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

[Master Oil Racing Team]

Now that the racing was over, Baldy was selling all the old motors and getting ready for the new Konigs. They usually came with something a little bit different. Mostly exhaust systems, and sometimes ignition. But most important was that the rotary valves and housings were more reliable to keep from a valve from sucking in and stopping on the intake port or belts riding one way or another without a lot of testing to true them up. The occentric to adjust the belts was made good about this time.

Baldy was getting ready for the next year, and talking with Scott Smith about what was coming up. Scott was very good at keeping Baldy informed. Baldy was also a very good customer of Overseas Dealers at that time.

Having just gotten in to the retail Outboard boat and motor sails and motorcycles, Baldy and Joe Hendricks were learning a new business. I was only just a bystander hearing what they talked about. Baldy and Joe talked about a "floor plan". That was the terminology I think might come from car dealers. Basically, it was about figuring out how much in inventory of boats, motors, and motorcycles they would need over a given period of time. It might be over three months if there was a huge turnover, but I suspect it was six months or more. In that "Floor Plan" Baldy and Joe would borrow money from the local bank to purchase the boats, outboards and motorcyles they wanted in inventory, and to display in the dealership. So when someone came in and saw what they liked, they could buy it or arrange payment right then. The idea was that the bank would fork up the money, or guarantee payment to the manufacturer in order to land the boats, motors etc on the floor for customers to see.

Every sale was processed and during the month, the boats, outboard motors and motorcycles that were sold were paid for with whatever interest the banks held on the inventory, and the manufacturers were always ready for the next shipment. I never saw exactly what the "Floor Plan" looked like on paper, but it was changing continually as equipment came in, was inventoried, paid for by the bank, set on the showroom floor or in back, sold, paid for by the customer, Emmord's pay the bank for the merchandise, plus floor plan costs, and so on....all around again.

[Master Oil Racing Team]

This is the ad that Baldy placed in the November/December issue of The Roostertail.

[Smokin' Joe]

My parents were a small Mercury dealer in Ky. across the border from Knoxville, the hotbed of Claude Fox's NOA. My parents mainly sold office equipment and TV sets,
Mercury, Glaspar and Lone Star were a sideline. I was the Mercury mechanic at age 15, factory trained by age 16. Without a friendly banker (Mr. Bailey, who actually was a
relative of my mother's father's mother) and floor-planning there would have been no boat-motor dealership. No one in that era could fork up the money to stock expensive
items like outboards and cars. We usually had one or two motors on display at any given time, and occasionally a Lone Star boat (Lone Star al boats were cheap). When someone
wanted a Glaspar then I or another employee drove to the factory in Nashville and hauled it home.

Now that the racing was over, Baldy was selling all the old motors and getting ready for the new Konigs. They usually came with something a little bit different. Mostly exhaust systems, and sometimes ignition. But most important was that the rotary valves and housings were more reliable to keep from a valve from sucking in and stopping on the intake port or belts riding one way or another without a lot of testing to true them up. The occentric to adjust the belts was made good about this time.

Baldy was getting ready for the next year, and talking with Scott Smith about what was coming up. Scott was very good at keeping Baldy informed. Baldy was also a very good customer of Overseas Dealers at that time.

Having just gotten in to the retail Outboard boat and motor sails and motorcycles, Baldy and Joe Hendricks were learning a new business. I was only just a bystander hearing what they talked about. Baldy and Joe talked about a "floor plan". That was the terminology I think might come from car dealers. Basically, it was about figuring out how much in inventory of boats, motors, and motorcycles they would need over a given period of time. It might be over three months if there was a huge turnover, but I suspect it was six months or more. In that "Floor Plan" Baldy and Joe would borrow money from the local bank to purchase the boats, outboards and motorcyles they wanted in inventory, and to display in the dealership. So when someone came in and saw what they liked, they could buy it or arrange payment right then. The idea was that the bank would fork up the money, or guarantee payment to the manufacturer in order to land the boats, motors etc on the floor for customers to see.

Every sale was processed and during the month, the boats, outboard motors and motorcycles that were sold were paid for with whatever interest the banks held on the inventory, and the manufacturers were always ready for the next shipment. I never saw exactly what the "Floor Plan" looked like on paper, but it was changing continually as equipment came in, was inventoried, paid for by the bank, set on the showroom floor or in back, sold, paid for by the customer, Emmord's pay the bank for the merchandise, plus floor plan costs, and so on....all around again.

[Smokin' Joe]

Very interesting Joe. Where was that picture taken? Looks like from a magazine article, but same scenario as your parent's shop.

