Thanks: 
Likes: Couldn't agree more. I look forward to every new post on the "Baldy's" thread.
Keep it up Wayne, and when you DO condense the thread into a book, I WANT a copy!
Couldn't agree more. I look forward to every new post on the "Baldy's" thread.
Keep it up Wayne, and when you DO condense the thread into a book, I WANT a copy!
Thanks Joe and Gene. I appreciate that. Baldy kept us together after our mother died, and I think about all the things he was able to do after that. He made everything work so seamlessly with his business, our racing, brother and sisters, that I don't know how he did it, although I was there. Baldy had a commanding voice and presence, but if you did what he wanted you to do or thought should be done, then all was right. If you disagreed, he would listen with reason and if you were right, then do it. Baldy would then praise you for what you did. Most of the time we all knew what had to be done and did it....or just goofed off and had a good time later just talking about things. If you messed up, Baldy would know. No way to hide something he would no about, so just fess up, and he would cover the cost to fix it. I learned not to lie many years before we started racing. I don't remember any specifics, but what I do remember that continued all the rest of my life living with Baldy is that he could heat up and get mad over something in an instant. But he could also cool down as quickly as if he fell from a helicopter into a thin ice lake in Minnesota in February.
As I mentioned previously, Baldy was very generous to many people who he never mentioned, but later told me about what he did.
I was having a lot of computer trouble the last few weeks, and in fact, Debbie and I have talked about replacing this one. Until then, I will try again to post the old Master Oil pictures on post # 602
Okay, I got it done. You can see the pictures and additional commentary via post #602 on what it took to get it done. Now maybe I can get back to the story.
We had a big enough break to make the trip to Floyd's and get back in time to work on motor's at Jack's.
Since we became dealer's for Konig motors, we no longer went to Bryan to pick up Konigs from Freddie Goehl and Arlen Crouch. They were shipped to us via Continetal Bus Lines, and I would drive down to the bus station turning north on Almond going one block off of main street to first. The Continental Bus Terminal was on the left. I picked up motors, and lots of packages of parts there. I also packaged up parts and drove them to the bus station to send to customers, although there were never many.
Before the next race, we had to change out the seals on half a dozen or more new rotary valve Konigs we had recieved. Mark didn't work on the motors, but he was a good deckhand, so he went with me to Jack Chance's house at Baytown to help us on the shrimpboat. I think we must have just delivered the motors and not worked on them because I just remember the shrimping. The main thing with the seals was that Jack's brother in law turned brass rings for the OD of the neoprene seals to fit the ID of the housing so that the better seals would do their job. The only part of sealing up the Konig crankcase that Jack didn't do was figuring out how to separate the top half from the bottom half.
Mark and I went out into Trinity Bay shrimping with Jack on his 30 foot boat. We spent the night before at the Holiday Inn at Baytown where we stayed when we were racing. It was only about five miles to Jack's house. We had to get up at four o'clock in the morning to get down to the docks a hundred and fifty yards east of Jack's house. Jack had already blown ice into the hold, so all we had to do was get on board and do three hours or so of switch backs on the river to get to the mouth of Trinity Bay. Mark and I curled up in bunks while Jack sipped at his coffee in the wheelhouse.
Light was just appearing on the eastern horizon ahead of the sun when Jack woke us up, and even though we were not needed, he slipped the doors over the transom, following the net. He wanted us to see the action. I think Mark shrimped with us a couple of more times, but this is the only one I can remember for sure. After that, it was just me and Jack.
Wayne, you should write a novel. Even it it's the truth. You're a writer.Originally Posted by Master Oil Racing Team
I would love to have the time to try such a thing Joe, But my version of the truth may just be my own. He He. Especially when I get together with friends and we tell each other how great is was. I get a lot of enjoyment looking stuff up, trying to remember and talking to all of you out there about what happened, and when, and just being able to share it with my old friends, and people I never met who like old boat racing stories.
Early that summer, on June 4th to be exact, Sirhan Sirhan shot Robert Kennedy who died the next day. I still don't know why. The Rolling Stones "Jumpin' Jack Flash" was released on June 8th and later that month Arlo Guthrie performed "Alice's Restaurant" at the Newport Folk Festival to exhuburent crowd. Iron Butterfly's "Inna Gadda da Vida" was released and became the first heavy metal song to hit the charts, coming in at 117. Incidentally, the lead singer was drunk when they did the recording. The words were actually "In the Garden of Eden", but he slurred so much he couldn't say it properly. They kept on jamming and in the end, they liked it well enough not to rerecord it when he was sober.
The United States, Great Brittain, USSR, and 58 other nations signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Agreement while the Soviet Union was still doing above ground tests and France was blowing up islands.
Two movies we went to see during June and July were Rosemary's Baby and the Green Beret. I couldn't stand Rosemary's Baby and didn't watch all of it. The Green Beret with John Wayne was a good movie, and the full effect of so called "Boy Genius" Robert Macnamara's playing games with soldier's lives had only just started to turn the public against the war in Viet Nam.
Inflation was only 4.27 percent and gasoline averaged around $.34 per gallon.
ADD again: I noticed I didn't get all of Carl's article posted, so here is the end. Don't know where it will end up. Okay...it's at the bottom which is the best place. Sorry for the confusion. Just a learning experience here.
