I spent a lot of years running up and down the road chasing USAC with Terry and we always had a great time after the races. I remember one year in Texas, when we all ran the SWIMS Tour. Terry, Sleepy Tripp, Nick Gojmeric and I were leaving an arts and entertainment dance studio late one night and had the race cars on the back of our vans. The establishment was a bit unhappy with our company and asked our whole group to leave for some odd reason.
As we left, Sleepy hooked a small chain from the rear bumper of Terry‘s midget to the big flashing sign that said “Nude Dancing Girls” that was sitting on a small trailer outside the parking lot, and we drove off. About a block down the road the sign was bouncing along pretty well when it finally fell off.
We went down the road to another fine arts and entertainment place and pulled up in the parking lot. Apparently, the owner had gotten a call from the first place warning that we might visit his facility and maybe he should greet us when we arrived.
When we got out of our cars, we encountered a man at the door holding a gun, telling us we‘d better get off the property NOW. At the time I was driving for Lee Carey. He had a big enclosed cube van and I was carrying a barrel of methanol fuel, as we were running about 10 races throughout the south on the tour. I thought it wise to leave rather than returning Lee‘s van looking like it had been hit by a small version of the “Little Boy” nuclear bomb.
I ran back to my ride alongside Terry and the rest of the gang, and we blew down the road from the bar with Terry‘s chain shooting sparks as it bounced down the road. I feel it must have been a case of mistaken identity with that bar owner, as we were all just innocent racers trying to learn the art of dancing.
Terry and I went out on the USAC Eastern tour a few times and stayed at the east coast home for wayward racers, Boston Louie Seymour‘s guest house on the property next to his shop. Like Wayne Weiler, Boston and his family were such perfect hosts and put up with our stay for a week or so while we ran around the coast. Boston and his boys, Mike and Bobby, made their race shop available to us and treated us like kings, even taking us to see the Big Green Monster at Fenway Park.
Terry, Irish Saunders, Mike Streicher and my right hand man for the summer, Geoff Pilgrim from Perth, Australia, all had a great time — at least what I remember of it — all at Boston‘s expense.
Geoff and I drove out together from the Midwest in my 1973 Mercury Marquis. The day after the ball game, Terry, Geoff and the group hooked up one of my spark plug wires to the windshield wiper reservoir and filled it with acetylene and oxygen from the set of torches in the shop. They told me Boston needed to have me move my car as it was in the way of a tractor he was moving.
When I turned the key to start it, the gas mixture blew the back of the hood off the hinges and scared me to the point of needing a new pair of pants. The whole group was falling on the ground laughing. We had to wire the hood down for the return trip, but it was quite a moment to remember.
Sadly, both Geoff and Terry are gone, and I sure miss those fun times with them. Terry always loved to race and loved the party afterwards, as did his great group of Skoal‘s John Mueller, who was Terry‘s children‘s godfather, Bronco Billy Molkenbur, and all the others who helped him over the years. RIP you two.
When I think of all the fun times and friends that are gone now, I guess the great soothsayer and racer Jack Calabrese was spot on when he told me about old age. Now that I am almost to that old age starting line, I think about some of the close buddies that are no longer running with me and going WFO all the time on and off the track.
It just doesn‘t seem fair that I don‘t have Stan and Tim ready at a moment‘s notice to jump in their vans and talk me into going to the West Coast for a month to race and relax in the Phoenix sun. Or, following Terry to some USAC midget race somewhere and borrowing all his tools. Terry was the first guy I remember seeing that had his own portable car washer in his trailer and I thought that was something like Roger Penske might have had back then.
It also doesn‘t seem right that Rich Vogler, the guy that I would always walk over to the fence to watch on the track, is no longer here. It never ceased to amaze me how hard he drove every lap. The few times I beat him felt like such an accomplishment. When you beat Vogler you really did something. He may not have been the smartest or smoothest driver at times, but I have yet to see anyone who drove harder than Rich and got everything out of any car he drove. It’s hard to believe he has been gone more than 30 years.
There are so many other racers, car owners, pit crew guys, sponsors, friends, fans and you name it in racing that have moved on to that big replica of the half-mile dirt track at Ascot Park in the sky. After 52 seasons of trying to become a racer myself, I can hardly believe they are really gone. It makes me sad at times when I think back about them and miss those times, but I‘ve still got a few years before Jack can officially induct me into that age group that sucks.
So, for now, as time continues to carry on, I must quote another great Calabrase-ism (which I think he sold to Andy Dufresne to use in some movie if I remember right) and try to live my own racing life by it. Jack told me that I need to “get busy living or get busy dying.”
They should make a wax figure of Jack and have it tell all of his famous quotes in a museum. – KO