Wayne, the girls were selling high school yearbook ads. The photo appeared in the 1961 Middlesboro HighSchool yearbook.
There's part of a Mark 58A to the left, the Mark 78 in the middle was my dad's racing motor. We'd used the Merc 800 on
the right to break 60 mph in NOA unlimited class (not much of an excitement for an alky driver!).

[Master Oil Racing Team]

That would be plenty excitement in 1961 Joe. I could tell by the dots that the picture looked like it came from a publication, but it wasn't cropped like in a magazine. It took me awhile to get to the motors. Those girls must have sold a lot of ads.

[Master Oil Racing Team]

The boat racing was done for the year. We would still have some work to do at the shop, but weekends were now more of choice than scheduled.

Gerel Malstrom had the look of a surfer, but he had never smelled salt air before. I called Ginger and told her that I would like to come to Houston to see her, and if she had a friend to come with her, I would like to bring a friend of mine. She said O.K. and so Gerel and I finished classes and headed to Houston.

Our main goal was to surf "Surfside"southeast of Houston. Gerel had no idea about Surfside or Galveston surf, but I had told him about what I knew and that Surfside was where all the surfers from Houston went. All that I had heard about it was that it was a real hotspot. The surf down where we were at Port Aransas was allright, but it was not smooth like the California coastline....straight an with a good break. Our surf was choppy. Most of the time the waves were two, maybe three feet. Sometimes they might get five or six feet, but they always closed early. A good long line of surf would chop two or three places. Surfside turned out to be just a hype scam. Houston surfers just listened to the Beach Boys, spent money on boards, and went to the beach just to meet girls. When Gerel and I stopped at a surf shop to ask them exactly how to get to Surfside, nobody knew. We finally figured out how to get there down there, and we camped out on the beach. We found out the next morning about how great the surf was.

ADD: Found and posted these pictures 9/15/14

Here is a picture of Gerel sitting on the "gunnels" of Mr. Clay. When I was growing up and my parents drove sixty or seventy miles or more down Padre Island, beached and salvaged shrimpboats in different stages of decomposition were a fairly common sight. This one in 1968 was beached not long. If I remember right, the engine was still in it, but everything worth anything was stripped. Most of the boats are not as high and dry as this one, and they are normally laid over on the port or starboard side, and lots more rust and decay.

[Master Oil Racing Team]

Early Saturday morning I latched my Smith & Gordon (Gordie) surfboard to the racks on top of my Dodge Polara and Gerel and I headed north to Galveston where we knew there was surf. When we got there, we didn't know where to go. I drove south down the main road along the seawall looking for a likely place. It was overcast, miserable, and on the verge of raining. Surfers generally don't mind weather if the surf is up, and although it wasn't great...we didn't see any, and to we didn't know where to stop. The surf was semi...semi. Not so great, but better than Surfside, so we finally found a place to pull over, get my Gordie off the roof and we went down the seawall to the water. I was trying to teach Gerel how to surf, but he kept pearling, and the waves weren't that great, the water was kind of cold, so I thought I would take a turn and show Gerel how to time the wave and swim to catch it.

As I was floating on the Gordie and looking back for the best wave my right leg scraped us against something. I immediately looked forward toward the beach and I saw a piece of barnacle encrusted steel tubing in the trough of the wave. Then I saw another. When you are surfing, you never stay in the same place. You always move left or right from the shoreline depending upon which direction the tide is moving. In this case, the tide moved us southward to where we were on top of a rotted off steel pier. I told Gerel we need to get out of the water. No wonder no one was surfing there. When I got to the narrow sand beach, my right leg was covered with blood from the sharp barnacles I scraped against.

After all that, it was time to head back to Houston and get ready for our dates. We spent the night on the beach and so were coated with fine beach sand and glossed over with salt water. We needed to clean up before we went to dinner and dancing with the girls. I drove to an Enco or Esso station, (can't remember which) and filled up my Dodge. I asked for the key for the bathroom, and Gerel and I went in together. We had a beach towel that we stuffed in the door jam at the bottom, turned on the water and proceeded to take a splashing shower from the water that came out of the faucet. That's the only time I ever took a "shower" with another man, and it was crazy Jerel's idea. He wasn't a funny bunny, and I knew that, or I wouldn't have done it. We didn't have much money. We had to save all we had to show the girls and good time. But we had to clean the salt out of our hair, off our bodies and become presentable. We were in and out in just a few minutes but when Gerel snatched up the towel, there was about two inches of water in that bathroom. We were mostly dressed by then and only had to pull on our pants and escape. We got away clean, and our dates never even heard about what we had done.

