My Teenage self. Lm

It started with riding from the store one evening. The shortcut I choose led past  the vacant lot, except the old locked up garage.  A side door was open  lights one and•••••• race cars! Sports racing cars!! 
I learned later one was a Cooper Buick, owned by Orlie Thornsjo The other? The Black Jack spl. Owned by Jack Baker. 
    Needless to say a 14 year old kid wasn't welcome but I persisted. Eventually worming my way  into the cleanup kid.  
Weeks later I came across guys stacking hay bales. They, actually invited my help! As a reward I was given  a ticket to attend the coming SCCA race.   
 That followed by a steam train ride ( milkrun) across Wisconsin  to another race track and more involvement with racing. 
Now!  Before I bore you with details what was your teenage life like and how did you wind up here? 
       
   

We moved from Woodstock New York to Orange California in 1967.  My dad took me to the Can-Am race at riverside.  We sat on a hill watching the race. The sounds and sights started my love of high performance cars.  

My cousin had just gone to the 67 New York Auto Show,  we were living out on Long Island, he and my brother announced they wanted to be race car drivers.They were older and so naturally at 5 years old I decided I wanted to be one too.

Several years later I saw the motorcycle movie On Any Sunday, after that I wanted to race motorcycles (which I did and technically still do).

Flash forward to 1989 and our local track was in a state of turmoil, the city owned the property and was holding meetings on what to do with it. Becuase of that I met some SCCA people and so here I am.

I come from a long line of automotive luddites. My influence was Rick who lived across the street and would become the surrogate older brother/ father figure. He had a Vega GT. Silver with rally stripes. It sat in our yard when it was recovered after being stolen. He replaced it with a 70 1/2 Camaro. He had an awesome short wheelbase Ford Van with full on 70s paint on the outside and major custom work inside. A neighbor to the right of him had an MGA and that guy's sister had a 77 white Corvette. I watched Formula 1 on Wide World of Sports. I listened to the engines at Islip Speedway from my home, but was never to go there. I built model cars instead. A kid in high school who obviously had been to the speedway and worked with his dad on engines mocked my auto knowledge since I had never built an engine myself. My parents barred me from going to BOCES to learn auto mechanics. I had to learn it all on my own. I went to college to be a general illustrator because I didn't have the portfolio to get into Art Center Pasedena or CCS Detroit. So I worked an automobile into almost every piece of work I did. I was published once. August 1992 Vette magazine.

Today I play with VWs (thanks Ralph), teach high school DE, and am slowly collecting the parts needed to resurrect the 75 Stingray in my garage.

My parents lived off of a twisty undulating road that had two hillcrest that if you carried enough speed over, you'd get airbourne. Of course that more speed you you carry out of the previous corner meant the more you'd carry onto the straight with the hillcrest. Soon the corners became the focus, the jumps just another feature. As soon as I was able to walk and drive again after football playing was over I reached out to some guys had been engineering students who had been active on the formula sae team to find out what to get into as young adults with a greater sense of responsibility. 

I cannot explain the source of my interest in cars. It predates literacy and was not inherited in the slightest. 
 

ive not done enough track time to say I've *arrived* anywhere in motorsports (though those 21 second 1/4 mile times in the '86 5th Avenue do add up...), but KCIR was probably a result of their high school drags challenge, IIRC autocross was actually advertised in print, road course was the result of word of mouth, time speed distance road rally was from my brother-in-law. 
 

GRM participation was the result of a kid named Chris in college who heard about the $2007 challenge and offered up his '86 RX-7 to put an SBC in. And 11 years later when no Z4 forums seemed autosport-ish enough (or local enough) for the questions I had, I came back here knowing this place had the right mindset 

Back then, I was reading Hot Rod and Car Craft. And chasin' girls. 
For some reason, we thought drinking, raising cane, and hoppin' up cars would help with that, so we did the last three with a gusto!

Some friends from those days went on to do many types of racing, so I got to be on the in with a lot of that.

Originally from So Cal so car culture. Watching the Indy 500 on Wide World of Sports got me interested in cars / racing. Lived off of Sunset Blvd and could hear cars driving fast on the curves, not far from "Deadman's Curve". Eventually cruised Van Nuys Blvd ('64 Impala SS) and played some on Mulholland (TR-4). A friend got me and a buddy into AutoX and I was asked to join Guldstrand Racing Assn club. Learned a lot at GRA - went SCCA racing as a result.  

