Orange
Show Speedway
In 1973 I was 17
years old, a junior in High School and Gary offered to take me to the
stock car races in San Bernardino at a place called the Orange Show
Speedway. This was a ¼ mile track and a lot of local guys raced there
on Saturday nights. One of the things he liked to do was go into the
pits so he could see all the cars. If one of his friends needed help in
anyway, he could jump right in and start turning wrenches. You had two
choices of seating, you could sit on either the spectator side or on the
pit side but to be able to get into the pits, you had to be 21 years
old. Gary said it wouldn’t be a problem getting me in so when we
arrived, you had to buy a ticket and then present your pit pass.
To
obtain a pit pass, you had to sign a waiver and once I had filled in all
the blanks, I handed the paper back to the guy in the ticket booth. Now
this ticket booth was one of those small “one man” types like the
kind you would see at a carnival. When the guy looked at all the info,
he had one question for me…”what year were you born”? Now I
wasn’t expecting this and the look on my face must have said….OH
DAMN!!. Well Gary heard the guy ask me this and right away stepped out
of the guys sight and held his hands down by his waist. When I looked
over at Gary, he was flashing me some fingers, like a third-base coach
in baseball might do and I was in the batters box looking for a signal. Gary had
five fingers on one hand and three fingers on the other. And he had them
in the right order so I didn’t mess up. Now all this took place pretty
quick but thinking back, who looks away from somebody after being asked
what year you were born? I answered the question “1953” and the guy
in the booth said “okay” just like that. I couldn’t believe he let
me in because he had to know I wasn’t old enough by the way I acted. I
guess this kind of thing was no big deal, as long as you answered the
question correctly. The guy ended up giving me my pit pass and from that
day forward, I was able to get into the pits. Looking back, that was
some quick thinking on Gary’s part to help me get that pass. Way cool!
Driving the Anglia
One of the
many fond memories that I have while I was still in High School was
cruising around town in Gary’s 1958 Anglia. This car is an English
Ford (if you’re not familiar with it) and has a very short wheelbase
(in other words, the car was very short and small). Originally these
cars came with a four-cylinder engine but Gary put a 301 cubic inch
small block Chevy in it along with a four-speed transmission. The Anglia
was very light and only sat two people. The car was also scary fast,
which was right down his alley too. Gary put in very low rear-end gears,
(5:38’s) which meant you had to shift a bunch as you drove it. Now the
clutch he had back then was very hard to push in because it was a
three-finger type and was made for a lot of horsepower, which made
driving it for very long quite hard on your left leg. With that said,
Gary turned to me one day and told me, “you drive, my leg is tired”.
Well, I didn’t have much experience driving a stick back then because
both of my parent’s cars were automatics.
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Gary
pulled into a parking lot, got out and walked over to the other side,
which meant that I was being thrown into the deep end (at least in my
eyes I was). When I pushed in on the clutch, I couldn’t believe
how hard it was and knew right then I was in trouble. I found first gear
and then tried to ease out on the clutch, which didn’t happen very
well and proceeded to make a fool out of myself. Gary laughed and said,
“Easy does it”. At that moment, it was like 'God' had spoken to me and
that everything would be all right. Gary had a way with words and his
teaching abilities were the best, which helped calm me down. I felt
like a King behind the wheel that day and couldn’t believe he let me
drive. On the other hand, he must have trusted me, or he wouldn’t have
let me. Once my leg had gotten tired (which didn’t take very long), it
was his turn to be back in the saddle. He said to me, “already?” And
all I could do was say thanks for letting me drive.
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