt all the valves. It had been overhauled after Mark had toasted the engine racing back to Alice during the past summer, and at some point during the trip up to Forest Lake, it started running bad. After a compression check at a local Chrysler dealer in St. Paul, they had to shut it down for a valve job. Apparently the overhaul boosted the compression enough that the regular size valves would not hold up. In order to clear the heads up, the dealer had to order oversize valves and Jack, Clayton and Doris had to spend another couple of nights in St. Paul before they could head home. In addition to that, the dash burnt out and the instrument panel didn't work. Don't know if that was result of that particular overhaul, or was related to similar problems Bud, Mark and I had on that doozey of a trip we took to Floyd Hopkin's house by way of Bourbon Street even earlier in the past summer. In any case, once they were back on the road Jack could not see how fast he was going, and they had to stop every 100 miles to fuel up because they did not know how much fuel that gas hog was going through.

    We did not dilly dally around, but tried to make the fastest time back we could. Don't remember much about the way back except the music and we made it through the bad 20 miles of road in the daytime. There were a couple of instrumental songs in the top twenty so we heard a lot of Mason Williams' "Classical Gas', and "Grazing in the Grass" by Hugh Masekela. He was under contract to put out so many minutes of music on his latest album, but it was a minute and a half or so short. So he took his band back into the studio and very quickly recorded "Grazing in the Grass". It became his only really big hit. Then there were new sounds coming on the scene and "Sunshine of your Love" by Cream, "Born to be Wild" by Steppenwolf, and the Doors "Hello, I love You" were all getting lots of airtime. Archie Bell and the Dells "Can't Stop Dancing" was still high in the charts and the song Brenda couldn't remember if she loved or hated ,"People got to be Free" by the Rascals was at the very top of the charts now. Also being played, though not in the top 20, was my favorite version of "The weight" by The Band.

    We drove on through the night that first night we left, stopping only for gasoline, food, pit stops and to change out drivers. I didn't ride in Velma's car, but stayed in Baldy's Suburban swapping out with him. Some of the others rotated back and forth so they could lay down to sleep in the back of Baldy's Suburban for better sleep than half sitting up. I took a turn somewhere around one or two in the morning. I was leaning against the doorpost in the front passenger seat when the eastern sky began to glow a little. I saw Baldy driving with his window rolled down and his head sticking out. I don't know how long he had the window down driving like that, but he had driven almost all the way through the night. I told him "Find a place to pull over and I'll drive." We did and passengers all swapped around. I think Bud was mostly relieving Velma, and maybe Mark and Bob as well.

    After a good breakfast we were all cheerful and ready for a long haul that day. We made good time and got a long way down the road. We skirted Kanas City, Kansas that morning and got way on down into Oklahoma. I don't remember another all nighter driving so we must have stopped somewhere in Oklahoma or Texas that night. It was an easy trip the rest of the way, with nothing particularly exciting or memorable finishing up our trip up and back to St. Paul and Forest Lake, Minnesota.



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    The day after we got back I boxed up a bunch of our propellers and some of Clayton's and took them down to the Continental Trailways bus station downtown Alice. I was spending a lot of time going to and from that bus station this past year. Except when we saw Scott Smith at the races, all the motors and parts were shipped by bus. And Jack Chance and I shipped back and forth on Continental. It was cheap for such heavy items and was also quick. Before UPS and FedX, that was the way to go for shipping parts and motors.

    We suspected some of our problems as Forest Lake had to do with the props. It was very shallow and we ran through sand and mud sometimes when launching the boats, or coming back. There weren't any props torn up, but at different times, we did some bottom churning. It was so shallow in some places that Dan Kirts stood up in the water after flipping one of his hydros. So I shipped a boxful of props to Floyd Hopkins for him to check out.



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    Sometime in the next week Bud Turcotte and I drove up to San Marcos to register for classes at Southwest Texas State College. Baldy didn't like it much, but he didn't try to stop me. Bud would be a freshman, and I was a sophomore. The Jackie Wilson song "Higher and Higher" was turning into a big hit then, and always reminds me of that trip. At Kenedy, Texas just a few miles north on Texas State Highway 123 from the intersection of State Highway 72 was Barth's restaurant. It had been there a long time and there was a 20 X 150' covered parking in front for early comers. Generally when Baldy was driving through that area we stopped for Bar be Que or cold cuts, cheese and homemade bread about three miles further north on the right. Instead Bud and I stopped at Barth's for lunch and it became a tradition to try to plan on being there around lunch time as we traveled to and from college.

    Restaurants in Texas are rated on their hamburgers and chicken fried steak. If those are good, then everything else is. Barth's not only served a great and large chicken fried steak, but real homemade mashed potatoes and gravy, and the green beans were also the real deal, and not canned tasting. The real treat though was the homemade bread with lots of butter baked on top, and kind of crusty on the edges. They were very generous with their bread which they served with just about everything except hamburgers. Many people stopped to eat there just for the bread that comes with the meal. I haven't stopped in there for many years, but I've been by there a half dozen times this past year and it is still packed. Barth's is probably close to sixty years old and still has customers coming in all day long, and at night.

    We got registered and then drove around looking for apartments to rent. We were not wise in the ways of renting apartments and so must have thought it would be more like getting a hotel room, except for a whole year, or at least a semester. We decided we would rent an apartment at the newest and coolest one in town, Le Chateau. Were we in for a surprise. Not only were they fully booked, but had a one year waiting list. While we were disappointed....no problem....we would just find one less expensive and maybe a little closer to campus. That would be better anyway. We drove all over looking for and stopping at apartments on the eastern side of the campus. No luck there either. We decided that we better come back next week and spend a full day just trying to find an apartment. We could have stayed on campus, but we did not want to. We wanted to be free of dorm mothers and do what we wanted.

    Bud, was in fact, supposed to stay on campus. It was a rule at Southwest Texas that freshman were required to live on campus. Sophomore and above could live where they chose. We went to an administrator to talk about Bud living with me. They did offer waivers and the way we pulled it off was because of boat racing. I told them that I raced modified racing outboards all over the United States, and that most races were held on Sunday afternoon. We raced a lot in the Houston/Beaumont area and we would be getting in between one O'clock and three O'clock in the morning. That would be very disruptive at the dorm, especially having to wake the dorm mother or whatever upperclassman was in charge of opening the doors. We got our waiver. So now all we had to do was find a place to rent.



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    Bud Turcotte and I weren't the only ones of CB Racing Team about to make a move. Clayton Elmer was close to moving his family from Highlands, Texas near Baytown to Corpus Christi, Texas. He was learning the ropes to become the manager of Baldy and Joe Hendrick's marine and motorcycle business Emmord's. It was located on Lexington Boulevard which would in a few years become upgraded from a two lane highway to a four and later six lane highway with multiple elevations above major intersections. It was in the heart of what would become the major retail center of Corpus Christi. The name was changed from Lexington Boulevard to South Padre Island Drive. This was the road that went to Padre Island, crossing over the intracoastal canal on the way to the Northern Padre Island seashore. It also connected to the park road leading to Port Aransas. Emmords was in the top three boat businesses in Corpus Christi selling Evinrude motors along with Thompson, Larsen, MFG and Ouachita boats, and Honda motorcycles. Clayton was very enthusiastic about his new career and ready to get moved down. He had already been working down here, but Doris, daughter Paula and son Donnie were still living in Highlands. That was to change soon.



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