Famous Texas Tracks, Cars, Stories and SpeedShops

More for today, hope you enjoy these rare photo's.

 

Even though I never heard of a couple of them, this really helps put DivIV back into perspective. Tom S.

 

There were truly some bad boys stockers, modified production, gassers, top fuel etc. in Division 4
Butch Lake and his 55 Panel Wagon being at the top of the list! Bring'em on partsrivet!

1940 Willys Coupe

 

Even though he was a pretty well known racer, I'd have a hard time putting Butch Lake at the top of the Division 4 heap.
Couple more pretty well known racers.
Larry T

 

Nuther one. I've seen MP racers load up and leave when this car rolled through the gate.

 

Not only was Green Valley used as a drag strip and Sports Car race track we also ran endurance Go Karts there, each race was an hour and forty five minutes when we first started but was down to just one hour the last time I raced there in the late 60s. I can tell you the turn at the top of the hill from the back course to the straight way, aka, Drag Strip took a lot of braking down to make it. We used to run there about six to eight times a year back in the sixties.

 

A few I have . Joe Smith is one of my personal heroes.

 

Hey Larry T!

Great picture of Vance Hunt going through the valve on the Hemi!

Great picture also of Carroll Caudle and that bad 55!

I put Butch Lake at the top of the heap because at the time he was young, near my age, could twist that four speed, was "Hands" brother and Butch could talk some "smack" and usually back it up.

Seen Butch about two weeks ago, he is not young anymore but can still drive a race car, and STILL likes to talk "smack" Ha! Ha!

1940 Willys Coupe

 

I'd have to agree that Caudle's car was one of the toughest C/MP in the division. The only other that comes to mind was Dennis Oncale's 57 Chev from New Orleans. Because of the distance between them, they didn't meet often.I remember Caudle being lost in a sea of C/MP at the Nationals in 66 ( I think). Dave McClelland, who was calling the heats at that time said were 101 cars in the class that year! He made it a few rounds before falling. Glad you posted this, as I haven't seen a good shot of Caudle's car as I've been mining through my stuff.

 

http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=656268&page=13

Oops. this link was to the AWB Plymouth that Grizzgang just posted.

I thought the 65 Plymouth Joe Smith drove to the World Championship was later sold to Charles Rodgers of Monroe, LA. Is this a different car from the Fenner Tubbs car?

 

They were both F-T cars . I don't know where they went but he won stock in 65 with one and the other was of course an AWB . I've seen a picture at his shop with the AWB on a roll back with the stocker on a trailer in tow.

 

I'm not certain, but I think this is the Whiz Kids AA/FD getting ready to go at Austin, TX in 1967. The reason I think this is that looks like Charles Smith, one of the "Kids" walking away on the left.

 

An injected dragster lifts 'em up leaving the line at Amarillo in April of 1967. There's a story about track owner Ernest Walker's cigar store indian near the tree, but this one eludes me at the moment.

 

This is a different view of the Match Bash at Green Valley. Bob Gibson says it was early '66 but I thought it was late '65. I'll probably defer to his better memory of these events. At any rate, Snow and Chadwick have switched lanes from the previous post and Kelly is out on Snow this round.

 

Snow was kinda an idol to me for awhile until some of the things he's into came out in the open. Poor kids.

 

This is the rear of the Creitz and Greer AA/FD at Amarillo in April of 1967. The guy in the Simpson sweatshirt is Willie Redford, my boss at AEECO, dispenser of the sacred press passes that got me some of the pictures you've seen. The guy in the red jacket on the left edge of the picture is Nat Quick, a painter and body man from Oklahoma City who finished a number of the regions cars. In the jacket behind Willie is Ernie Spickler from Denver who was working on his AA/FD. In the distance is the Corvair of Tom Strum from California, a guy who Willie disliked so much he used Strum's name as a serious insult. I couldn't tell you the basis for the animosity between the two. Interesting characters all.

 

Wow, these sports car pix and results/entry lists from GVR, post #222, really take me back. I was following Texas sports car racing and racers in those years but never got to Green Valley.
Joe Locario (DP Alfa) had the first racing Alfa I ever saw, and later he worked on my own Duetto many times. Martin Grantham (Merlin) and Willie McKemie (Elva) were fellow members of the Texas Spokes in Austin; Willie called himself M.G. Sneat when racing against Porsches. Wally (Austin Healey) Gafford's dad lived across the street from my folks, and Bill Steele's #7 Cobra was absolutely the best-sounding car I've ever heard on any track anywhere. And Colonel George Koehne (USAFRet) was the father of a college buddy that I've kept up with all these years later. Col. Koehne actually let me help him on that Cooper-Buick ("Hey, you, hand me that 9/16th there!" "Uh, unh, yessir!") But he got in a little over his head a few years later at Riverside when his Genie-Chev developed a fuel leak and caught fire. He was medevac'ed to the BAMC burn ward but died from his injuries after a few weeks. Sad day for us, for sure.
Fearless

 

Ill see about posting more for you bud.

 

More

 

We knew nothing of that back in the day. Other than the comments I've heard on various threads recently, I had no idea of his personal issues. I doubt very seriously he'd have been tolerated back then had the racers known-they were a hard boiled bunch and transgressions by anyone about anything were subject to ridicule and humiliation-if not worse. His was just one of the cars you could count on seeing just about everywhere you went.

 

Few more

 

Here ya go.

 

Ah, that explains it. Charles Rodgers did get the SS/A car in '67. Think I have a slide of it somewhere. Don't know what happened to it after that.

 

Oh I agree completely. I know guys even today who are "new racers" who want to beat that man half to death. It might be a new generation but this is still Texas and that stuff just isnt tolerated, especially in the racing community.

 

I don't know, but there were several Div IV folk all around the top of the modified elim heap. And classes like Jr. Fuel and Top Fuel were like a world of it's own out there you would see every week in the National Dragster.

Question; was Ted Detar out of Div IV or Div V?
Tom S. in Tn.

 

I guess they still have their chance. He's still a car owner and is at most of the major NHRA races in the division.

 

Yea I know. One of the kids it happened to lives on my Dads block in Hurst or Bedford, cant remember which he lives in. Anyways, sad deal. I was at an event here in the local area where he had to leave a track because a big crowd started shouting and yelling at him, several had to be pushed back. I cant remember if he left on his own, was asked to leave or was forced too by the track owner.

 

Since he was from Wichita, KS, he would have been in Division 5. But guys could and did race in other divisions. Some came to get extra points or to make up for a local division meet they'd missed or skipped. I remember Blair and Goldstein from VII making a lot of the races in IV during 67, picking up points and being involved in the Texas AA/FD circuit.

As far as Detar, I always pictured his as more of an AHRA guy. Maybe some one from V or Wichita can illuminate us.

 

Something about Pontiacs and funny cars out there too.
1 more question: Wasn't Arnie Beswick out of Div IV also?






Fred Clifford brought the body from this car to Nashville, put it on a Logghe style car of Norman Siks with an injected BB on nitro and named it the God Father for the short lived A/FC class. Tom S. in Tn.

 

Yes I see, that was AHRA country out there alright. thanx; Tom S.