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

  1. #721
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    I don't know everybody that came to the races from out of state, but there are many I do know were here. There was never an official roster so I made this one up from memory of myself and others I have talked to, race results and some I don't remember, but should have been here unless of some emergency. This list I think is better than 90 percent accurate, although I am certain I'm leaving out some C service drivers. Trouble is, I don't know who. And Frank Zorkan had come to Baldy's at least three times, but I can't remember if he was here at this race. I will add to the list if I find out who I missed. There is a guy whose name was mentioned in the Alice Daily Echo by the name of Wright Mayes from California. I am not familiar with that name. Given the misspelling of several other drivers I know, I'm thinking that may be the case here. Maybe Ron Hill or someone else might help with this name. I'm thinking it could be Dave Mayer. He came to Texas on several occasions.

    ADD: I made a mistake on Lyndol Reid. He is from Texarkana, Arkansas.

    ADD: Baldy had a long wooden serving table built down below the hill where his house would be built, and under a grove of tall mesquite trees. The table was about three feet wide and forty feet long to hold everything to be served. There were many tables set under the trees, but not enough for everyone. But there were a lot of places to sit. The Barbeque would be served Friday evening when it was figured that everyone that was coming would be there and were given notice that the feast was Friday night if they wanted to attend. Baldy and local boat racers helped prepare the food.

    While Clayton was having trouble with his B Konig, so was I. At least one of our motors was first run at Forest Lake, but I don't know if it was mine or Clayton's. I stuck a piston in mine. Most likely the top front. Our shop was in Alice, so I would have to go back there to work on it if the trouble were serious, and I was sure it was. I pulled the powerhead and split the crankcase. Yep, a stuck piston. It was in the afternoon and I wanted to get it fixed quick so I could participate in the festivities. After all, we were the hosts to all these friends of ours. All of the Lone Star Boat Racing Association members were also proud to be the host state to some of these top drivers who did not race down here often. I loaded up the powerhead and everything I thought I might need. Had plenty of tools and parts at the shop in Alice, so I hustled everything up and took the half hour drive back to Alice. I would be late for the feed, but I should be getting back by around eight O'clock if everything went well.

    The powerhead was apart, but I had to clean up the crank and bearings from aluminum fines as well as the ports and and the other pistons then hone the cylinders. It took awhile to get everything cleaned up and spaced out correctly, but I finally started back together with the engine. I was the only one in the shop. Everyone else was partying back a Baldy's and Baldy was on the run seeing to everything, and making sure his guests were having a great time.

    I had gotten the crankcase back together with all surfaces permatexed and had the motor laying flat in the bench to install the rotary valve housing. When Baldy built the shop at the house he would build at Barbon, Jack Chance made us a couple of "stems" from short pieced of crankshaft with a base bolted onto the workbench. We worked with the motors swiveling upright on the driveshaft "stems". At this time however, I had the motor laying on it's side with the intake side looking up. I had started three of the four 10mm (wrench size) nuts started and was about to do the same with the final one when it slipped from my fingers directly into the open hole of the top intake. The rotary valve belt of course was not on, and instead of turning the cog so that the rotary valve blocked off most of either intake, the top one was wide open and the nut just plunked right in. I wasn't worried though. I just carefully turned the motor upside down and shook it and moved it around for the nut to fall out the big opening onto the workbench. My main concern was tilting the motor too much one way or the other and letting it slip into a port passageway. I shook and turned it some more, but the nut didn't come out. After about fifteen minutes of that, setting it back down and peering inside with a flashlight and fishing with a magnet, I became worried. I tried again, even bending some wire and moving it all around in case it somehow got lodged somewhere inside the motor. Again no success.

    After my first initial failure, I looked all around the floor next to where I was standing. I was back at it again on the floor knowing that sometimes things you drop can end up a long way from where you think they should be. I started a methodical search around the immediate area, and began moving things stored under the bench completely away. I ended up clearing almost one whole side of the shop near where I was working. No nut. Nothing else to do but tear the motor back down and get that nut. Sometimes getting the B rings on a Konig started is a problem, but I had no choice but to open the motor back up. All this time, not a soul showed up. It was quiet and I was the only one not partying.

    I got the motor broke down then started looking for the 10mm nut. It was nowhere to be found. I checked all the passageways and found nothing. I made sure I didn't miss anything, and when I was satisfied that there was no way that nut was in the motor, I started putting it back together. I never heard it hit the floor, and never saw where it might have ended up. To this day I have no idea how that nut completely disappeared. Anyway, I got the B Konig put back together and it was ready to race on Saturday. It was midnight by then, so I just stayed home and missed some really interesting stuff.