Grandpop had Alzheimer's.  I, 15 or so, would frequently ride down to Merritt Island with Dad to visit, help grandma, and generally spend time.  On one of the 4+ hour trips Dad and I were passing through somewhere in middle-Florida (Dad would probably remember the road and how far away we were from X) and we saw an absolutely gorgeous sea-foam green '66 Mustang.  6-cyl, auto, AC, completely restored, had been the guy's daughter's car for high school and she needed something more reliable for college.  At $6k it was way outside what I had saved up in my bank account.  But it started me looking.

Eventually my mom heard from my uncle, down in Crystal River, that there was a '67 "in decent shape" for $2k.  Now, my uncle's definition of "decent shape" and mine are wildly different, but he got the guy talked down to $1500.  Mom, Dad and I rode down and looked it over.  We handed over the money and Dad and I drove it back to Tallahassee.

Lots of tinkering, lots of wrenching, and learning, then Dad reached the limit of his mechanical knowledge and he introduced me to one of his good friends Chuck Sparks.  Chuck was the reason I'm still here wrenching on my own stuff.   He was a character and a half.

Chuck lied about his age in order to join the Marines to fight in WWII and turned 15 on a ship in the Pacific.  He fought in Korea.  He met Chesty (!!!) while in an Army Captain's uniform.  He moved to Europe and started wrenching on Italian and English exotics (coming to love Jags more than Frenchy does.)  He worked as a crew chief for the Triumph factory team at some point in the 70s (I think.)  And he ran a small shop in Tallahassee filled with Jags, Ferraris, Maseratis, and Rolls Royces, first day I met him I drove up to the shop and wandered up to see him working on a 308GTB with an E-type in the next bay.

He taught me so much about wrenching and how to be a man, and I miss him every god damned day.

My parents brought me to my first SCCA race when I was only 4 months old. My father had me working on customer cars by 8 years, I worked cheap. His customer base was entirely import, and frequently older exotics. Photo is in front of the family shop with another influence, an employee and former Alfa racer named George Urso. He had a major influence towards my Italian car interests, not withstanding the customer's Bentley. Photo taken by Dad around 1963.

My Dad always took us to the September Friday night "Big Reveals" for all the new models at the local car dealerships in the 60s, so my interest in cars was from an early age. A buddy and I went to our first pro races at a Trans-Am weekend at Le Circuit Mont Tremblant in 1969 or 70. We drove the 45 miles from home in his father's MGA. My introduction to GRM occurred when another member of the Western Ontario Sports Car Association showed up at a monthly meeting (in 1986) with a little specialist magazine called "Auto-X",published by a young couple named Suddard. The revelation that there was a magazine "just for us" was a life changing experience.

I grew up working on cars, but never really played with them. My dad was too cheap to pay someone to do anything he could do himself. I'm the same way. 

I was probably 25 when my grandmother gave me her 1970 Chevelle. 250 I6, 3 on the tree. It was a little short on power, but I couldn't afford a 350 swap. So I turbocharged it using the turbo and carburetor off an 81 Trans Am. That was a fun project. 

Not long after that, I acquired a 1983 RX7 GSL for $250. It was a fun little car. One Saturday, I came across a handful of older guys driving around road cones in a parking lot. It looked like fun so I stopped. Those were some grumpy dudes and no one would take the time to talk to me. Hard pass. I drove the RX7 for a couple of years and then parked it in a field and moved on to other things.

5 years later I heard about an event happening fairly close to me called Autocross. My eldest and I went to see what it was all about. Turns out it was the same thing I had seen years before, but this time we had barely gotten out of the car when a young guy came up and talked our ears off about how much fun this was. We spent the day hanging out and talking to people.  They convinced me to give it a try. When my son and I got back to town we dragged the FB out of the field and cleaned the ants out of it, and went to the next event. 

It's been downhill ever since. It wasn't long before we were the family that showed up early to help set up and then stayed late to pack up. I ended up as chief of tech, and my wife ended up as the regional executive. 15 years later we are starting to slow down, but we still hang out with the crowd and make it to events. My wife is training to be the novice chief for TNiA this Thursday at Charlotte Motor Speedway. I think I'm going to stuff a V8 in the Abomination. Should be fun. 

My mother's twin brother had an MG Y Touring car. He used to take us for rides around the little village where my grandparents lived. On one of the these we ended up in Kingston Ontario ( my home). There was a rally going on and there was a fascinating stream of cars driving around . I was hooked. I assume this was the 1000  Islands Rally , the year may have been 1956 or 1957 but it could have been earlier. I bought a Mini Cooper as soon as I had a driver's license and never stopped. Passed the bug to my son and grandson as well.

