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

[Master Oil Racing Team]

It was in 1964 that the United States of America authorized the war in Viet Nam. It was recognizing the fact that there was leftover business from WWII and the Korean War that the communists were really our long time insidious enemys.

Beatlemania had come to America and were the first wave of what was to become the "British Music Invasion". I loved every minute of it.

I never liked boxing. I hated going to my "Unce Buck's" house if we were going to stay up late have to watch the "Gillette" boxing matches. Those were televised boxing matches in black and white in the late fifties and early sixties that I had to endure. Yet in 1964...there was so much hype about Cassius Clay...I had to listen with the AM radio close to my ear when I went to bed. I was listening to a disc jockey who called himself "Wolf Baby" He was capitalizing on the success and fame of "Wolfman Jack", but he had a high and whiny voice. I did not get it. For some reason AM listener's from California to Chicago to New York could pick up Wolfman Jack less than 200 miles from my house, and it was a couple of years later before I actually heard what he sounded like. So that was when I heard about Cassius Clay beating Sonny Liston for the world heavyweight title.

It was also the year that "Fatah" made the first armed attack against Israel, and the future and unrepentant winner of a "Nobel Piece Prize" Yasser Arafat was a leader.

On January 16, 1964 HELLO DOLLY appeard on Broadway. Two days later the Beatles "I Want To Hold Your Hand" appeared on the Billboard Charts at number 35.

March 9th 1964....one of the historical moments in automobile history...the much anticipated Ford Mustang rolled off the assembly line. I think most if not all the production was already sold. A friend of my sister Brenda had been wringing his hands waiting on for his for awhile. I can still remember him driving up to the Pernitas Point Lodge at Lake Corpus Christi.

While we were asleep, sometime around 5:30 to 6:00 am on March 29,1964 the wave from the second largest recorded earthquake reached South Texas. It was 9.2 on the Richter Scale and originated at Prince William Sound, Alaska on March 28.

[Master Oil Racing Team]

Baldy had brought in a drag line and made a canal for our boats to come in close to the house at Pernitas Point at Lake Mathis. It was a natural cove, but with the drag line, he had the canal and cove lengthened and deepened. the fill went to the left side of the accompanying picuture and additional earthwork was done to build the pond. It was a private fishing pond, but I was the primary fisherman. A three foot dyke was thrown up around the big mesquite tree to protect if from the water. It is an arid tree, and while it can thrive close to water...too much will kill it.

I had baited five or six throwlines and tossed them out into the pond on the 28th. I had been having a problem of catching turtles on a couple of throwlines and I don't remember if I tried different baits, or some different hooks, but I was anxious to see what the next morning's catch was. When I got up early to check the lines, I found the basin surrounding the mesquite tree was half filled with water and some perch and small bass were swimming around in it. I was totally confused. Then when I went to check my throwlines which were on the north and back to the east side going clockwise, I noticed a number of dead perch and bass, all small (1/8-1/2#) on the north shoreline. Then I noticed that the grass was wet all along the northern embankment,

It was shortly after I went back to the house that Baldy's ex partner Calvin Cron called Baldy on the Telephone. Calvin spent the money from Baldy's buyout to purchase a brand new lot directly across from us and build a Marina. He was sitting there early in the morning drinking his coffee when the big shake got there. Calvin told Baldy that the whole lake sloshed back and forth. We never felt it. I guess the earth didn't move, but the seismic wave moved the water. Here is a pic of the pond, and the mesquite tree surrounded by the dyke which became half filled with water.

[Master Oil Racing Team]

We had a black and white television then. It was the next year that we got a color TV.

One of the ads on the B&W that I will never forget was the Anacin one where there were three blocks. One had a hammer pounding, the other a continually zapping electricity, and another of dripping water. That ad was on all the time. But the one that I always stopped whatever I was doing to watch was the Bardahl ad. Having only gone maybe 25 mph on water and felt so exhilerated, I could not imagine the feel of driving an unlimited.

I did not try to put myself in that pilot's seat, because there was no way I could even imagine that. I was just enthralled by the speed and the roostertail. The way the ad was done...and the slo mo way the roostertail falls is still an inspiration. The boat is long gone before the last of the water lands and is still.

