Post by allstarhr on May 6, 2010 16:55:39 GMT -7
Thanks Rick. It's been a very hard week for my family and especially my 90 year old mother; but we've found out how many,many friends my brother had. The race track side of his life was just a small part and he led a very full life.
Jeff Burk, the editor of dragracingonline.com and two other Internet magazines was at the wake along with Bret Kepner, announcer extraordinaire. We got to talking war storing about the track and one of the stories that they both had forgotten was the one I put psyshcslots.com a couple years ago. Pardon me for repeating it here and Jeff, feel free to move this wherever you want or even remove it, but it's one of my favorite stories as it explains the frustrations that a promoter goes through even when he's trying to do something right.
In 1977 my brother and I bought St. Louis International Raceway from Wayne Meinert and quickly learned that we knew nothing about promoting drag races. After two mediocre years we were agreeing on nothing and I bought my brother out. I had been planning our seasons in January and getting as many items like booking racers for shows, radio and tv time, various promotional items, the track newspaper redundant stuff and other items out the way when the snow was on the ground. That way I could spend my time in season on trying to put on a quality program each week.
I had been told by Jim Tice that running a small show on the 4th of July was an easy way to make a few bucks. I noticed that it fell on Wednesday that year and we would have our normal Grudge Night that night anyway. So I called around and booked Bill Golden’s Little Red Wagon, Richard Hutchins’s Chevy Rebellion along with his friend, John Ludwick and his new Dodge Rebellion plus Bob Riggle’s Hemi Under Glass They sent contracts which I signed for the four of them including the two from Richard who was taking care of the Ludwick bookings.
In the middle of March I was told that the City of St. Louis had such success with the 200th Anniversary 4th of July Celebration in 1976 and the smaller one in 1977 that they were going to have a big one again on the evening of the 4th of July. For those of you that don’t know, SLIR is 4 miles from the Gateway Arch and you while you can easily see the fireworks from there the view is not that spectacular. My thoughts went like this. SLIR with higher than normal priced Wednesday night program of 4 wheelstanders vs. FREE fireworks and waterfront show downtown with cheap bucket's of beer. Drunken fireworks would win. So in late March I sent a letter to Golden, Riggle and Hutchinson to cancel the show. The contracts all had a clause that said I could cancel as long as it was at least 30 days before the event. No problem....I thought.
Fast forward to Wednesday night on the 4th of July. Beautiful weather and I’ve got a nice sized crowd of about 800. They have all paid the normal $4.00 Wednesday night price. About 7 PM I look up at the entrance gate and saw a semi pulling in. Now back then a semi bringing in a race car was a big deal. The Little Red Wagon and Hemi Under Glass still toured the country on ramp trucks. I drove over to the gate and it was John Ludwick with his Dodge Rebellion. He said “Where’s your crowd?” and then “Where’s Richard and the others?” When I told him that I had canceled months ago he said that he had raced with Richard just two weeks ago and Richard didn’t say anything about it. He then said, “You do have a nice crowd here, how about I make a pass for them and you just give me three hundred dollars for fuel as I’ve driven down from Chicago. Since I felt bad for him and I liked throwing unexpected extra’s at the crowd so they would leave feeling they got more for their money than they expected, I agreed. However... I had been taken by enough unscrupulous racers by now that I wasn’t going to let him just screw me out of the money. I told John that it’s a deal if he makes a pass all the way down the track with the wheels in the air. No going to the starting line and pulling a wheelie for 20 feet and bouncing down the track to collect the $300.00. He said no problem.
At 8 PM Ludwick pulled into the staging lanes. We are pumping it up on the PA system and our starter let him chose lanes and he went into the left lane. We ran the tree down and he pulled the wheels up for...oh...about 20 feet, came down, bounced around to the right and drove on down the track in the right lane. I was standing in the middle of the return road when he came back shacking my head “no” and he said “no problem” that he would get it fixed and be right back up for a full pass. I didn't want to renige on my deal and agreed to let him try again so he went to work on the truck.
