Before Bud Turcotte and I started classes at Southwest Texas State University we always traveled to and from in my red and white Dodge Polara. His Camaro was too small, and I liked to drive anyway. For this race we both drove down in separate cars because we were both going to need transportation.

When I got to Baldy's in the early afternoon on Friday there were cars at his house and lots of people. I don't recall whether Baldy was at the house or at the race course, but I went over there and found a pit full of people, and many were testing. The weather was good. I knew we would have a good race because I could see drivers coming from all over. Somebody had gone to the airport to pick up Armand Hebert that day or the day before, I don't remember. It was a big party atmosphere and Baldy was all over the place making sure everyone had everything they needed and were taken care of. He was in his element. Baldy loved boat racing and all the people he had been meeting along the way. Now he had to be the host, and he did not want anything lacking. I don't really remember talking that much to my Dad at that time because he was all over the place and it was up to me and Jack Chance to see that everything was ready for racing.

At this same time, Clayton Elmer was in the process of moving his family to Corpus Christi. We were all very busy. There was no sleeping. Or not much. We went to bed late and got up early. Boats were already in the pits from Minnesota, Wisconsin, Ohio, Missouri, Arkansas, Illinois, Tennessee, California, Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, and maybe a couple of states I forgot. The local Texans were still coming in that afternoon.

Scott Smith was already there and had plenty of Konig parts, but for some people a shop was also needed and so I went to Alice to open it up for not only our repairs, but others that needed to use some of the power tools, lapping block, or just a clean bench to lay everything out to work on. We also had a lot of Konig stock down to wrist pin spacers and an assortment of dump tubes for carbuerators. Baldy was successful in getting tops racers from across the U.S. and including a Canadian and Australian to come down to finish off the 1968 NOA World Championships. There was nothing Baldy would stop at to make sure it was a success and everyone left with a good feeling about the race and hospitality.