    Sometimes when we worked on motors in the pits we would throw bad spark plugs into the lake, and we also had done the same with pistons. When the lake was down very low during the drought preceeding the current one, I found this piston. It is an early VB Konig piston from the first generation VB Konigs. This could very well be the piston that stuck that afternoon before the NOA finals. It was resting on a hard bottom about fifty feet from where we always pitted and was covered with algae and mud.

    ADD: Jim Wilkins from Garland, Texas and Bob McFarland from Granite City, Illinois were also at the race.
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  2. #722
    Tim Weber
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    Wayne,

    I always enjoy your posts on this thread.

    I sent you a PM a few days ago.

    Tim

  3. #723
    Team Member Master Oil Racing Team's Avatar
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    Thanks Tim. I didn't see the PM. Will go there now.

    I can't find it Tim. Sometimes people send PM's to my brother Mark who is just "Master oil". Try it again.



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    A week or so before the races there were strong winds out of the north and northeast. They dislodged many tons of water hyacinths from where they had been growing since last summer after being dislodged from upstream by the floodwaters from Hurricane Celia. I forewarned of this upcoming problem in two previous posts covering the last part of 1967. These so called "water lilies had exploded in growth and were rapidly massing in small coves and rivulets at the water's edge. Pernitas Creek on the southeastern boundary of Barbon Estates was choked back almost to the open water.

    Races began on Saturday with a mix of Texas State Championships open to all drivers and the World Championship classes left to run filled by any who were already qualified and rounded out by others to fill the classes.

    The water hyacinths were already floating around the race course on Saturday. Some were floating against the shore, and many were just milling around. The guys in the pits were throwing them ashore. Before it was all over, Ted May was one of the most voracious tossers of water hyacinths in the race. He was like a Tasmanian devil grasping the stems and heaving the water logged roots and all behind him, no matter who was there. Seems like Ted May and Doc Collins were pitted just a couple of trailers just to the left of us close to the judges stand. There was a big pile of water hyacinths all around there.

    Johnny Dortch pitted next to us, Clayton Elmer and Jack Chance. The Seebold's with their big trailer pitted to the left of the judges stand in the fishing cove with a more gradual drop off. Kay Harrison and his Mom and Dad Millie and Mable pitted in the same area with the Seebolds. I don't remember a lot about where others were pitted, but the pits were full. Armand Hebert was racing at least our C Hydro. We may have loaned him another boat and motor or two but all I can remember is C Hydro.

    Baldy rounded up a lot of rope and probably a number of lengths of ski rope all tied together to stretch from one bank of Pernitas Creek to the other in an effort to keep them from drifting onto the race course. There was just too great a mass moving against the ropes and they broke. They didn't move fast, just steady, and before you realized it a group would break off like pieces of an iceberg and move into your path.

    The races on Saturday were run intermittently due to the squall like weather conditions. Rain would come followed by calm, then a round of downpouring rain and wind would stop racing. After the brief rainstorm stopped, everyone would come out from inside their trailers, or under the lids, cars, or tents. Sometimes pit crews and racers waded out and gathered up more water hyacinths to toss ashore and get ready for the next heat.

    I believe it was on Saturday that the B hydro nationals were run because it was overcast and even though the wind had dropped some, the water was still a little rough, but we got a heat in.

    Clayton Elmer had been having some trouble with his B Konig. Jack Chance had been into the motor a couple of times before the race. It was not running good and he checked everything. The rotary valve timing was o.k., ignition timing was on, fuel system seemed fine. The motor just didn't want to go. Jack pulled it down to check the seals. We did not use the labyrinth ring that came with a factory Konig. Jack's brother in law machined brass rings for upper and lower crankshaft seals that fit the Konig crank. They were good, the rings were good, crankshaft and piston wrist pin spacers were absolutely critical in those day and all that checked out. Jacked changed coils and condensers. Resealed the heads with yellow Permatex. The motor was free. No binding. Nothing wrong that Jack could find. Jack gave up and put the motor in his trailer.

    The rain had stopped along with the wind, so the referee called to the five minute gun. Water hyacinths were clear of the course for the moment. Clayton was not going to run, but Baldy wanted a full field of B Hydros for the spectators, and even if his motor wasn't up to snuff to win, it would be good to at least make a start, so CB Racing Team rigged it back up some time earlier and Clayton went out after the gun was fired.