About 9 PM he comes back to the left lane and we started the tree for him. He yanks the wheels in the air all the way up on the wheelie bars and with sparks flying he flies down the track all the while drifting over to the right. He crosses the finish line in the right lane, takes out my center line lights with the left rear wheel and goes off the track past the finish line. SLIR at that time had the guard rail about 20 feet off the pavement and it stopped about 100 feet past the finish line. He misses the end of the guard rail and hits one of the light poles head on with the passenger side of the truck. Fortunately for John, his truck was still driven from the left side as most of the wheelstanders had moved to the center driving position. With mud and grass flying he hit the pole which broke into three pieces. The stub in the ground was broke off at about 12 inches out of the ground. The center piece was exactly the length of the height of the truck and the top part of the pole was now rotating completely over the wires between the poles on each side of it. It made one complete revolution with the accompanying sparks as the wires crossed and arched. As it came to a rest at about a 60 degree angle to the ground and was now supported by the wires only. All the track lights from that pole on quit working. The truck made at least two full clockwise rotations throwing up more grass and dirt before it came to a stop with the front of the roll cage pushed back to the back of the cab. The ambulance and track safety truck flew to help him. By the time I ran down the tower steps and jumped into my car and drove down the track to see if he was alive, he was out of the truck He seemed ok as he walked to the ambulance and climbed in on his own but you could tell he was in shock.. We helped his small crew get the truck loaded up while he went to the hospital to be checked out. Yes, I paid him the money plus later paid $2300.00 to get the light pole fixed.
Oh yeah, to finish the evenings event I needed to get the lights back on. We had an old (and I do mean old) wooden extension ladder that had been laying by the track shed for years. As nobody else was volunteering to do it, we put the ladder up against the now unattached to earth light pole and as the ladder swaybacked from my weight, I climbed to the top and spliced in some jumper wires to get the lights on. The ambulance guys helped by putting their spotlight on me and the pole. When I got safely down and switched on the lights they all worked although the broken pole light was aiming the wrong way.
Let’s see. 800 people at $4.00 = $3200.00. $300.00 to Ludwick, $2300.00 for the light pole, $100. for centerline lights, add the track crew salaries, ambulance charges, security cop pay, track insurance for the night and a bunch of other expenses. I should have closed the track and gone to watch the fireworks under the Arch.
Jeff Burk, the editor of dragracingonline.com and two other Internet magazines was at the wake along with Bret Kepner, announcer extraordinaire. We got to talking war storing about the track and one of the stories that they both had forgotten was the one I put psyshcslots.com a couple years ago. Pardon me for repeating it here and Jeff, feel free to move this wherever you want or even remove it, but it's one of my favorite stories as it explains the frustrations that a promoter goes through even when he's trying to do something right.
In 1977 my brother and I bought St. Louis International Raceway from Wayne Meinert and quickly learned that we knew nothing about promoting drag races. After two mediocre years we were agreeing on nothing and I bought my brother out. I had been planning our seasons in January and getting as many items like booking racers for shows, radio and tv time, various promotional items, the track newspaper redundant stuff and other items out the way when the snow was on the ground. That way I could spend my time in season on trying to put on a quality program each week.
I had been told by Jim Tice that running a small show on the 4th of July was an easy way to make a few bucks. I noticed that it fell on Wednesday that year and we would have our normal Grudge Night that night anyway. So I called around and booked Bill Golden’s Little Red Wagon, Richard Hutchins’s Chevy Rebellion along with his friend, John Ludwick and his new Dodge Rebellion plus Bob Riggle’s Hemi Under Glass They sent contracts which I signed for the four of them including the two from Richard who was taking care of the Ludwick bookings.
In the middle of March I was told that the City of St. Louis had such success with the 200th Anniversary 4th of July Celebration in 1976 and the smaller one in 1977 that they were going to have a big one again on the evening of the 4th of July. For those of you that don’t know, SLIR is 4 miles from the Gateway Arch and you while you can easily see the fireworks from there the view is not that spectacular. My thoughts went like this. SLIR with higher than normal priced Wednesday night program of 4 wheelstanders vs. FREE fireworks and waterfront show downtown with cheap bucket's of beer. Drunken fireworks would win. So in late March I sent a letter to Golden, Riggle and Hutchinson to cancel the show. The contracts all had a clause that said I could cancel as long as it was at least 30 days before the event. No problem....I thought.
