“There was also a raceway for karts in MacArthur Park, and it was competitive, but for me it was sporadic. So, I never got to race as much as I wanted to. Because my dad and both older brothers were racing, I just had to wait my turn.”
When Johnson describes his persistent effort to be allowed to race, he freely admits that he “wore his parents out.” His dream finally came true. “I didn‘t turn 16 until August and the season began in April, so we fudged a bit. I ran a few enduro races at Oklahoma City and that happened because they hid me in the pits. I wasn‘t supposed to be in there, and when the time came they would sneak me into the car. I bugged my dad to death. All I wanted to do was race in front of that big covered grandstand.”
You can understand why. He had been there on so many nearly magical Friday nights. As family tradition dictated, he would sit with his mother Geraldine and other members of the clan near the first turn. Then, when the races were over, Wayne recalls with a laugh that he “made a beeline to my favorite driver‘s car.”
In this case, holding members of his family constant, his favorite driver was a legend in Oklahoma racing circles names Sietse “Dutch” ter Steege.
Dutch had immigrated to America as an adult, and was reputed to have once been a member of the national soccer team in the Netherlands. One story that always made the rounds involved a trip southwest of Oklahoma City to Lawton Speedway. It seems that time was tight, but a member of the highway patrol was less than amused when he pulled the ter Steeges over. It seems that while his wife was handling the driving chores to the track, Dutch was working on his race car while standing on an open trailer.
Johnson suggests that this was not the first time that the man known as “The Flying Dutchman” had a dispute with law enforcement. “I remember he got into it one time on the front straightaway,” Wayne recalls with a laugh. “They called the cops and he whipped about six of them. It literally took that many of them before they handcuffed him and took him away.”
With this as a backdrop, one could imagine what was going through Johnson‘s mind when his first real on-track altercation was with his hero. “I ran into him,” he says. “So he ran into me. Then I ran back into him. After the races were over — and remember he is a family friend — I pulled into the pit area and here he comes down there. I‘m scared to death. I‘m 15 years old. He looked me in the eye and said, ‘Hey boy, that is what you are supposed to do, don‘t take no shit from anybody.‘”
In 1987 Johnson was competing in a non-wing, six-cylinder, 100-inch modified on the quarter-mile track at State Fair Speedway. It was a tremendous thrill. Wayne was victorious in just his fourth start; a win made all the sweeter because it was a feat accomplished in front of family and friends.
Sports can humble the strongest of egos, and Johnson was soon to get another lesson in how fickle racing can be. After winning in the fourth round of the new season, the next date on the card was going to be a different story. It began when the race track threw him a curve. “It was bone slick,” he recalls. “And I spun out about 63 times. Nothing like winning a feature one week and looking like a jackass the next. I had never raced on a slick track. I just didn‘t know what to expect. Then, after I did that, all I wanted to do was to learn how to drive on that kind of track.
So, that was on a Friday and the NCRA was racing on Saturday at Lawton. I‘ll never forget it. Chris McDermott was up on the curb hauling ass and Terry Gray was on the bottom putting around, and he ended up winning. Right there it clicked in my head that if you go slow on a track like that you actually go faster.”
This simple vignette shows that Johnson was committed to becoming a racer and not just a driver. The ambition to be great was what also propelled him to explore options beyond the home front. Of course, some of the first trials by fire came in his own garage. After his 1987 season, Wayne began racing supermodifieds, and thus started competing on Oklahoma City‘s big half-mile.
While his father retired from active competition, he now fielded a car for all three boys. “We raced out of one shop,” Wayne says. “So, it was a mess. I still lived at home and we would all have Sunday lunch with Mom and Dad. We would work on the cars, wash them, and we also had a couple of knockdown drag outs too.” That could have been a carryover from Friday night.
In 1988, Mike Johnson was the State Fair Speedway Supermodified champion, but Wayne recalls that over the course of a 19-race season the Johnson family pulled down nine wins. Even more gratifying were those nights, and there were several, where the family finished one, two, three.
The 1988 season nourished Johnson‘s love of big tracks. Oklahoma City offered a traditional multi-purpose dirt oval like one found at places like Des Moines and Sedalia, Missouri. A driver could carry a ton of speed down the back straightaway at State Fair Speedway and, if one fell asleep at the switch, turn three could become the Bermuda Triangle.