Ketzer Racing Team

[Bill Van Steenwyk]

Stevie:

I know Wayne is familiar with this story, but it is such a good one I think a lot of folks will get a kick out of it, especially those who knew Ray Hardy.

This race brings back a lot of memories for Eileen and I, one of which is very humorous and has as one of it's chief players someone who youand the other readers may or may not remember. His name was Ray Hardy, from Chicago, Il., and unfortunately he passed away several years ago from the consequences of Alzheimer's. Ray, who was also a good friend of Baldy's, as well as Eileen's and mine, had called me several days prior to this race after deciding to come down, and asked me to reserve a room at a local motel where we would be staying. Motels were in very short supply in Dumas, in fact there may have only been one, so when we (Eileen and I) arrived and checked in we asked about a room for Ray and his wife. The manager told us they only had one room left which was the "Bridal Suite" and asked if that would be alright, and since it was either that one or nothing we said yes. As Ray and his then wife Jeanie, were having some problems at this point, which later on led to Ray leaving and then divorce, Eileen and I thought that perhaps a "Bridal Suite" atmosphere was just what was needed for the sake of the marriage. The really special thing about this room was the large canopied four poster bed and everything in the room was done in pink, including the walls and furnishings. We called him and filled him in and he said he would be coming in late and would come out to the race course which was a way from town as you mentioned, to drop off his trailer and then we could have supper together and get a good nites rest for the coming race.

After meeting him as agreed and having dinner, we saw to his check in and before going up to our rooms, I agreed to give Ray a wake up call in the morning as he wanted to ride out to the race course with me and get in some early testing. That would leave his car for Jeanie and Eileen to come out later after they had slept in for awhile. I did give him a call the next AM about 6 and went down stairs to wait at my car. About 15-20 minutes went by and no Ray, so I went back up and called him again. He again said he would be down in just a few minutes. After another 20 minutes or so, I went back up and called the third time and told him in no uncertain terms if he wanted to ride with me he had 15 minutes to get downstairs or I was leaving.

Just as I was about to pull out without him, I heard him call my name, and the door to his room slam shut above me and he appeared hurrying down the stairs. He was only about half dressed, red as a beet on the bare skin I could see, and had a big "knot" on his upper forehead that was getting larger by the minute. I of course wanted to know what had happened and he related the following story.

After my third call he had realized I was serious so he got up and stepped into the shower to take a cold one and hopefully wake up from what had caused the problems from the nite before. Unfortunately the hot and cold water faucets in the tub/shower combo were reversed from the order he was familiar with (remember he was from Chicago and this was rural Arkansas) and instead of getting the cold faucet he had turned on the hot water, and when I say hot, I mean HOT, almost steam. He immediately started yelling and trying to get it turned off but the faucet was stuck and would not budge, so to keep from getting scalded more than he was he tried to pull back the shower curtain so as to get out. Like most of you are familiar with, the rings on the curtain would not slide quickly or easily, so he just grabbed the whole curtain and pulled it down and lunged out of the tub. He got his feet tangled up in the bottom of the curtain, as it was now laying in the tub, and started to fall forward, headfirst, towards the commode which was adjacent to the tub and had the pink wooden seat in the up position from previous use.

He reached out to break his fall and keep from hitting his head on the porcelain edge of the commode, and the sudden jar to it from all his weight caused the wooden seat to fall, cracking his knuckles in the process, and causing him to yell in pain from the hand injury. His wife Jeanie, heard all the commotion in the bathroom, and as the door was closed and she could not see what had happened, started yelling to him wanting to know what the problem was. As he was laying on the floor, scalded from the steamy water, and with what he thought were broken knuckles. he could hear her running across the floor to check on him as she had heard him hit the floor behind the closed bathroom door, and also heard the screaming from the scalding he had gotten from the hot water.

As he was relating the story, I could see the knot on his head getting visibly larger as he talked, and just as I was about to ask him about it, he got the rest of the story out, and I was almost unable to drive the rest of the way to the course as I was laughing so hard as he related "the rest of the story". As he was laying on the floor about two feet away from the door (which opened inwards) he was visualizing what was about to happen. He tried to get up and get out of the way. Unfortunately, time was up, and when Jeanie threw open the door, the bottom edge of the door cracked him across the forehead giving him the big knot that was continuing to get bigger by the minute.

