An Amazing Story: Part 2

[wboxell]

wayne, still need my 77 video! i was wondering why i wasn't there for this race briefly then i remberbered. my dad was ill at the time. your recall is 100% i still remember tim saying, i'm not doing this again! guess he did it again! great post! great podium picture. bill

[Mike Schmidt]

I am a couple of days late on this one...Skip Birbarie was D-72. Only ran AOH. John R. Yale was D-14. Most of the time he was in O'Dea's J-2 boat. On the very first shot from Dayton, George Andrews's station wagon and boat is in the back ground ( J-1).

Wayne: Great shots, please make time to develop and post more.

Michael D-1

[Mark75H]

The Harrison Museum posts from this thread have been relocated to this thread: http://www.boatracingfacts.com/forum...ead.php?t=7287

[Master Oil Racing Team]

Bill..I have looked through the stuff and so far all I found has been a short clip of the Hydroglobe 77. All the good stuff is still missing.

And Mike...You got me straight. You saved me from looking up Skips's number which I then remembered. I've got the cassetes out. Next is to guess what I need to tell the developer.

We got to La Crosse. Since we had some time on our hands, Debbie, Tim and Ruth Butts and myself took a tour of the town. We ended up on one of the main streets. It appeared every other establishment was a bar. We went from one to another, and every one had whitesh looking cheese in bowls instead of peanuts. It really was some good stuff. We weren't the bar hopping types, but we did that day. One beer we tasted we liked and they had glasses with their logo. We bought a whole case of their beer glasses for our bar.

[Master Oil Racing Team]

We had been to races before where there had been rainouts, bad weather etc. But it usually only lasted one day. If that day was Sunday....we packed up and went home.

At this race, there was a big concern because of recent flooding. There was a lot of flooding which meant more currents and debris on the Mississipi. I had already encountered that type of situtation on the much smaller Neches River at Beaumont. Myself, nor many others could envision that the Mississipi would clear up enough for us to race by the weekend. So we just partied.

Four years earlier I had given up partying before a race. There was no reason not to at this point, and Debbie, Tim and Ruth Butts joined in. The first night at the hotel,(maybe a Holiday Inn) we sat at a small table just off the raised platform where a two man band entertained. The main vocalist also played a keyboard which he could cause other instruments into play...primarily a bass guitar. The only other band member was the drummer. His mouth was a coronet and maybe another wind intrument or two. Between those two guys, they sounded like four or five were in the band.

Joe Rome came in along with Bill and Eileen Van Steenwyk and many other boat racers. We were all having a great time. I danced a few rounds with Pete Hellsten's wife, & she was a great dancer. The guys in the band did a fantanstic version of "Mack the Knife" with the drummer doing an unbelievable brass section with his mouth. As they got into some more lively songs this one blonde lady with a tube top was not at all bashful. She wanted to dance. As the lady and her partner bounced around the dance floor to the song, so did her boobs. The red tube top kept slipping down, but she didn't pull it up until it almost popped off. You know the frequency of a good lively song. Before it was over, she didn't pull up the tube top in time enough before the finish of the song that she finally quit. It may have been the howls, laughter and applause that encouraged her.

We had such a good time we stayed until everyone was gone. We had been talking to the two band members, bought them drinks and invited them to our table during the breaks. We found out why they were better than the average local motel band. They had played with Marshall Tucker Band at one time and were out on their own. We had that table every night for the next few days.

[Master Oil Racing Team]

....There were a few forebodings before we ever got to LaCrosse. A rumbling of discontent from across the Midwest found its way to a lot of the racers. Bill Van would probably know most of the inside story, but we had only gotten bits and pieces of potential problems with the race. I would never intentionally write something for the purpose of putting someone down. That is why I like BRF and only venture from here to write about something I personally know. What I write here is only for the specific purpose of telling the alky history as I knew it from that time. Others can fill in from what they know, but I can only attest to what I myself personally saw and heard.



Before we left for Dayton, a number of racers that we knew intimately told us that the organizer might leave us hanging. For that reason, my Dad flew back home after the race at Dayon and Debbie, myself and our boat racing friends just hung out to have a good time and visit. Our North American OD Championships was kaput. We did quit that venture after things began to fall apart before the Dayton 700cc Pro Nationals.