ADD: The order of everything I just did is totally backwards. I don't know why this happens. Start from the story at the bottom and come up to be in order. Guess I'll just have to post pictures first then add the narrative to see how everything comes out in the future.
roostertail june 1968.jpgroostertail may 1968.jpgroostertail may 1968a.jpg[/ATTACH]Upcoming races were the two of the three biggest NOA for the year. The National Outboard Association World Championships were awarded to Forest Lake, Minnesota about thirty miles north of Minneapolis. Without the World Championships or North/South to bring boats, Carl once again held the Southern Championships. The fantastic racecourse at Alexandria could always be considered a national championship in its own right due the the number and calibre of drivers that came from all across the U.S. and Canada to compete on record breaking water. The mile and a quarter course at Fort Buhlow Lake just about had a lockdown on alky competition records during its reign.
The first two writeups are from the May 1968 Roostertail, and the Ads are from the June 1968 Roostertail. Bill Seebold was gaining notoriety as a good propmaker.
We did an awful lot of driving in 1968. Seems we did more driving than racing. Going to the World Hemisfair in San Antonio, New Orleans and finally back, I thing we missed a race or two in Texas. I cannot remember a race we went to at Beaumont, and they always had two a year. In spite of the friction between Baldy and Louis, Louis always wanted us to come to Beaumont. The way things worked out, we sometimes missed the Neches River Festival, or the other race. That may have contributed to their sparring over the years, but each was a bull in his own right, and they butted heads. I did not garner many points in Lone Star in 1968 because we traveled. The next race though was the Southern Championships at Alexandria, Louisiana and many Texans went there. There were no Lone Star points, but it was good for Texans to get out of our own circuit and challlenge the NOA stars. As I found out after a couple of years, the few Texans that traveled out of state always represented us well.
When we would go to Alexandria, we would always leave earlier to give us a chance to stop by Jack Chance's house and shop in Baytown. It didn't matter what race we went to that we went near Houston, we always stopped at Jack's on the way up, and sometimes coming home. He usually had something he had been working on that we needed to take with us. Jack was teaching me a lot mechanic wise and we had our own shop set up with work benches, tools, parts, motor racks and everything now, but there were still certain things that Jack did himself.
I always liked stopping at Jack's but was also at the same time ready to get loaded and back on the road. All of the CB Racing Team was with us so we were all anxious to get to Alexandria and see who showed up. This race was a little earlier in the year than when Carl Rylee scheduled the NOA World Championships, so I think it was one of the times we turned north on 165 near Kenner while there was still plenty of daylight left. As usual we would get stuck behind logging trucks, but on the downslope Baldy always stomped the gas pedal on the big Chrysler engine so he could whip around the truck and back into the northbound lane before the highway bottomed out and started back up. As long as a vehicle wasn't topping the hill and coming down southbound when Baldy first pulled out, we could make it. Baldy wasn't too concerned about CB Racing Team official chaperone Velma Mynier. I can't remember exactly what she took the girls in on the way to Alex. Seems like she drove a big Caddy, but she may have driven something else for the other half of the pit crew. Baldy knew Velma could work the traffic well enough to not cause us much delay. The biggest problem was pit stops with two vehicles and the gas hog that the Chrysler 440 was. So like big bullfrogs, we jumped ahead of timber trucks, one at a time, one by one only to see them lumberingby while we were refueling and taking a pit stop.
This might have been one of the daylight trips I thought we could do the traffic circle and make the MacArthur exit on the first go around. Nope. I know we didn't get it right in most of the races in the 1960's and it was already a standard joke for us. Baldy would be driving and watching traffic, and Mark and I would shout, "Now...Now". We always turned too quickly. It took us awhile to figure out it wasn't halfway around but more like 3/4ths or more around. We never had any trouble at the traffic circle at the north end of MacArthur because we could see all the way around and knew which road to take off. The one coming off 165 was a big circle that had the view blocked from the center so you could only see a part of the circle as you go around. We told the girls that we never made it on the first go around, and they thought they would get the best of us. They told Velma to turn off after we did, and they planned to wait for us as a joke. Velma was not only willing to go along. but maybe even thought the same thing herself. This time though Baldy got it right and they turned off at the next intersection. We waited for them to come back around, but they didn't. It wasn't easy to find a place to pull over, but we waited for them to make another couple of circuits. They saw us turn, but went around to the next right, not knowing we were on MacArthur and waiting on them to come back around. There was no way we could talk to each other, and none of them had ever been to Alex before, so Velma just drove up a little way to find a place to pull over. After about fifteen minutes, Baldy decided they took the wrong road, and knew Velma was no dummy, so we got back on the traffic circle and took the next right, and a little way down the road, we saw them parked on the shoulder. Baldy figured that instead of going back to the traffic circle, we could just cut across to MacArthur. Hah! We must have zigged and Zagged back another ten miles before we cut the path. When you look at buildings and major thourofares from a distance, you just think you know where you're headed. When you reach the intersection, you just get more turned around.
But we got there in good spirits and got our usual pit spot all the way around in the sandy cove far left of the judges stand. I don't recall if Jack followed us up or not, but he either did, or we saved a spot for him Clayton and Charley Bailey. Charlie had recently married Jack and Gertie's daughter Charlene, and Jack sponsored Charlie at this race.
We dropped off the boats and went back across the Red River into Alexandria and registered in the Holiday Inn where we always stayed in the 60's. Good to be back, and Baldy was making the rounds seeing his ever growing number of boat racing friends. Mark and I went about showing the rest of CB Racing Team pit crew what Alexandria had to offer.
Wayne:
Eileen and I both are glad you evidently have some time again to spend on "Baldy's" thread. We look forward to each installment, as others evidently do also, as it has over 60K views now. Keep on, keepin' on!
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