Big Boy Racing Team

[Smokin' Joe]

Paul Allison was less than 30 years old when he made the boats that dominated OPC in 1959. Here's a small poster that I made fro him when he turned 81. There was a big celebration in Louisville, Tenn. Louis Collins, Jay Cox, Chuck Rutherford and others from the old crowd were there, but I was landlocked in Europe and couldn't go. Here's the background on the 'Big Boy Racing Team'.

A Hydrostream/Evinrude 75 held the EP record at about 68.5 mph in 1977, my first year in OPC since 1960. The Allison V-bottoms we ran in '77 had all been designed by Paul (and most of the other boats had been copied from him). Darris wanted to break lose and do something new, and Paul wanted to support him in that. So after I won both EP National Championships in 1977 Darris built an experimental boat called the XR-14. We aimed to up the EP record in 1978 and otherwise blaze a new path. So, in spring, 1978, I drove Louis' Ford Bronco with his tunnel in tow, and my hot 1975 75 Evinrude in the back, and bucked that rough riding Bronc all the way up to Waukegan, where I had lunch with Edgar Rose and got a tour of the part of the OMC factory where blocks were cast. Louis had been at a coin show, so I picked him up at the Chicago airport and we drove on up to Kaukauna to meet Darris, Paul, and Jay, who'd driven up (all three in the front seat) in Darris' pickup with the new XR-14 in tow. The boat sported a 15" aluminum offset bolted onto the transom. Pedro Gibson (Darris' employee) had already made test runs at over 70 mph with his 75 on Ft. Loudon Lake.

In Kaukauna, the weather was bad so the trials were postponed, first a day and then two days. To make a long story short, we spent 2-3 nights in Marc's Budgetel (in a suire with with adjoining rooms)waiting hopelessly for the weather to break, eating Big Boy hamburgers at the neighboring Marc's Big Boy (we had Shoney's in the south). The weather didn't break and the time trials were called off. We weren't to have a chance at the record until 1980, but every time I was in Louisville (which was often in those days) at lunchtime I'd say 'Let's go eat a Big Boy', Darris or Paul would repeat the phease, and we'd drive down to the Shoney's by the McGee-Tyson Airport and order. The joke still stands among us.

Before we gave up and left Kaukauna for home Paul turned to me, grinned, and said 'When I die I hope I don't go north of the Ohio River'. It was a frustrating stay but we spent 3 days together dry-racing, setting unreachable records, recalling the old days, and generally having a fine time together while nearly dying to bolt on the championship 75 and run the XR-14 through the traps.