These are the first and second notices regarding the 1980 Pro Nationals to be held at LaCrosse, Wisconsin.

[Master Oil Racing Team]

Last week a BRF ex OPC racer from Texas PM'd me about someone he met, and it was an amazing coincedence as I was just about to post this part. We did a lot of hanging around in the pits after we rigged up. There was a lot of debris floating down the Mississippi because of recent floods, and the rain was still coming off and on. While I was walking around taking a few pics, a spectator asked "Where did you get that cap?" I said "My brother had it made." He then replied "I have one too. I was head of John Connally's campaign for Wisconsin." Then he told me he had gone to Houston for a strategy meeting when someone gave it to him.

In 1980 my brother Mark was the Jim Wells County co-ordinator for John Connally's presidential bid. I was the George Bush guy. We had met Rick Rosales at the Offshore Technology Conference in Houston four years earlier and had become friends. As a salesman, he often gave little goodies to his customers. Mark asked Rick about having some caps made for John Connally's campaign. Rick had been thinking about starting up his own specialty business to sell giveaway items to business such as pens, magnets with logos, etc. Mark ordered 250 caps from Rick and his business was off. It became so successful Rick quit his regular job and built his specialty business up. Mark kept about 50 or so caps to pass around town and sent the rest to Connally headquarters in Houston. By this particular time at LaCrosse, Ronald Reagan had gotten the nomination and Bush was his VP pick, but I thought at the time it was pretty amazing that of the millions of people and only 250 caps, one of them showed up in the pits at LaCrosse.

Back to the BRF member. He had gone to a theater dinner party with some friends and was introduced to the cousin of one. The cousin was Rick Rosales. Somehow the subject of boat racing came up and Rick asked if the member knew me and my Dad...and of course he did from our involvement in the 70's and early 80's. I told him the timing couldn't have been more perfect as I was getting ready to post the story of the chance meeting at LaCrosse and the caps that Rick had made for my brother.

[Master Oil Racing Team]

We rigged up our 700 and 1100 hydros, but we didn't go out on the water. Some people tested and there may have been some qualifying heats run. I can't remember. Rain was on and off for a little while, and at one point we were expecting some high winds, so we set the boats on the ground. There was talk of moving to another race course not to far away that was on a separate body of water.

In the meantime, Franny Petrillo rigged up one of the radar absorbing flourescent tubes and made some runs up and down the road next to the pits. It was a dark blue Ford or Chevy pickup with a dark blue camper shell. I don't know if he had a radar gun from Dick O'Deas, John Yale, or someone else, but the gun didn't pick up his speed on any of the runs. That was the clincher to some of the racers, so they went out to buy some tubes to wire up.

With nothing else to do, we headed for "our table" at the bar that night. It was right next to the stage and during intermission the two musicians would join us at our table and we bought them beer. As I mentioned earlier, the drummer could "play" brass instruments with his mouth. I think Peter Frampton had already had his famous song out, and Tim Butts thought that was how the drummer made his sound. One night Tim was curious because he couldn't exactly make out any wiring or anything coming from him. Tim asked "How do you do that electronic thing with your mouth?" The drummer said, "You mean this?" and started doing a trumpet part of Mack the Knife. Tim's eyes popped wide open, his mouth dropped and he bolted upright in his chair. We all had a good laugh.

Here a pic of Ray Hardy and Joe Rome riggging up, and Tim Chance and Glenn Coates either testing or running in an elimination heat.

[David_L6]

What kind of boats are those last two? Especially that last one?

[Master Oil Racing Team]

I don't know David. I thought Tim Chance might have checked in by now to tell you about his boat. It had those ?"air traps" (forgot what they were called) on the deck from part way back on the pickleforks to the deck. The first I remember using something like this were Ron Anderson and Lee Sutter on the A & H hydros. Commercial airliners were using something like this to train the air to go straight in the direction they wanted in certain parts of the wing.

Jeff Lytle would be to go to guy to ask about Glenn's boat, unless Glenn wants to tell us. He is a member here, but I'm not sure how often he check in...or even posts.