    I don't know who made the first move on the clock, but all the B hydros made a swarm at it and nobody was strung out. We were all there together. I might have beena gun jumper. I never thought about it until I started to research this part. Without the results and knowing the caliber of drivers in this heat, I am just guessing that a few of us were over in that first heat. I liked the outside but was not able to take it. The outside lane at Baldy's racecourse was only ten or fifteen feet from the nose of a hydro or runabout on stands in the water on the way to the first turn. I liked to be in the clear and not in the middle of a bunch of boats, but I ended up in the middle at the start. I thought I made a good start and we were all flying in a pack for the first turn. I laid out the course and tested on it. No tricks or anything, but I knew it well. It was surveyed and all was good, and I knew my way around it. I got a good line from the middle of the pack and was shooting down the back straight in the lead. I didn't have much of one. There were boats just behind to the left (Jerry Waldman I think) and a little further back on the right (Bob Hering I think). They were pushing very hard and I could not slack off. I had enough lead on the inside boat to cut him off in the swiftly approaching turn as long as I didn't back off too soon. I had to wait to the last minute to set up for the turn, and then commit.

    I backed off just briefly. We had the "can" exhausts that were fixed. We did not slide them like the Europeans, so we didn't have to worry about sliding pipes then. I backed off to set the sponsons and go into the turn. I only got part way into the turn when I dropped the outside sponson into a hole. That was the neatest corner flip I ever did. The Marchetti spit me out with a slingshot effect and instead of dumping me, I was sent skidding on the flat backside of my Gentex life jacket about thirty feet. The fuel tank was another thirty or more feet beyond me.

    In the milliseconds that slow motion accidents are slowed down in the brain I figured I was in a very bad place. I was number one crossing a perpendicular path of the bulk of the field all still in a pack. Even with the skill level of drivers in the heat, to this day I think God looked down upon me. It was a very spectacular crash and set of spray along the water. The whole pack was through the turn by the time I stopped skidding. I found myself floating face up looking out toward the main lake at the fuel tank about thirty yards distant. I paddled myself around toward the race course and saw where the pack was headed. I was still in the middle of the turn where the race was, so I quickly paddled back to the Marchetti. It was floating with the bow up and I was able to reach the bow handle and pull down so it floated parallel to the water upside down.

    That was in the days not long before a race was stopped when someone flipped. I gave the overhead hand clasp "O.K." sign, so the race was not black flagged. I was still interested in the race so I climbed up on the Marchetti and stood up to see who was in the lead. I can still clearly recall that the pack was still mostly together and going into the first turn and into the corner when I caught a glimpse of a hydro going at half the speed of the rest of the field and half a lap behind. I looked at him and where I was on the race course. I had landed further outside the course, but the Marchetti that I had swam back to and climbed upon was about forty feet from the bouy line. I figured I was alright unless there was a vicious duel in the corner so I looked back at the leaders coming out of the first turn. The back tracker was getting closer so I took another look then turned my attention back to the leaders, now breaking away from the pack. The noise of the hydro that was soon going to be lapped got my attention and as I saw his path around the race course, I started to frantically wave my arms at him. Surely he could see me. He kept coming in a wide turn that would be very close to where I was. I quit watching the racing and kept my attention on this guy. The boat was not familiar, and I had no idea who was driving.

    Surely the boats coming on strong down the back straightaway would be able so see my boat in the outside driving lanes. The pickup boat in the turn had diagonal blue and white flag indicating a boat down in the turn, but I had to take to the water because this backmarker was headed directly for my boat with me standing on top of it waving wildly. I jumped into the water and swam as fast as I could away from where I thought he might go. I didn't see it happen because I was swimming, but the driver drove over my B Marchetti, and sliced it down to the stringers all the way across at a point about halfway from the transom to the throttle. I quit watching the race then and didn't realize that my CB Racing Team partner Clayton Elmer had won it with a motor that wouldn't run and was only out there to make up a full field for the start.



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    As it turned out, when Clayton rigged his boat back up to make the start, it came alive as he got up on a plane. The motor was perfect. He started back in the pack and made his way to the front blowing by Bob Hering and Jerry Waldman. The problem all along was a bad cell in an otherwise fairly new battery. We always kept them up on a trickle charger, but this battery went bad on us just at the wrong time.

    Bobby Wilson was running a flathead in A hydro and was up against not just the usual Texas crowd, but Kay Harrison, Bob Hering, and Jerry Waldman. He had never run nitro before and decided to give it a try. He borrowed some from Louis Williams. His little A Merc Quincy flathead was really running fine and he built up a good lead. On the last lap he could feel the motor losing power and just backed off some hoping he could make the motor last. He had enough lead that the motor lasted and he was able to win the race. It was the Texas State Championships, the Nationals already having been decided at Forest Lake, but Bobby was very proud to have won in the company he was competing against. I don't know how many points total he had, but he was the Texas and Region 15 champ.