I took this picture of Gerel a couple of years later when I was taking the same college course he did. Gerel actually had taken pictures of our surf adventure, but they were lost when Hurricane Celia blew Baldy's house away. Gerel is the one that was standing behind the camera for the photo taken at Devil's Backbone, and that was part of his photography class. His photos were much better than mine. Gerel ended up pitting for us in college and Joe Rome will most likely have some comments when I get to that part. Here is a picture of Gerel.

[Master Oil Racing Team]

There was a lot of good music going on at this time. One of my all time favorites was HEY JUDE by the Beatles. One of the most unusual, and maybe one of the first music videos (which I cannot stand) was FIRE by the Crazy World of Arthur Brown. I can remember the number three hit of that time THOSE WERE THE DAYS by Mary Hopkins because of Ginger. Mary Hopkins was, I believe, the first or one of the first that the Beatles signed to their new Abbey Road publishing company. Bud Turcotte and I both loved the song I'M A GIRL WATCHER by O' Kay sions, and MIDNIGHT CONFESSIONS by the grass roots were in the top of the charts.

Number nine hit in 1968 was a girl from Beaumont. I had never heard of Janis Joplin until "Piece of My Heart" with Janis Joplin and Big Brother and the Holding Company hit the charts. WHITE ROOM by Cream was number twenty two, ALL ALONG THE WATCHTOWER, a cover of a Dylan song was number 20, and Dion's ABRAHAM, MARTIN AND JOHN was just hitting the charts. Soon Judi Collins song BOTH SIDES NOW would be moving up. Creedence Clearwater Revival had a hit song SUZI Q. On that same album from San Francisco though was one of the best blues songs ever, and a cover from another artist I can't recall. CCR's version of "I PUT A SPELL ON YOU" is one to don the headphones and lay back to listen type song.

[Master Oil Racing Team]

Elections were coming up right around the corner. Hubert Humphrey, from Minnesota was selected as the democrat candidate after Lyndon B. Johnson from Texas pulled his name out of the hat. Women's lib was kicking off, but mostly it was not known at the time.

The Summer Olympics in Mexico City had just concluded and there was a lot of controversy over two finalists in the 200 meter dash. Tommy Smith and John Carlos raised their arms with clinched fists during the playing of the "Star Spangled Banner". It was a spark in the "Black Power" movement that had both positive and negative results.

October 20, 1968 Jackie Kennedy married Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis. At the end of October President Lyndon B. Johnson announced the end of bombing in North Viet Nam. "Boy Wonder" George McNamara played the pieces like it was a chess game. He was such a spectacular know-it-all the White House went with him rather than the military. That's why LBJ did not seek a second term. He knew the cards were against him on the election, but the cards McNamara dealt below the deck meant that thousands more would be killed or injured before hostilities ended.

Richard M. Nixon won, but not with a majority. He won with 43.4 % of the vote. Hubert Humphrey was second with 42.7% and George Wallace was the spoiler with 13.5%. The northern democrats and southern democrats split enough votes to give the win to Nixon with less than fifty percent. (que lastima).

A couple of the lasting quotes that came about in the waning moments of 1968 were "Book 'em Dano" from Jack Lord in Hawaii 5-0, and ""Open the doors HAL" in 2001 Space Odyssey.

Some of the most popular TV shows were LAUGH IN, GOMER PYLE, USMC, BONANZA, MAYBERRY RFD, FAMILY AFFAIR, GUNSMOKE, JULIA, DEAN MARTIN SHOW, HERE'S LUCY AND BEVERLY HILLBILLY'S.

Bud and I didn't have a television in our apartment, and none of the guys we hung out with had one either. Music was what was important, and the music was what followed us. Whatever we did, wherever we went, there was always music...either blaring out the rattling speakers in our cars.....the compromised speakers in our furniture cabinet at the apartment or some real music on campus, with a down and heavy bass.

The late fall of 1968 was a time for us to settle in, and grind our way to the end of the semester. Baldy never called to check up on me, nor did Louis Edgar or Bud's Mom Joyce call to check up on him. We were left on our own. Bud and I were pretty much free to do what we wanted then, except there was the Lone Star Boat Racing Association banquet coming up , and I would be there. Bud would not.

[Ketzer]

Great start, Wayne. Oddly, I've been working on a story about my father, Steve Ketzer, that, after a few dodges that include everything from recipes on how to make candy cane cookies, four tortillas and Knotts Berry Farm, ends up being about boat racing--around 25 pages, thus far.