As I got to know Ray better over the following years, I came to realize that things like this that happen only occasionally, if ever to regular folks, were a regular occurrence in his life, and provided much humor and fun for his friends when the stories were retold. He was a one of a kind, a good friend, and someone who, like your Dad, provided me with a lot of fun and pleasure in my life because of our friendship. The saddest things sometimes happen to the best folks, and Ray's later illness was one of these cases. He was a very talented person, who could take a problem and not only figure out how to solve it, but with a drill press, hack saw, and file, make the tool, part, or thing, to accomplish what you were trying to do in 24 hours or less.

For those who wonder why in the world the race festival was called something like the "Ding Dong Daddy Festival", that was the name of a country song from 10-15 years (I think) or so prior, called "I'm a Ding, Dong, Daddy from Dumas" which of course was Dumas, Arkansas.

[Master Oil Racing Team]

I laugh every time I hear that story Bill Van. I just wish I would have known about it before Ray was gone so I could ask him about it.

Here's a photo you remember hanging on the wall in my Dad's bar down in the bottom level of his house at Barbon. It was taken at Lake Catherine near Hot Springs at the first annual Waldman Memorial Race in 1973. Steve, I figured you would like this picture. See how many guys you can name. Not everyone that was there is in the picture, but most of them are. I had a 20 X 30 framed for my Dad and hung it in the bar. Every racer that came to visit after 1973 always took a real good look at it.

[Ketzer]

Thanks for the great story, Bill Van. Suddenly, “Ding Dong Daddy” takes on new meaning. I recall going up to that motel in Dumas to eat breakfast, but I was happy to be sleeping in the camper down in the pits (and not in a Falcon station wagon). And thanks Wayne for the photo! I didn’t know it existed, but do recognize several people. That is Johnny Dortch in the red coveralls and white hat, right? Well, I spent a couple hours going through boxes up in the attic. I was looking for pictures or clippings that might tweak my memory regarding races and places from ’74 to ’76, but didn’t come up with much, other than more photos of our Marchetti, “Cool Cat” that I’ll write about in due course. However, I did find my Three Stooges Official Membership Card! I’ve been looking for it for fifty years!

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For the boat racing aviators, I ran across the Ketzer & Wendel Bamboo Bomber (Wendel left, Steve right), and Dad’s sketchbook of possible paint schemes (you can see how he arrived at yellow with blue trim for the boats). Also, with this lull, I’m going to tell a couple stories about homebuilt aircraft, since Smitty the Welder emailed me a great story about homebuilts—said he didn’t want to mess up or interrupt the Ketzer Racing Team thread.

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Inspectors new to the FAA, usually at the GS-12 grade, cut their teeth on general aviation (GA) before being assigned to air carrier certificates. The GA work typically involved overseeing pilot schools, mechanic schools, small air taxi operations, small repair stations, inspecting and dealing with A&Ps and IAs, inspecting GA aircraft, approving homebuilt or kit airplanes, and such. With a few years under the belt as a GS-13, an inspector moved on to air carrier work. A sad state of affairs putting GA at a disadvantage, but that’s the way it worked. To put that GS (General Service) business in perspective, I was an inspector for 21 years, and not a bad one. I retired as a GS-14. During the blue dress incident with Monica Lewinsky, while she and Linda Trip were trying to decide how they could parlay it into a promotion, they turned up their noses at a GS-15 position. That being said, I’m glad I didn’t reach the 15 level.

Actually, working with air carriers was easier, because they knew and understood the regulations, whether or not they always agreed and followed them; whereas, from the GA side, you could sometimes expect arguments and anger, such as, “Where does it say I can’t put a NAPA alternator on my Cessna!” Or, “Where does it say I have to have my torque wrench, cable tensiometer, and Fluke calibrated!” Or, “Where does it say I have to show you my certificate!” And, if you offered, “Let me see your Regs, and I’ll show you,” you’d more than likely follow with the rhetorical, “And you don’t have a copy of the Regs? Hmm.”

