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

**Master Oil Racing Team** · 12-04-2022

Yeah.... I know.

Back up a little bit. We spent the first night in Sanderson Texas at Sanderson Motel. It was kind of an adobe style motel with colored cement floors and the electrical wiring was fastened to the wall up near the ceiling. I don't know how old the motel was at that time but thirty seven years later Debbie, the kids and I stayed at the same motel on our way to spend a week with some former neighbors that moved to San Francisco. The motel was clean both times and we were only there for a few hours to sleep, then back on the road. The motel was just on the north side of IH10 and the Union Pacific line was just on the south side of IH 10. Several trains passed through thie whistle stop town during the night.

Back on the road we saw lots of desert. Sanderson was about halfway between San Marcos and El Paso, and we spent the first part of the day getting out of Texas. Not mcu traffic or homes, or building for miles and miles. We stopped at a as station way out by itself on the side of a road. I asked a kid who was working there what they did for fun. He said they would hang old tires on the arms of tall seguaro cactuses. This is a photo of Gerel and Baldy waiting in from of the station wagon in the heat of the day waiting for the motor to cool down enough to add water.

ADD: That is on the side of IH 10 in 1969 with the Union Pacific railroad on the other side. Pretty desolate back then.

**DeanFHobart** · 12-04-2022

Wayne,

Lots of old memories…. Really cool. We need to talk soon.

Sincerely, Dean Hobart…..

**Master Oil Racing Team** · 12-04-2022

Okay. Think I have your number somewhere

**Master Oil Racing Team** · 12-04-2022

There wasn't much to see after we went through El Paso and besides stopping for gasoline every now and then and to top off our radiator we didn't see any towns until we hit Phoenix. It was fairly big then but not like now. It did have a large and active airport though.

We got through Pheonix and on our way west. I already mentioned about the incident with Baldy and the Coors beer. But as we got closer to our destination I noticec a lot of low hills to our left that were mostly black and desolate. Not much if any vegetation. It didn't look like volcanic activity. It looked like slag or tailings from a mine, but how could that be because they were higher than everything else around. Never figured that out.

We drove on into Needles that night and got a room at a motel. We would go back east into Topock Arizona in the morning to find a place in the pits.

**Master Oil Racing Team** · 12-05-2022

The next morning we drove back east into Arizonato the race course near the town of Topock. As we pulled off the hgihway onto a road overlooking the race course we found the pits pretty well filled up. We were elevated and could seethat there were not really any openings with boats stretching for a couple hundred yards like a nationals. Well this was advertised as the Winternationals and it was to be our very first APBA event to compete in.. We didn't know what to do and were stting in that Chrysler upon a hill overlooking the scene and try to come up with a plan.

Baldy watched very carefull as he noticed a farm tractor towing a boat trailer into the water to a mall island located abouttwo hundred feet offshore from the eastern side of the pits. The water not not very deep and appeared to have a good bottom. Once the tractor spotted the boat trailer, it unhooked and came back across to the shore to haul another boat racing trailer across. Baldy then decided on a course of action.

He drove down the hill to the pit area where the tractor was crossing then just took that station wagon and trailer across to the little island and found us a good pit area. Some more came across and there ended up being six to eight teams pitting on the island. We were pitted toward the western side with Sid and Bob Viera on our left and Jay Root on our right. We had never met any of them, but we all got along great and became friends. about four teams to our right was one of three boat racers we had known from NOA races. They were Milly and Kay Harrison. The other was Bob Hering who we ran into later. He was pitted somewhere on the mainland. The only others that I knew who they were but didn't really know them were Ron Hill, Ted May (who came to race at our house in Texas a few months earlier), Doc Collins andRich Fuschlin, . We also knew Ken and Gloria Steelman who came to Texas, and though not racers, but a big part of the boat racing community.

**Ketzer** · 12-07-2022

Enjoying the story, Wayne. I had to Google "Earth" to see Topock...well, as Topock is today or recently. It would be cool if Google or Bing or someone could come up with a map search where you could ask for, say, "Hot Springs, AR in 1930," and you could check it out and walk the streets of those days.

**Ron Hill** · 12-07-2022

Back in the day (s) that Wayne was talking about Topock, it had been rename Golden Shores. The "Real Topock" was an old Bar, probably nice to call it a "Dive Bar". They did have great Chili Sizes and cold Coors.

The bar was on the Colorado River, back water and had a gas dock.

A man named Dolly Harcourt owned it. He was a hell of a nice guy.

Some guys from Phoenix saw what was happening in Havasu (People were buying land by the plane full, as McCullough flew potential customers in from Chicago.

These investors bought desert land for $100 an acre and called the area Golden Shores, even though their land was not on the water. The investors, John Mueller was one met with Dolly and they made a deal to change the name of the Bar to Golden Shores Marina.

Jimmy Dawe was always a pretty good drinker, he and Dolly were good friends. Jimmy suggested they put on a boat race. Dolly loved the idea.

Jimmy got a hold of me and I contacted the Golden Shores People. I came up with the name Winternationals from Pomona Car Drags. APBA wasn't very hot on the idea.

My brother was on the APBA Council and he argued that Clyde Winter and Fred Nationals had offered his little brother $10,000 to put on a boat race. The Council agreed to have a race, no extra points, no National titles.

The first Winternationals was 1969, I think.

The year Wayne came, I had raised Golden Shores ante, to $40,000 dollars.

There was a cool little race course inside the backwater of Topock, we paid $100, $75, $50, $40, $30 per heat. We had 435 entries. I won High Points and won my 3rd lot in 1971. When the Golden Shore people found out Clark Maloof only raced the gas classes, thy gave him a lot for the Stock Outboard High Point.

The Havasu McCullough had bought land in Colorado, Arkansas and Arizona (Fountain Hills). I was paid to go to Fountain Hills by Havasu Land Company to see if we could race in their man man lake.

At the same time Golden Shores bought a large piece of land with lakes on it in Michigan.

I envisioned me working with these two land companies to promote some great boat races. I was offered a job with Golden Shores to run their Michigan Development.

I had been on Wide World of Spot at Havasu, local TV reported on our Winternationals. We bought some ads in the LA Times and they gave us a full page ad for Golden Shores.

I was about to take the job when John Meuller called and said a new law put them out of business. The new law require developers for lots smaller than 5 acres to guarantee water for 20 years.

Havasu City, Golden Shore, Willow Valley, California Ciy, Lake Los Angeles....and a few more land developments went out of business over night.

**Ketzer** · 12-10-2022

Hey, Wayne, as you're the photographer, looking at the picture Ron Hill sent, is he standing really close to the camera, or is he eight foot tall?

**Ron Hill** · 12-10-2022

Until 1964, I race bare foot as I liked standing on the transom and the bottom of my runabout on the Straight A Ways. At the 1963, Boston Nationals, I hit a wave at the finish line and almost did a hand spring out of the boat. All the officials were amazed I had no shoes.

The next year shoes were required, now closed toed shoes are required.

Being 6'5" tall weighing 235 pounds and having a 32 inch waist, I got the nick name "Elephant Boy" because I had baggie trunks. The name never bothered me as I was kind of an ELEPHANT when I was in a boat.

Ted My called me "MOOSE". No trick photography here!

When I raced for OMC they always worried about my weight, til the races were over and they got the statistics. In many an Endurance race my laps times were the most consistent and my speed for my power was always above the plan from OMC. I always got the slow and steady stuff. But frequently, I wasn't slow.

As I always said, "235 doesn't matter if it is all on the gas pedal".

First Outboard to ever lead the Parker 9 Hour Enduro, 1969!