I tried to attach the video with no success. I guess I need some advice.
I tried to attach the video with no success. I guess I need some advice.
Here's another clue: Halfway down this Kokomo Indiana newspaper article is a the 1964 Lake Spivey race information.
https://www.newspapers.com/clip/2869...an-feb-9-1964/
There were four reasons I got into boat racing and watching that race on TV when I was a sophomore in high school was the biggest reason. Whenever the black & white Bardahl ad came on TV, I would stop what I was doing to watch Ron Musson speeding down the lake with a sky high roostertail trailing Miss Bardahl. That was one of the four. Another was the ad in Popular Mechanics and some other magazines with a picture of Gerry Walin when he set the outboard speed record at 122. My Dad and his partner bought a marine dealership in Corpus Christi and they became Evinrude dealers, so I was glad that Evinrude was the motor on that Starflite Jones hydro. Right up there with the Lake Spivey race being on TV was a 10 foot John boat owned by a neighbor at the lake we were on. After our Mom died he and his wife did a lot with us to help my Dad out while going through all that trauma. Mr. Valentine told me to take his little boat for a spin. I had never experienced any sensation of speed like that close to the water before. He had a small Merc on it, but the boat was so light it just skimmed very fast along the water. And it would slide in the turns. I went round and round and round and round with it, getting better in the turns with each lap. I found an ad in Popular Mechanics for an 8 foot runabout called Minimost. My brother Mark and I started working on it after school and on weekends in 1964. We got to the deck and found out the plans were wrong, and we didn't know how to go any further so we quit. Then we heard about a race on our lake which was going to be almost in front of our pier, so we finally figured out a way to finish the boat and tried to get it built in time. We didn't, but we each raced one heat in B runabout with a 12 foot Nomad and a stock 20 hp Merc. But it was the boat race televised from Lake Spivey, the two ads, and a small fishing boat that got me started in boat racing in 1965.
ADD: Never in my wildest dreams did I ever think as I was watching these races on TV, that I would race with and become friends of everyone mentioned in this CBS Sports spectacular except for Tommy Christopher and the Canadians. Tommy quit right before I started. If Hebert is related to Armand, then I did race with one of his relatives. It is quite remarkable to think that I was able to do something that I really yearned to do at that young age.
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