This is when my gut for boat racing is forming. I never saw a boat race before and there was never any racing going on around where I lived that I knew about. It was just a feeling for going fast on the water.

[David Alaniz]

I have enjoyed your writing....it has stirred some memories of the "climate, sounds and feelings for those days".

[Master Oil Racing Team]

Baldy had built a workshop at the end of our carport in Alice....approximately 30' X 30' with a tack room/storeroom and bathroom on the west side. There was no longer anyone at our lakehouse that could take care of the horses. After summer was over I was too busy with high school, flying lessons and night school once a week to be able to drive back and forth to take care of the horses, so we moved them to a fifteen acre plat behind Alice Specialty Company. One of Baldy's first employees lived there and raised pigeons so he helped me feed and water them, but I still had to trim the hooves and groom them.

The shop had a large worktable right in the middle. About ten by twelve. Hand tools were hanging on peg board or in drawers and power tools were on the eastern and southern sides. In addition to the typical hand held power tools were a radial arm saw, jigsaw, drill press, grinder, and wood lathe. We had all kinds of woodworking hand tools. My brother Mark was good at working with wood, but I was not. I made a birdhouse and a few things that did not require much craftsmanship, but I could turn out more weird things on the lathe than he could. I could have made lamp stands, but don't ask me to make things with legs unless you didn't care if they didn't match. I could have made matching legs, but they would have been more simple, boring and time consuming.

It was sometime after school started in 1964 that I found blueprints for an outboard runabout in a magazine. This was before I found Boating News, and read about fast boats only in something like Popular Mechanics. I don't believe it was Glen L. In fact, the only plans we had were in the article itself if I remember correctly. It was not "Minimax" or "Minimost", but it was probably someone trying to capitalize on that formula.

We had a fine hardware and lumber store several miles west of us, and Mark and I got to know the owner of JE Moore Hardware & Lumber, Johnny Moore very well. I showed the plans to our Dad and he enthusiatically supported us all the way in the project. He even went down and bought some more tools he thought we would need such as planers, wood chisels, sanders, etc. He told Johnny let us have what we needed and send him the bill. JE Moore Hardware & Lumber already stocked marine plywood that the plans called for. He also carried the Anchorfast type nails in both copper and monel. Then of course, there was plenty of Weldwood powdered glue in stock.

We got home with all the basics to get us started and went right to work. That's where I first learned about stringers, chines, etc. The plans were not detailed enough for someone that had never built a boat, nor much of anything like that for us to get to far at first, but Baldy showed us some tricks and stood back to watch. It was slow going due to us taking time to measure, set up the tools properly, then make careful cuts. Mark and I took pride in our progress, and I think it was Mark's eye for woodworking that brought me, his older brother, some patience to see that we got it right the first time. For one, I could not imagine what we would have done if we got something wrong and that Weldwood glue set up. We didn't want to start over. I gained tremendous respect for how strong a powder can get when mixed with water and properly applied.

[Master Oil Racing Team]

We got off to a tremedous start on building that boat. The first part of it went very quickly. Stringers and crossmembers got laid down. We worked hard, but got the chines correctly angled, nailed and glued in place. Then when we got to the deck, we realized the flaw in the plan. The bottom was almost 48 inches. The deck was supposed to be made from on 4 X 8 sheet of plywood. We had already split that sheet and cut the deck out according to the pattern. When you consider the extra width that the chines spread out from the bottom we were several inches short of connecting the deck pieces. There was a curved piece of wood from the "dashboard" to the bow where the bow handle screwed on, but the left and right section of the deck did not come together at a point to where we could fasten it to the framework. Baldy did not give us any guidance. I cannot to this day remember if it was because he wanted Mark and myself to figure it out, or because he was so busy with business. Anyway.....when my brother and I didn't know what to do......we quit working on it.

[Master Oil Racing Team]

Here are a few pics of what we were working on. The last photo is my brother Mark checking the bottom. He was the woodworker.