Thus, homebuilt or experimental aircraft. In addition to being cheaper and fun, there was much less government intrusion, fewer rules and regulations. Basically, the builder/pilot accepted the responsibility, liability, and danger. Still, the Feds monitored the building, inspected the finished product, and if all looked fairly normal, issued a Special Airworthiness Certificate, handed them a pamphlet on flight testing, and said, “Good luck, buddy.” During the inspection process, if the builder wasn’t an A&P, you might run into Standard Practice problems, reversed safety wire and so on, but mostly they did good work, and some designs, like Rutan’s, went above and beyond and over the heads of most FAA Inspectors. Oh, and during the inspection, you made sure that if you rolled in left aileron, their little bird could be expected to bank to the left, and not the right. Cross-rigging has happened after major repairs. The pilot takes off, rolls the wheel to the left, and the plane banks right. So he rolls it harder to the left, the plane banks steeper to the right, et cetera, until flown into the ground.

But anyway, the first kit plane I certificated was built by a guy in his 70s who had flown small Cessnas many years earlier, but wasn’t current. I’ve forgotten the make, but it was a little tricycle gear, single seat, high wing, all aluminum tubing and fabric, with a Rotax pusher engine. He did pretty good work. On the weekend after I issued the airworthiness certificate, I got a call from one of my FAA compadres who was on accident standby: “Hey, Ketzer, you know that kit plane you approved last week?” Oh, crap! Well, the guy had hauled it out to the airport and on the shorter runway had intended to do some high speed taxi and grasshopper moves—lifting it off, letting it settle back down—just to get a feel for it and see if he needed to tweak the flight control trim tabs. So he puts the power to it, and the little plane fairly leaps into the air. Instead of chopping the power, he freaks and tries to fly it. But the engine had beaucoup torque, and instead of kicking in some rudder and a little aileron, he let it fly him, “Smack!” right into a snow bank—fortunately, there were snow banks. Other than a bump on the nose, only his pride was hurt; well, and his airplane.

The first true homebuilt I put a certificate on was, basically, a Super Cub lookalike with a Mazda rotary engine. During the building process, I called to check status one day and was told, “Kinda had a setback…burned up the first engine.” What? Well, he failed to cut a hole in the cowling for airflow to the radiator, so the Mazda engine cooked itself during ground runs. When he got another engine in, I figured I better go out and watch him run it. So I headed out to his house that was located near one of those dirt landing strips that can be found all over Alaska. I walked around the plane and noticed he had the tail wheel rope-tied to a birch tree. I figured, well, an extra measure of safety, not a bad idea. He says, “Are you ready?” I say, you bet, and I’m thinking we’re going to get in there together, or at least he is, but he walks up to the plane, reaches in the window, and fires it up (car engines don’t require all the priming and stuff). He’s all grinning and proud when he looks back at me, then he reaches back inside and shoves in the throttle. The tail wheel jumps off the ground, the engine is roaring, the plane is shaking, the birch tree is trembling, and I’m waving my arms and shouting, “Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!” But he eventually got it all put together, the wrinkles ironed out, and flew it for many hours while hangar bums no doubt looked up and thought, “That is the strangest sounding Super Cub I’ve ever heard.”
With any luck, I’ll be back to boat racing in the next post—this was all Smitty’s fault..

[Master Oil Racing Team]

God bless Smitty. He has done it to me too Steve, and I have enjoyed every minute.

That's what makes threads like yours so special. You're telling a tale, and sometimes, like on my Baldy thread someone like Smitty throws in something that is maybe not directly tied to boat racing, but it is part of the boat racers story. His or her life. It is a part of where they came from. Just like the drawings of the airplanes, schematics, colors, etc. Your Dad was an excellent artist. The only boat racer whose art I have seen before was Harry Pasturczak, and his was engineering perfect. Your Dad's though was like an artist. I was blown away by the illustrations you posted before. It demonstrates the mindset of someone who really paid attention to what he was taught and really wanted to be the best he could be.

The encyclopedia is not just for boat racing escapades. It's all about the people that started racing boats...how they got there...what experiences they had... and what they're doing now. It's all about boat racers, family, friends and lifetime experiences at the races.

