At this point in time a great deal of any kind of history is as accurate as butterbeans. I think PBS does a pretty good job, and think it would be more appropriate to honor our heros. Where does this wikpedia type shit stop? You can say the same thing about Wyatt Earp, Abraham Lincoln, or anyone else you choose.
http://www.evansville.net/user/boneyard/babs07.htm Also remember seeing a picture of Charlies car with Felix the cat on it.Had a good laugh.
Good point! But, if I recall correctly, Johnson's entry to AAA was made via "questionable" means, wasn't it?
I'm a Felix fan myself! If I recall correctly, that picture was in "The Illustrated History of Sprint Car Racing", by Jack Fox. Btw, the picture of the Wiggins Special in the linked article actually shows "Rajo Jack" de Soto in his "Sally".
I have an old racing cars magazine published by Carl Hungness that has an article on the Gold and Glory races that might be a little more factual, I was lucky enough to know Joie Ray, and also Red Oliver who won one of the gold and glory races at the Indy fairgrounds, Red Oliver went on to work for Patrick Racing on their Indy Team,
BTW Hungness article was published in the 70's, I showed it to Charlie Wiggans neice a cople years ago she never knew it existed. Also a certain former IMS CEO had a marker placed on Wiggans burial plot when he found out he had no tombstone.
Red Oliver about the middle of the picture, Mario Andretti and Al Unser drivers, my step father was the chief mechanic on both cars, between the two cars they won EVERY USAC Champ Dirt race for 2 years straight
Wow. I grew up near there, Waukegan, IL, and never remember seeing that poster. In those times, the fact that a black team could run, let alone win in motorsports was amazing. All due respect to driver Cook, the fact that the team was owned and wrenched by a minority group was not well known to casual race fans. Back when gassers were kings, eh? Gary
Also, many thanks for those articles, Brian. As an aside, how do you save articles from the Google Newspaper search to your hard drive? I never seem to be able to manage that... As to the content, I rather don't believe that LeRoy Wallace and Bobby Wallace were one and the same. I don't know much about the former, and I have him only competing in a couple of "outlaw" races in the Chicago area in 1926, but at that time Bobby Wallace was already fairly well known, especially around Chicago since he had won at Thornton Speedway in 1925, and finished 3rd at Roby Speedway in '26. He'd have been a drawing card for any race promoter, and there was no need to hide his identity in an outlaw race, so the story just doesn't make sense. The articles also touch on the "unwritten rule" issue, but I think the later article (1993) is based somewhat on the article written in the sixties, which states that there was no rule "in 1948" which is correct, afaik. I have never seen actual evidence of this rule in original source material, but a very respected researcher has discovered the abolition of the segregation in an official 1946 or '47 AAA document, and I trust him on that. Also thanks for mentioning Mel Leighton, who as a car owner actually predated Joie Ray in breaking down the race barrier. Leighton came to the Midwest in the summer of 1948 with his 4-port Riley to compete in AAA Sprint Car races at Salem and Winchester Speedways and the Wisconsin State Fair Park in Milwaukee. His main driver was Chick Barbo from Washington, but he had also Orville Epperley, Jack McGrath, Kenny Eaton, Dempsey Wilson, Roy Prosser and Russ Congdon drive for him, probably many others, too.
Fines wrote: "As an aside, how do you save articles from the Google Newspaper search to your hard drive? I never seem to be able to manage that... " My process is a bit labourious. After finding the article I make it as large as possible so I can read it. Then I make a screen print of what is there, what you see is what you get. Then I paste to Paint. Crop and save that. If there needs to be more than one shot to get the whole article then I stitch them all together and have something. Took a lot of trial and error and cursing and whatnot. Google seems to have the newspaper archive set up so you can't save a page or anything. So that's my work around. cheers, Brian
Well, having read the article it seems to me that the author, Fritz Frommeyer, working from basically the same sources as the author of the Gold & Glory book, has come up with a fascinating story for us gearheads. It just needed to be brushed up a little with some BS to reach a wider audience...
I might ad that i love to find historical sites connected to racing in and around Indy, and I drove to where Charlie Wiggans auto shop had been but it is no longer there