An Amazing Story

[Guy]

Whats just as amazing is that Marcel can also fly his collection of aircraft (with one eye) just as good as Chuck Yeager!

He's taken me up in his Beachcraft (which I understand isn't the easiest aircraft to fly OR land) a number of times.
The first time I was a little nervous & apprehensive, due to his depth perception problem (which obviously comes from having only one functioning eye). But after that first time, I was quite comfortable flying with him all the other times.

The guy really IS quite talented in just about everything he endeavors to do...

Guy Conklin

I never knew that's what happened to Marcel's eye. Man, I don't see how he could have driven after a shot in the eye like that.

[RichardKCMo]

Whats just as amazing is that Marcel can also fly his collection of aircraft (with one eye) just as good as Chuck Yeager!

He's taken me up in his Beachcraft (which I understand isn't the easiest aircraft to fly OR land) a number of times.
The first time I was a little nervous & apprehensive, due to his depth perception problem (which obviously comes from having only one functioning eye). But after that first time, I was quite comfortable flying with him all the other times.

The guy really IS quite talented in just about everything he endeavors to do...

Guy Conklin

Hey Guy , don't you know sometimes you have to close one eye to see right?

the reason i remember him is for the way his boats were made, propshaft extended beyond the rear of the boat.

OH! i forgot this was nearly 40 yrs past, say what's this about they said. oh well.
RichardKCMo

[Master Oil Racing Team]

I was sick as a three-manged dog in a leaky turpentine factory...catnip scented! Didn't even know who "we" entertained Christmas Day until a couple of days ago. It was very dark in the dungeon.

So I decided I wanted to finish the OD World Championships before year end, but I been messin with this stupid scanner for several hours. It seems it forgot how to balance white light. It had started a couple of weeks or so ago and I had to color balance some stuff, but the B&W is a different matter. I have to figure out how to get into other areas to correct it, or if I can't then......

So here are a few at the podium. Debbie didn't take a pic of Tim receiving the Gold for some reason. She also took color, so maybe she missed it. I will try to correct the scanner problems and have a list of the names for those postings.

[Roy Hodges]

Whats just as amazing is that Marcel can also fly his collection of aircraft (with one eye) just as good as Chuck Yeager!

He's taken me up in his Beachcraft (which I understand isn't the easiest aircraft to fly OR land) a number of times.
The first time I was a little nervous & apprehensive, due to his depth perception problem (which obviously comes from having only one functioning eye). But after that first time, I was quite comfortable flying with him all the other times.

The guy really IS quite talented in just about everything he endeavors to do...

Guy Conklin

....................................I for one, don't knock a person who has but one eye. My dad had only one . He blew out his right vision ,entirely at age of four, when he set off a CASE of dynamite caps , almost died , blew half the house away , including kitchen , where an older brother stupidly was storing the caps, and a case of dynamite , which somehow didn't go off . Or I would not be here. He was an ACE backhoe operator, and heavy truck driver . with just one eye.

[Master Oil Racing Team]

I have always had great respect for those with one eye. It's remarkable how they can compensate for depth perception. My daughter has one eye that doesn't really see much. She wore a patch for a long time. I was always worried about her driving, but she does pretty well.

We used to have a welder with a glass eye. When someone was around that didn't know him, he would find something in a tight spot or low to the ground that needed welding and say "Well, let's take a look at it". Then he would pop his eye out and run it along the area to be welded.

[oldalkydriver]

Out here inSouthern California, there was a 'one eyed driver', and he drove side by side 1100cc runabouts. Dominated for over 10 years! Probably closer to 15 years! George May whom drove John Torprahanian's 'Yamarudes'. If yu were ahead of him in a corner, it must have been a scary site to see a black patch and one eye going by you.

[Master Oil Racing Team]

Richard---seems like you like some good music from those days as well.

Hey Dave--here is the photo I promised. To the far right in red is Don Wood facing us.

In the other photo L-R is Tim Crimmons, Jimmy Nichols, Kurt Mischke, Dan Kirts, Myself, Tim Butts, Jerry Kirts, Don Wood and behind the crowd are the others on the right-Erwin Zimmerman, Weilfried Weiland, Rick Dertinger, Dennis McClellan, Rex Hall.

Payout was 2,000 for first, 1,000 for second, 500 for third, 150 fourth and 50 for fifth place. In addition, the racers coming from Europe got at least 1,000 for appearance money. It may have been 1200 or 1500. I can't remember. In any case it was a very successful event, and all teams had professional appearing uniforms and clean, nice rigs and pit crews. That was the type of event Hydroplanes International was about, and even the Unlimited guys were impressed with the show.

[Master Oil Racing Team]

We got back from Dayton and got everything fixed and ready to go for the Nationals. We were looking forward to that. The Stocks had run their Nationals there I think the previous year, and we had heard lots of good things about Hinton. Also, it would be the furthest north and east that we had ever raced.

Our friend that we stay with when we go to Berlin came to Texas with her friend. Jenny Schwartz-Nitka was a Russian from the Ukraine who migrated to Berlin in 1945 looking for her brother--the only one left in her family. She stayed and became a very successful business woman. Her friend Harry Splettstosser was the president of the Berlin Chapter of ADAC. It is kind of like APBA, SCCA and AMA rolled into one organization. I met both of them the previous year when Harry had the American Team (David Westbrook and myself) staying in Jenny's 4 story house in Berlin.

They came to Texas shortly before Hinton and we did the South Texas tour, including a day in Nuevo Laredo and a fishing trip on Debbie's Dad's boat. Then they rode with us to Hinton.