For me it was Sebring 1963.  

Previous to Sebring my racing experience was the 1962 Daytona 500.  More than the race, what I remember most about that event was that I rode from Miami to Daytona and back in a red MGA with wire wheels.  Other than that, I had experienced some drag racing at Masters Field in Opa Locka.  Big Daddy did ¼ mile burnouts in one of the early Swamp Rats while we sat on the hoods of cars parked on the same runway with no guardrails between us and Big Daddy.  It was real.

Sebring ’63 was a lot more life changing experience.  My older brother was home from the Navy and he had heard about Sebring and planned for the big event with all sorts of camping equipment and provisions.  He was leaving on Thursday to get in line, hoping for a good camp space by the fence entering the hairpin.  In those days no vehicles were allowed on the inside of the “Hairpin” in the Green Park.   Brother wanted to take me with him.  My parents were adamant that I not miss any school.   I was heartbroken.  Then my mother had an idea.  After school on Friday she would put me on a Graydog bus and send me to Sebring. 

There was no bus station in Sebring.  Heck, there wasn’t much to Sebring at all.  But, there was a new Publix grocery store out on U.S. 27.  So the driver was told to let me off in front of the Publix.   What I remember about the bus trip was sitting on a left side window seat riding up U.S. 98 out of Palm Beach in the dark and being passed by strings of little sports cars.  Later, word was that one of them was Stirling Moss returning from the Breakers.

I stepped into a deserted parking lot and wandered around the front of the store.  Eventually my brother arrived and off we went into the night down a small dark road through the orange groves.  Even after midnight the gate was manned.  On the other side were shadows of hundreds of vehicles created by as many campfires.  In those days you could build your own scaffolding viewing stands, and some were pretty elaborate, and scary high.  At 13,  I had never seen anything like it.  In the dark many of us were like moths drawn to the light.  We would migrate to the lights coming out of big hanger doors and look into those old WWII hangers and see race teams still working.

The next morning I shelled out my life’s savings to buy a program and a felt banner.  (still hangs in the shop)  I poured over the program, and figured out the schedule, entries, and track layout.  But, basically I just hung at the fence and listened to the PA speaker, hanging onto every word.  Seemed like forever before the race would start, with all sorts of parades of big wigs and fancy cars circling the track.  Then for 12 hours I don’t think I got more than 3 feet from the chainlink fence.  I walked anywhere I could see the track.  Alas, my general admission ticket wouldn’t let me anywhere on the pit straight, and it took expensive (to me) tickets to go over the bridge to the pits.

Then it got dark.  It was surreal watching dim oil covered tail lights disappear out of the hairpin down towards the Webster turns.  In those days the track was 5.3 miles long with crazy long straights down the runways.  At night you could watch the lights of the prototypes just flashing by the little basically stock  British sports cars on the long North-South runway.

When the race ended, like all great spectators we clamored over the fences to rush the ceremonies on pit lane.   It was nothing like I had ever experienced.  Lots of foreigners with hard to pronounce names, and… beautiful cars covered in oil, dirt, and tire rubber.

Speaking of nothing ever experienced before. To try to distract me from intently watching the race were rental box trucks full of kegs with naked girls dancing on the roof.   And, law enforcement officiers marching arm-in-arm through the crowd with axes to split the kegs.  Then, the ensuing mud party in the beer mud.  Toto, we weren’t in Kansas anymore.  In later years coverage of the race in the Sunday editions of the Tampa Tribune focused mainly on the infield orgy. 

Oh, and the infield restrooms… enough said.  My brother, having been a Boy Scout (be prepared) had bought a separate tent with its own portable potty. 

We stayed in camp Saturday night after the race.  The infield looking like a Mad Max set.  Climbing out of the tent Sunday morning was a heck of a scene of havoc.  Abandoned furniture, tents, blankets, clothes, and thousands of beer cans.   Occasionally a passed out body in the debri. 

 As we were driving out in my brother’s VW beetle he noticed all the gates to the track were open, so onto the track we went.  We didn’t make a full lap courtesy of the Highlands County Sherriffs Office.  We did get far enough to learn the inherent limitations of a VW swing axle suspension.   It got real dicey in the esses. Near the MG bridge we had a meeting of minds with the Sheriff’s Deputy.  After a discussion that included my brother’s patriotic service in the U.S. Navy, we were escorted out the gate and released on our own cognizance.

