The fact that Junior had upped his game should not have come as a surprise. He was testing himself against high quality competition and, more than anything, he was just spending more time behind the wheel. In a poignant moment, he had returned to Kansas City and was preparing to compete in the Jayhawk Nationals at Topeka.
His father had rented a house in North Kansas City from standout midget racer Howard House, and Junior was in the middle of prepping his car when fellow racer Gene Gennetten and some crew members paid a visit.
After taking a look around, the group suggested that his car looked less than sanitary, a point that would be hard to argue. Sizing his pals up, Junior asked them how many times they had raced thus far over the course of the year. The common answer was somewhere around 25.
Given the length and intensity of the Pennsylvania season, Parkinson looked up at his visitors and reported that he had already put it on the tee more than 60 times.
By 1975 some of Parkinson‘s old running mates realized they were dealing with a different cat now. Junior was in the pits at Knoxville when he was approached by Osage City, Kansas owner/promoter Gary Mussatto.
Mussatto had “Tiger” Bob Williams in his car — no slouch behind the wheel — but it wasn‘t going well. Junior thought he knew why.
“Those big drag tires had come in,” he said, “and if you got off the gas they would drift around. You couldn‘t back off of it like you did before.”
Mussatto asked Parkinson to talk to Williams, and what Bob heard confirmed what he was feeling.
Even armed with new information, Williams was not keen on taking the car out for the semi-feature. Junior agreed to step in and quickly put the car in the show. Junior was adamant that it was Bob‘s car to race in the feature, but Mussatto reported that his driver packed up and left. After Parkinson scored a quality finish in the main event, Mussatto was waiting for him with a simple message — he was clearly a far different racer than the man who left Kansas City a few year ago.
When Russ Smith stepped away from the sport, Parkinson was able to stay east by racing for Ted Brewer and Jim Seidel, but perhaps his biggest mark came in the Midwest during the fair season. In 1975, driving Jack Conyers and Jim Ward‘s Chevrolet, Junior won two IMCA dates at Lincoln, Nebraska and in September in Topeka.
The 1975 IMCA final standings would find Bill Utz on top followed by Jan Opperman, Ralph Parkinson Sr., and Ralph Parkinson Jr. However, the IMCA as we knew it then was winding down.
After Ralph Sr. won the title in 1976, the 1977 slate was comprised of just a handful of dates. Junior had done the math. His father was pushing towards 50 years old, and with the demise of the IMCA at hand he wondered what the next move would be. The response was shocking.
“We‘re going to race with USAC,” Ralph Sr. said. And before his son could stop sputtering, he added, “And you‘re going to be the driver. Get your stuff together and get home.”
Father and son gussied their race car up, built a new 302 motor, and got to work. They didn‘t go into this totally blind. The men had a relationship with people like Steve Stapp and noted wrench Donnie Ray Everett, and for the next three seasons Parkinson gained the respect of racers and officials.
Early in the 1977 campaign, Junior showed he wasn‘t afraid to haul a sprint car around the Indiana State Fairgrounds mile, but a performance at the Terre Haute Action Track in late September got everyone‘s attention. When he went out early and qualified poorly, he began the night behind the eight ball. After surveying the track, he was convinced that the bottom was now cleaned up and he could make his way forward.
He looked at his dad and told him he was going to sipe his tires and put the car in the show.
His dad and Steve Stapp, who had ambled down, agreed this was not a workable plan. Stapp reminded him that even if he made it to the top four and transferred to the feature, he would be left with ruined tires. Parkinson didn‘t care. He wanted to make the main event.
Watching Junior continue with his task, Stapp then proclaimed if somehow he made the feature he would buy him a new tire. When the green dropped Parkinson started picking off cars.
“Stapp is standing there at the opening in turn four,” Junior recalls. “And he is counting cars with this mouth open.”
Parkinson did his job, hustled back into the pit and told his team to jack up the car and start cleaning off his tires. As they were getting to work, Buzzy Dobbins, who supported Stapp and driver Pancho Carter, told everyone to wait because two new shoes were on the way. Junior wasn‘t done, and when the 40-lap feature had concluded he had finished third behind Carter and Tom Bigelow.
Looking down at Parkinson, Steve Stapp simply said, “I‘m impressed.”
The 1977 season also provided an unexpected surprise when Parkinson jumped on an opportunity to race on what we now call the USAC Silver Crown trail. It came about in an unusual way. Racer and constructor Lee Osborne had been manhandling one of the big beasts for Texas owner Tom Adrian, but had run afoul of USAC for running a so-called outlaw race.
Lee had relocated to Jamestown, Indiana and seemingly out of the blue called Junior and told him to come get the car and take it to the Springfield, Ill., mile.
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