Disco was in full swing and the radio was full of Andy Gibb, Barry Manilow and for the 437th time in one day---Peter Frampton.........AAAAAAAAAARRG! At least every now and then we would catch a Fleetwood Mac song, and Jimmy Buffet had his shrimp boiling and Margaritas in the blender. On the country side, Waylon Jennings was half way through a six week run of "Lukenback, Texas" at number one. That would be the last time a C&W hit stayed No. 1 that long for 20 years. And some European band had a hit that Jenny and Harry liked because of a drink concocted from the Bahamas where they were before coming to Texas---It was Yellowbird.

We were only a few hours west of Hinton in the afternoon when the DJ said Elvis had died. Quite a shock.

We stopped for gas in West Virginia and I saw Harry walk straight into the women's restroom. He was alread entering, so it was too late for me to stop him. The men's was on the far side with a sign that said HIS'N. The women's closest to the pumps said HER'N. In Germany women's restroom are DAMMEN and men's HERREN. I don't know why Harry thought of all the restrooms in the U.S. we would find one in the hills of West Virginia that was properly labeled, but he was clearly confused when he came out. His eyes were bugged out and was slack jawed with wonderment splashed across his face. He looked around in embarassment and I was just looking sideways at him. I never said anything and let him think nobody saw, but he headed straight back to the car and got in. There was no way he was going to see what was behind that HIS'N door. He would just wait.

[Master Oil Racing Team]

We stayed at Pipestem a State Park Resort. It was very beautiful. The lobby was at the top of a mountain, and if I remember correctly a restaurant connected to it with other rooms. It seems as all that was separate from the main lodging facility, but maybe I don't remember because we didn't stay there. We parked in a large lot next to the lobby, but our rooms were at the bottom of that mountain. Maybe not all the way to the bottom, but our rooms were setting about 20 feet above a beautiful stream. The only way, besides climbing, to and from our rooms were by a tram. According to the ad on the bottom right of the program it was 3600'. I didn't remember it being quite that long, but it was a nice and interesting ride to the top. There were only 15 to 20 rooms at the bottom and I think we had 4 or 5 with our group. Debbie and I were still on our honeymoon There was a lit up view of a real "still" that was busted when the lodge was being built. The moonshiners split and left their still and the lodge made a museum attraction out of it. It was halfway down the tram ride inset into an overhang in the mountain.

[Bill Van Steenwyk]

HI Wayne:

Have really been enjoying your memories about the Dayton world championships as that race and that time frame bring back a lot of memories for both Eileen and I. She mentioned the other day that everybody talks about what a great time we all had, the only problem is we can't remember a lot of it, and not because of age. I was thinking just the other nite about the new years eve parties at Bar Bon and stringing the firecrackers all around your brothers house. Almost made it all the way around the last time if I remember right. Anyway, about Ray's "gadget": I will have to take credit for the original idea or at least the concept as one of the many conversations I had with Harry ZAK in that time frame had to do with the shortcomings of his Konig pipes, i.e. they were fixed and did not slide, making a decision neccessary as to whether or not to make them longer or shorter depending on course length. This was done with cast spacers about 1 1/2 to 2 inches long that were placed between the manifold and the exaust ports, but as I stated, once you decided the length you wanted to run, you were stuck with it. He did fool around with sliding stingers some, but they were never as good as sliding the whole pipe. Shortly thereafter Dieter changed the exaust port spacing on the motors and basically obsoleted Harry's pipes of that design, requiring a new design that he just didn't want to go to the trouble of making new casting patterns again for. By this time he was very busy with cranks, heads, motor building so based on his dissapointment with the ease of obsoleting his other pipes that had been done, he just decided to not mess with them anymore. He always felt that the two cylinders that fired together should go into the same chamber though, and that is why he built them differently to start with. This design was inherently very difficult to make slide so he decided not to put any more time into it.

I had been reading some articles in some motorcycle magazines pertaining to rotary valve two strokes used in road racing bikes and had an idea to do something with the rotary valve that would accomplish the same thing as sliding the pipes, and that would allow some performance increase and still allow people using Harry's pipes to benefit. I discussed it with him, I was still living in KC at the time, so it must have been late 60's or prior to 71, and he agreed it should work but he just didn't have time to work on it, so he suggested I get hold of Ray and discuss it with him and see if he could do anything with the idea. As you have stated previously, Ray had a natural talent of being able to not only figure out how to make something work, but give him a couple of days and he would build a prototype. Long story short, he built it, sent it to me, I tried it on my C Konig and it worked great, with only one shortcoming. Because of bearing material problems there would sometimes be a jamming or binding and the "gadget" would cease to work, and if it was not in optimum adjustment when this happened, it was like you could't slide pipes anymore, and since you couldn't slide Harry's pipes anyway, you were in deep do-do. He worked on that problem for several years and never really solved it, I believe because some of the more modern materials that are now availiable just didn't exist then. What was really funny was one day after he and he first wife split up and he moved down and went to work with your Dad at Alice Speciality, he called me and said he hoped I wasn't going to be mad but he had told your Dad about the "gadget" and made him one. I of course told him I didn't care because of all the nice things Baldy had done for me. What I don't think he ever knew was I had told your Dad myself about it several months before, and he was trying to figure out how to ask Ray to make him one or several without spilling the beans, because Ray had made me promise I would't tell anybody else, and your Dad knew that.

As we all get older we sometimes wish we had done things differently at various times in our life, and I fit in that category with many others, BUT I would not trade the times we all had around the table in your dad's kitchen and all the other times I spent with he and Ray both. They were some of the best times of my life and I wish I could go back and do them over again. Even Rio Grande City....... and I thought I would never say that.