And Smitty....keep on coaxing tales out of boat racers!

[Stuart]

I would just like to thank you for putting your life and memories out here for us to see and take us on these trips through time. I grew up with inboards put did know some of the great pro outboard guys here in Northern Cal. Steve thank you for your service. Having just turned 50 I do not recall the times, but have nothing but gratitude for those that served. THANK YOU ALL

[Ketzer]

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Thanks, Stuart. We have troops fighting as we speak. Well, I wouldn’t know how to act in an inboard. You guys were probably required to drive with Flight Attendants. My dad, Uncle Ed and I loaded up in the camper and went to Owensboro in 1973 to watch the unlimiteds run—that was a busy summer. But, wow, those unlimited hydros! I’ll never forget the sound and the roostertails that went all the way to Argentina. We got pit badges and got to watch them prepare the boats and crane them into the water. We stayed in a campground on the other side of the river, a great area to watch the races. When we pulled into the campground, holy cow, outboards with modified Mercs lined the bank! They were holding outboard races as a warm-up for the unlimiteds. Dad said, “Crap, we could have brought our boats.” And I said, “Yeah, and then we could have said, I raced with the unlimiteds.”

[smittythewelder]

I enjoy seeing digressions in any thread I start, but try not to go off-track too far on other's threads if I don't know them well. That said, many racers, and nearly every racer in any kind of modified, non-turnkey class, in any form of motor racing I can think of, is a gear-head! Gear-heads in any motor sport are invariably interested in hearing about any other form of motor sport. Drag-racers like to hear about shifter karts, roadracers compare notes with flat-trackers, airplane restorers can yak for hours with car restorers, and so on.

If you're old enough (and Ron's wonderful site attracts lots of codgers), you'll recall vividly the release of Bruce Brown's knockout survey-of-motorcycling movie, "On Any Sunday," in 1971 (??)(I'll come back with the right date and edit this)(EDIT: Wow, I was right!). Someone not involved in any sort of motorsport might have imagined that the movie would only attract motorcyclists or teen-age wannabees. But every member of Seattle Outboard at the time immediately went to see the movie, and we were absolutely jazzed by it!! I don't even have to ask if this was the case around the country (and I'd bet money that your thread is going to be sidetracked now with old guys telling us about their memories of "On Any Sunday," Steve)(glad you don't mind digressions that gear-heads think relevant).

Bamboo Bomber story: After the war, in late-'45/early-'46, the only flying job my dad could get for a while was charters with one of those slab-sided (but beautiful in their own way) Cessnas with their gas-guzzling "shaky-Jake" Jacobs radials. On one trip, headed home to LA, he encountered strong head-winds, and found that he had underestimated the amount of fuel he'd had to buy. Not wanting to take unnecessary risks with a load of passengers, he put down at what he hoped would be an acceptable place to add some fuel . . . an Army Air Force base. The war had been over for months, but as soon as he taxied up to what looked like a gas-dock, he and his plane full of baffled passengers were met by a squadron of armed soldiers in jeeps, led by an irate major. Dad explained that he didn't have a lot of choice in the matter, but it took the intervention of a VIP passenger to get the grumpy major cooled down, the Cessna gassed up, and passengers and pilot happily departed for home.

Trivia: Everybody now remembers Sky King flying a Cessna 310 (early straight-tail), but he started that TV series in a Bamboo Bomber. This is the trouble with thread digressions; they're too much fun, and tend to spin farther and farther off-topic, LOL.

[Master Oil Racing Team]