[Master Oil Racing Team]

1964 was the year they started working on the Civil Rights Act. I can remember watching the TV and seeing rioting black people being hosed down by firehoses and getting clubbed by policemen. There were not many combines in our area and a lot of black people came in to pick cotton. At Chester's, a local restaurant in Orange Grove, they had a screened in porch where the blacks would order their food through a side window and eat at tables inside the porch. I was confused about what all the rioting was about because non of the black people in our area caused any problems. I also could not understand why they wanted to eat in the porch rather than inside. There were really not many black people in our area, and I was politically naive. Baldy did not really comment much on any of this stuff, so I was unaware of what it was really all about.

Brezhnev took control of the Soviet Union when Kruschev went on vacation.

Goldfinger came out and Shirley Bassey had a really big hit with the song "Goldfinger". I think that was probably why all subsequent Bond movies searched for really good music as themes for the shows.

Baldy never ever commented on any of the music I liked except for one time. I was watching a B&W TV program and Gale Garnett was singing "Sing in the Sunshine". Baldy stopped what he was doing and listened to it, then he said to me "I like that song", and nothing more. I can still hear him saying it, and I have always thought it was because of the memories he had of our mother.

One more shot of the boat we were building.

[Master Oil Racing Team]

1965 was a good year for music. Rolling Stones recorded what some say is the greatest rock & roll song ever written.....Satisfaction. And then another of my favorites "Like a Rolling Stone", by Bob Dylan put him on the pop music charts and also cleared the way for other tunes longer than 2 and a half minutes. Had that song not stayed on the charts as long as it did, the long version of "Light My Fire" may have never been played on the air.

The Vietnam War was escalating and operation "Rolling Thunder" commenced. The first protests over the war started appearing on campus and in the District of Columbia. Hippies came on to the scene, and as a 16 year old boy, the debut of the miniskirt got my attention.

Lyndon Johnson's war on poverty began the road to poverty we are now faced with'

Sound of Music won the awards and Gomer Pyle USMC was one of our favorite TV shows. Baldy would watch it with us.

[Master Oil Racing Team]

Baldy was still taking us to shooting events....mostly with shotguns. He took Mark and I to compete along with himself in the Texas State Skeet Championships in San Antonio. He signed me up to shoot with the adults because he watched a kid about a year younger than me and concluded I would have a better chance shooting against the adults. We had practiced a lot, and daily for the last week or so. In the 20 guage division, I was rated class F I think. I forget exactly, but that put me averaging around 88 to 90 targets out of 100. I ended up shooting 96 out of 100 which bumped me all the way up to class C and the winner. We shot 400 rounds each that day between the various gauges and I had a splitting headache at the end of the day. I haven't shot one round of skeet since then.

I continued to fly, but I had been slacking off, due to my interest in fast boats. Baldy told me I need to keep up the practice or quit. One of my last flights was one of the most memorable. It was a very stiff crosswind about 40 miles per hour and out of the west. There was no runway built for that direction so we didn't do touch & go's that day, but my flight instructor George figured it was the best day we had to teach me how to fly crossways and land in a bad cross wind. We flew around awhile and he had me going in directions to make the plane fly crabwise. When it came time to land I was nervous because you have to come down sideways then straighten out just before you touch down. I came in too hot and the stall warning never went off, and instead of landing the Cessna, I basically flew it into the ground. It hit hard and bounced about 6 feet back into the air. I didn't even try to figure out what to do. Instinctively I worked the pedals and yoke to aim back into the wind to keep from drifting left and to the runway's edge, then I pulled the yoke way back, and at the same time left rudder and the plane settled in so softly you couldn't even feel it. The wind was blowing so hard it seemed we were only doing about 30 miles per hour. George looked over at me and just said "Nice recovery". It was these flying lessons that gave me the "seat of the pants" sense of flying that pilots talk about that I attribute my successful boat racing career to. I knew what it felt like at the point you are about to "take off". George even taught me how to take off without the hands on the wheel....only using the foot pedals and throttle. Because of those lessons I only blew over one time in all my days of racing and testing. But my flying days were just about over.

Baldy had bought us a little red boat that I believe was called a "Nomad". It was about twelve feet long and equipped with a 20 horsepower Mercury. Baldy was always an Evinrude guy, but when it came to racing motors he figured you needed a Mercury, so that's what he bought. We were on the lake all summer "racing" it. Here's a couple of Mark driving it, and a few shots I took while at the wheel.