Fast forward to Wednesday night on the 4th of July. Beautiful weather and I’ve got a nice sized crowd of about 800. They have all paid the normal $4.00 Wednesday night price. About 7 PM I look up at the entrance gate and saw a semi pulling in. Now back then a semi bringing in a race car was a big deal. The Little Red Wagon and Hemi Under Glass still toured the country on ramp trucks. I drove over to the gate and it was John Ludwick with his Dodge Rebellion. He said “Where’s your crowd?” and then “Where’s Richard and the others?” When I told him that I had canceled months ago he said that he had raced with Richard just two weeks ago and Richard didn’t say anything about it. He then said, “You do have a nice crowd here, how about I make a pass for them and you just give me three hundred dollars for fuel as I’ve driven down from Chicago. Since I felt bad for him and I liked throwing unexpected extra’s at the crowd so they would leave feeling they got more for their money than they expected, I agreed. However... I had been taken by enough unscrupulous racers by now that I wasn’t going to let him just screw me out of the money. I told John that it’s a deal if he makes a pass all the way down the track with the wheels in the air. No going to the starting line and pulling a wheelie for 20 feet and bouncing down the track to collect the $300.00. He said no problem.
At 8 PM Ludwick pulled into the staging lanes. We are pumping it up on the PA system and our starter let him chose lanes and he went into the left lane. We ran the tree down and he pulled the wheels up for...oh...about 20 feet, came down, bounced around to the right and drove on down the track in the right lane. I was standing in the middle of the return road when he came back shacking my head “no” and he said “no problem” that he would get it fixed and be right back up for a full pass. I didn't want to renige on my deal and agreed to let him try again so he went to work on the truck.
About 9 PM he comes back to the left lane and we started the tree for him. He yanks the wheels in the air all the way up on the wheelie bars and with sparks flying he flies down the track all the while drifting over to the right. He crosses the finish line in the right lane, takes out my center line lights with the left rear wheel and goes off the track past the finish line. SLIR at that time had the guard rail about 20 feet off the pavement and it stopped about 100 feet past the finish line. He misses the end of the guard rail and hits one of the light poles head on with the passenger side of the truck. Fortunately for John, his truck was still driven from the left side as most of the wheelstanders had moved to the center driving position. With mud and grass flying he hit the pole which broke into three pieces. The stub in the ground was broke off at about 12 inches out of the ground. The center piece was exactly the length of the height of the truck and the top part of the pole was now rotating completely over the wires between the poles on each side of it. It made one complete revolution with the accompanying sparks as the wires crossed and arched. As it came to a rest at about a 60 degree angle to the ground and was now supported by the wires only. All the track lights from that pole on quit working. The truck made at least two full clockwise rotations throwing up more grass and dirt before it came to a stop with the front of the roll cage pushed back to the back of the cab. The ambulance and track safety truck flew to help him. By the time I ran down the tower steps and jumped into my car and drove down the track to see if he was alive, he was out of the truck He seemed ok as he walked to the ambulance and climbed in on his own but you could tell he was in shock.. We helped his small crew get the truck loaded up while he went to the hospital to be checked out. Yes, I paid him the money plus later paid $2300.00 to get the light pole fixed.
Oh yeah, to finish the evenings event I needed to get the lights back on. We had an old (and I do mean old) wooden extension ladder that had been laying by the track shed for years. As nobody else was volunteering to do it, we put the ladder up against the now unattached to earth light pole and as the ladder swaybacked from my weight, I climbed to the top and spliced in some jumper wires to get the lights on. The ambulance guys helped by putting their spotlight on me and the pole. When I got safely down and switched on the lights they all worked although the broken pole light was aiming the wrong way.
Let’s see. 800 people at $4.00 = $3200.00. $300.00 to Ludwick, $2300.00 for the light pole, $100. for centerline lights, add the track crew salaries, ambulance charges, security cop pay, track insurance for the night and a bunch of other expenses. I should have closed the track and gone to watch the fireworks under the Arch.