You're right Smitty. I like all kinds of racing. That was the fun part of being a photographer for Motorsport covering stock car racing, champ car racing, motorcycle racing and of course boat racing (alky, opc, inboard marathons and drag racing.) And that movie "On Any Sunday" was great. I went to see it during my last semester in college. Joe Flow is in the business of making specialty valves for all types of high performance engines from sports cars, to champ cars, outlaw sprints, trucks, stock cars, etc. His cusstomers have won and placed high in most major events, and dominating Pike's Peak. He was working on a valve to control coolant in an outboard using premium motor oil and a closed system on an outboard. After some bench tests we did a weekend of field trials with Jim and Sean McKean, but we didn't know it at the time but the Yamato rigged with the valve had a very, very slight leak in the seal between the head and block. The motor ran great, but it kept overpressurizing the closed cooling system. This wasn't figured out until after the final modifications were made and a plastic hose blew out and sprayed everything down with hot oil. I was proud to be a part of the team recording the tests. In order to be included all participating members of the team had to watch a movie starring Anthony Hopkins about an Australian or New Zealand motorcycle rider named Bert Munroe. I can't remember the name of the movie, but it was about one guy's hard work to set a speed record in America with an old Indian motorcycle against what all his detractors called impossible odds. It was a great movie, but just like you say, all us Gear-heads in any motor sport are interested in other forms of motorsports.

[Ketzer]

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“Hey, Sky King, you might wanna de-ice that 310 before take-off.” I haven’t heard that “Shaky Jake” expression in quite a while. And I’ll bet you know, Smitty, that among aircraft mechanics, the “PT-6” of the more modern Pratt & Whitney turbine engines found on Beech King Airs, stands for, “Penile Thrust—Six Inches.” Working at Central Flying Service in Little Rock during the late 80s, it was very unusual to see a stick and fabric or tail-dragger aircraft come in, and I imagined there weren’t many left, but a few years later I found them all: They moved to Alaska, but not to retire. Walking around the ramp and float pond was like visiting an air museum. As for motorcycle racing, the only experience I have—and this at 12 or 13—is sliding around on dirt roads out in backwoods Arkansas on a Cushman Eagle; although, my brother, Charlie, raced a Ducati in Moto X before he started boat racing with us. And as for that “codger” comment, we weren’t codgers when Wayne started his “Baldy” thread, so it must be his fault (I read his post this morning about the female pit crew). Back to airplanes for a second, here’s a picture flying over Atigun Pass in the Brooks Range. Some IFR pilots (I Follow Roads…Rivers…Railroad tracks), ended up on the sides of those mountains. They’d try to sneak through the pass, encountered fog, couldn’t turn around, couldn’t out-climb the mountains…Mm-mm-mm. The accident investigation wasn’t easy, and it wasn’t pretty. Definitely back to the boat racing after this.

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[smittythewelder]

Enjoyed flying over terrain like that as passenger in a family friend's badly-overloaded poor little old Aeronca Sedan on the way out of Anchorage on moose and caribou hunting trips around Lake Susitna. Less enjoyable was the ride back from one of those trips in the '54 Ford station wagon assigned to carry the meat home to Anchorage. The Glen Highway had long stretches that had been displaced vertically by the freezing and thawing of the layer above the permafrost, I guess; anyway, the road had what any boater would call good-sized rollers. By chance, this loaded-down Ford wagon had the worn-out rear shocks removed for replacement, but the owner hadn't got around to getting and putting in the new shocks before the trip. The co-driver, 17-year-old Smitty, would very gradually add throttle as the wagon went over the "rollers," but pretty soon the frequency of the bumps matched the frequency of the rear springs, and the poor wagon quickly was bouncing higher and higher, slamming down on the bump-stops on the frame until I quickly applied some brakes and restarted the process. That was a loooong drive home!

Wayne, the movie was, "World's Fastest Indian;" I haven't seen it, but remember very well reading in Hot Rod about those record runs at Bonneville Speed Week in 1967. Burt Munro, who actually got that old scooter over 200mph one-way, was 68 at the time, inspiration to all old guys. (In fact, I read somewhere a pretty good comment on that: "Men don't quit doing things because they get old. Men get old because they quit doing things."

Steve, here's one for you, and then I'll stop with the airplane stories. A kid who was working as a flightline gas-boy on Lake Hood in Anchorage, the worlds largest floatplane base, was visiting in Seattle and happened to be walking around the GA airplanes on Renton Field, while waiting for his host. The host came out of the shack and found the kid staring at a DeHavilland Beaver in the tie-down area.

"Jeez, yer from Alaska, don't tell me you've never seen a Beaver before!!," exclaimed the host.

Said the gas-boy, still staring, "I never seen one on wheels . . . ."