Needless to say it became a family tradition to return to Sebring for many years afterward.  Ignoring formality, even the honeymoon with my practice wife was at the 1970 edition.  My daughter as a toddler attended.  My mother, then in her late 50s was an expert and getting through all sorts of security.

Years later I crewed for many teams that were racing in the 12 Hour.   I have many great stories from those days.  From the pit box one doesn’t have a clue of what is going on out in the infield.  Except one time during night practice.  One of our driver’s wives was an avid photographer, and stunningly beautiful.  She wanted to take night pictures and catch the headlights, glowing brake rotors, infield scenery, etc. Being an “older gentleman", I was assigned bodyguard duty to escort her around the track.  I was amused to discover that even decades after my first visit the infield was living up to legend.  

Finally, it wasn’t until The Winter Nationals in 2007  that I actually got to drive a race car on the famed track.  It was seriously on my bucket list.  The first few laps were kind of emotional I must admit.  Not my favorite track, but the history embodied in that track is huge.

In March of 1963 I became a complete road race fan.   Did serious autocross in the 70s.  Started road racing Formula Continentals in 1998 with enough success to stay addicted.

In reply to Purple Frog (Forum Supporter) :

What a fantastic story. Continentals are fantastic cars; they are just fast enough to be considered fast but still fun. 

I got started when we got our first set of slot cars. I had a Ford GT 40 and a silver Porsche 911. Later on, when I got my license a family friend gave me some performance driving instruction. I've always had an interest in cars, but to arrive where I am today took decades.

My first career was racing, two wheels, one horsepower. I spent 12 years in the business, ended up with just a few race drives. Thirty starts, one win, seven seconds, three thirds. 

This is a training photo from the training side at what used to be Pompano Park. 

 

Portrait of me, painted by my dad.

I left the track, moved back home to Florida, and started college in January 1987. 

Ten years later, I had my veterinary degree, and subsequently resumed a string of bad decisions in fishing boat purchases. 

In 2018, I had begun spending time on the GRM forum, and decided I wanted a Miata for autocross. In keeping with the history of my boat purchases, I bought the wrong one. Lava orange, but not a real Mazdaspeed.

It wasn't competitive, but I managed to trophy for the first time on a set of used Re 71s and an $80 set of eBay shocks.

I kept it for a year, then bought the right one. 

My grandfather owned a Sinclair gas station in a small town.  He worked on cars and had a wood and metal shop in his basement.  My dad had 0 mechanical aptitude or interest.  I loved the tools and machines in the basement and my grandfather would show me how they worked.  He also had a gun range in his basement.  He taught me to shoot there.  He had been a competitive shooter at Camp Perry as well as other Midwest events.  I have 3 of his guns and his medals.  He encouraged my interest in guns and machines.  He would bring me small engines and l loved to take them apart and put them back together.

When I was a freshman in HS, I met some of the older guys who had street race cars.  I can still remember seeing the guy lift off the fiberglass hood of his '69 Superbee.  It had a 440 6-pack.  I was hooked.  I didn't have enough money for a car so I bought a basket case '72 Suzuki 250 Enduro.  I put that together and sold it.  Bought a basket case Kawasaki 500 triple, put that together and sold it.  Eventually had enough money to buy a '68 LeMans.  It had bucket seats, console and a 350.  As things broke, I replaced with upgraded equipment.  Eventually it had a 400ci motor from a '67 GTO, a turbo 400 replaced the powerglide and a 12 bolt rear went in.  I was a regular at the junkyards scoring a set of Rallye Gauges, a his & hers shifter, headers and a GTO hood.  

I went to the local drag strip and had a blast on the street.  Friday night was spent cruising the strip and street racing at the new industrial park.  I've been messing with cars, boats and motorcycles ever since.  Wish I had been able to afford to keep my old cars, 3 GTOs, Formula 400 Firebird, Trans Am, '68 Charger, Dart Sport.  I always had to sell something to get the next one.  Now I'm older and a little better off and I'm working on a a few: '71 914, a '73 240, '78 280z, '99 Z3 and a 2012 911.

In reply to Purple Frog (Forum Supporter) :

Beautifully written, I almost felt like I was there with you.  

frenchyd said:

In reply to Purple Frog (Forum Supporter) :

Beautifully written, I almost felt like I was there with you.  

I agree, I would have loved to have been there. On second thought, I was seven years old that spring. Being there at that age might have been a bit much. I remember the adults talking about the circus in the infield. I've still never been to Sebring, and I have a cousin that lives nearby.

After covid settles some more, I'm going do an autocross there.