With both houses sold, we were without our shop also. It wasn't a problem right now though because of the racing season over and it would be a few months before we got started again. Jack Chance could do the work on new motors coming in at his shop, which he always did anyway. I was sometime during the middle to latter part of 1968 that Baldy began to sell off all our DeSilva runabouts including our first ever new boat, an A/B DeSilva. It was a beautiful piece of work when we bought it, now it was an ugly silver blue solid paint job. He sold the Jumbo C/D DeSilva, which I only ran a C Konig on and the B DeSilva which I don't remember any great success with since all runabout classes in Lone Star were very tough. My biggest problem with the runabouts was that cockpits were always so wide, I could never get a snug fit, and so I had some control problems in the corners, always bouncing around and tearing the bottom pads loose from their grommets.

Baldy's partner Joe wanted to start raising cattle on the pasture part of Barbon upon the ridge and hilltop so he built a barn for hay and implement storage. Baldy had some 2 X 6's built up inside of part of the barn where we hung the hydros while he had the motor box rebuilt with an aluminum skin. And he redesigned the insides where we hung the motors after having done an add on to the box previously. Our Marchetti C hydro went to the paint shop to have the "Spider" black stripes painted on like we had planned to do with the others, but didn't get around to it.

While Bud Turcotte and I and Joe Rome were back at San Marcos, Baldy and Jack were getting things ready for next year. Clayton Elmer was settled in at Emmords and he Baldy and Joe were learning the boat and motorcycle business.