  6. #726
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    I have had to add to some previous posts due to not remembering in time to keep things in chronological order. I want future readers to read straight through, so I have to apologize to those who have to go back to read the additions. If I didn't give notice, it would not show up as something new so this is the only way I know how to do it. I had thought that some of the key things I wanted in this tale happened on Saturday, but after talking to a half dozen people who were there, I was wrong by one day. There's more to add to what happened on Friday rather than Saturday, and I should have thought about the weather in the first place and I might have gotten it right. Anyway, I have added a couple of things to post #725 for those of you who want to go back and read it. It will be a long thread before I'm done with one or two more adds.



  7. #727
    Tim Weber
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    Wayne,

    I need your contact info for Ralph Desilva. He wants to talk to you about some pics.

    Tim

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    Hey Wayne, You found some gold there at the bottom of your lake, only the pistons are from a C as they are stamped 53.93. Guess you done the same to the C as well! Merry Christmas buddy, Steve

  9. #729
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    You're right Steve. Got me again. That piston was so old, it didn't look like the ones I remember in my later years. You think that might be one from our 4 carb C?.

    Tim, I sent you a PM yesterday. Maybe it's not working. Joe Rome has Ralph's number. I'll give them both a call.

    ADD: That's not all I found in the bottom of the lake Steve. Another item coming up.



  10. #730
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    One of the funniest moments of our racing career occurred at the barbeque below the hill and I missed it. There were a lot of people there, but not all of them witnessed the actual incident.

    Someone with Jerry Simison's crew had brought a long box covered with wire mesh and a little house with a hole and trap door on one end. I have seen one of these since then so I know about what it looked like. From a hole in the bottom of the wooden box protruded a furry tail of some kind of animal. The story was it was some kind of ferocious little animal that lived in the woods of northern Minnesota. Even large animals were afraid of it the same way they were afraid of a Wolverine, another northern animal with a chip on its shoulder. Someone in Jerry's crew would troll through the various crowds of people standing around talking and bring him back to the wooden box where others of Jerry's crew and some in the know were standing around looking on in curiosity at the box. They were told about how mean and scrapping this little animal was. They wanted the unsuspecting person to see it, but unfortunately it was asleep inside the box. The crew talked about how bad it was. Then one of the guys suggested that if they opened the lid very slowly, the target of their joke could take a peek. He got down close to the lid so see into the dark little box while the lid was slowly and quietly opened on one side. When the lid was lifted enough, the tip of a thin whiplike antenna cleared the box and flipped up with the animal tail tied to the tip. It would fly up in the face of the victim and as you can imagine there were all types of reactions.

    I don't know if they did this once or twice before Jack Chance was picked to be next. One of the Texas officials had overheard the perps asking where Jack was and somebody went to find Jack. The official thought another trick would be in order so he hurried off to find Jack first. I think Texans were the primary targets and the Lone Star guy wanted to turn the tables. I don't know who he was, or forgot if I ever was told. Anyway, he explained the caper to Jack, and told him to come to his car where he kept his starter pistol used in case the cannon was not working. Jack pocketed the pistol filled with blanks and went back about his business in the pits. The guy looking for Jack found him and told Jack that they had something they wanted him to see. The guy told Jack about this mean little animal as they walked back around the hill where the barbeque was being prepared. Being forwarned, Jack went along with all the talk and explanations that went before the actual springing of the trap. When the time was right, Jack leaned over low anxiously try to peer inside as the lid was slowly being lifted. When the tail flew out, Jack jumped back a couple of steps and with his right hand already in his right pocket, he pulled the small revolver and began pumping shots at the tail.

    Everybody scattered running over each other except for Jack and the referee, and maybe one or two other Texans told in advance about what was going to happen. You can imagine the shock and confusion among those who were expecting a totally different outcome. Jack and the Lone Star official waited a few moments for the full effect before they both busted out laughing. When everyone around the trap had figured out the turn of tricks they all joined in. Many more people hearing the gunfire then lots of laughs came over to see what was going on. After that the show was over because both tricks had been played out. It was the funniest prank I can remember from one of the alky races. I regret not being there to see it, but I have lived it in my mind many times since then listening to Jack and Baldy laugh about it around Baldy's bar.

    ADD:

    Since I wasn't at the barbeque I missed some of the goings on. One was told to me recently by Bobby Wilson. Bobby was sitting down in the pits leaning against a mesquite tree, which still stands. His main pit man walked up carry a loaded heavy duty paper plate and a six pack of beer. Now Glenn was a diabetic of no small means, and had to take medication to control it. Bobby was curious about the six pack of beer which was a "No No" for a diabetic of Glenn's caliber and so asked "What are you doing with a six pack of beer?" To which Glenn replied "They gave it to me." Bobby told me "They weren't just handing out a beer to everyone....they were giving them six packs." I didn't ask Bobby how come he didn't get one.



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