First off, I'm pretty sure there was no organized racing at Trenton in July. Without wanting to look up the exact date, I think the racing ban was lifted in mid-August (17th?), and things happened very fast from then on. Sam Nunis had been waiting for that moment ever since Pappy Hankinson's death more than three years ago, and he had all his ducks in a row. So had George Hamid, head of the major booking agency in the East, and a close personal friend of Hankinson for more than thirty years. Hamid wasted no time in drumming up business, convincing fair boards all over the coast to NOT wait another year, NOW's the time to return to normality, and what could be better for the communities (and their businesses) than staging a grand ol' county fair, like they'd always done in the fall, and Hamid himself was ready with all the entertainment acts one could wish for, including auto racing!
Also in August, the Contest Board of the AAA let it be known that it would not sanction any events in 1945, waiting for general conditions "to improve", and so it was only natural that Nunis would turn to Norm Witte and his Consolidated (Central) States Racing Association of Dayton, Ohio. In fact, the CSRA had already sanctioned the large Hankinson circuit in both 1941 and '42 after a fallout of the senior promoter with the AAA early in the former year. Much like the AAA, the CSRA was "caught with its pants down" in the summer of 1945, but Witte went ahead with Nunis nonetheless, despite not having the infrastructure nor the necessary personel to do the job justice. The end result was a shambles, and basically presaged the end of the CSRA as a sanctioning body barely a decade later.
Late in August, Nunis advertized no fewer than ten fair dates for New Jersey, New York and the Carolinas, and continued to add events as he went along, but it was Ted Nyquist who beat him to the first postwar meeting, at the Champaign Valley Fair in Essex Junction, Vermont - this event happened in almost total obscurity, as newspaper men do not appear to have attended, and even the exact date is not entirely clear: maybe it was the 25th, the 26th or even the 29th, in any event still in late August, an amazing feat all things considered! Ted Horn took the main event (or so it seems), with Lee Wallard and Milt Marion following, while Red Redmond broke a gearbox. No info about car identities, attendance, car count - or anything else for that matter!!
The following, extended Labor Day weekend saw a return to action on a wide basis: Nunis debuted his new circuit at the Flemington (NJ) Fair in front of a 30,000 (!) crowd, with Joie Chitwood and Bill Holland winning heats and finishing one-two in the main, while Nyquist staged another show on Monday the 3rd (not Sunday, as per "The Eastern Bull Rings"!) at the Lycoming County Fair in Hughesville (PA), with Ted Horn's two-car team (himself and Tommy Hinnershitz up) dominating over a two-digit field, with 11,000 pairs of eyes looking on. And "west of the Alleghenies", Frank Funk was re-opening his storied Winchester Speedway with a full house and Jimmie Wilburn in his big 318 CID Morgan/Offy, and much grumbling about the "unfair advantage" amongst the losers, led by Eddie Zalucki in a 211 CID "works" Dreyer, loaned to him after his Iddings/Hal had sprung an oil leak earlier during the programme. Nothing's new under the sun, as Wilburn and his oversize engine had been a constant source for discontent during the prewar years in CSRA competition, only now there was no CSRA sanction, as Funk had had a fallout with Witte much like Hankinson's with the AAA, and was biding his time with his own club, calling it the Midwestern Racing Association or somesuch, until AAA was ready again the next spring.
On seeing the impressive number of cars and drivers in action, Roy Richwine and his Williams Grove Speedway could no longer wait to join the fun, and carded an event for the next Sunday, September 9. Since the CSRA was quite happy to issue sanctioning numbers, but unable to provide any framework of rules, Wilburn showed up with his huge Offy and swept the card - or what was left of it, after a sudden rainstorm had drenched the record crowd and stopped the show after two preliminary heats. Richwine's tears of joy on the face of the dream attendance mingled with the rain and real tears as he issued 34,209 rain checks for the following Sunday - fingers crossed! Mark Light and Joe Sanco had been following Wilburn home in the fast heat, while Chitwood romped home in the second with Hinnershitz and Frank Luptow on his heels. Some of them didn't bother to return for the rain date, figuring that Wilburn wasn't likely to be beat under these conditions, but in any case it rained yet again in Mechanicsburg, Pee-Ay - while Chitwood was at Trenton, continuing his extraordinary love affair with the New Jersey State Fairgrounds on the new one-mile track after thirteen wins in fourteen events on the half-mile pre-war. Bill Holland took second in the Judson=Gardner/Offenhauser, 24 hours after having driven Chitwood's Peters=Cunningham/Offy to a main event win at Altamont (NY), when Joie had been busy with his thrill show at Trenton. Holland had actually beaten Chitwood in a Trenton heat (a rare feat!), driving the same car which veteran Bob Sall had used to finish 3rd in New York. Sall was present at Trenton, too, losing a match race to Chitwood before turning the car over to Holland.
Hinnershitz and Light fared not so well during a return trip to Hughesville while evading the Wilburn challenge: 3rd and 5th, respectively. Still, that was better than Tommy's Altamont experience of crashing the fence after running second to Holland in the time trials and fast heat the day before. Ted Horn and Lee Wallard both beat him in Lycoming County, while it was a "no-name" who took up where Tommy had left in New York, and beat Sall into third: Howard "Bumpy" Bumpus of Massachusetts. Also on Sunday, Frank Funk scheduled a return match for Winchester Speedway, and with Wilburn tied up in rainy Pennsylvania, it was Elbert "Pappy" Booker in the Jewell/Hal from Chick Smith in the Bowles/Offenhauser and Johnny Shackleford in the Christie/Miller. The next day, Emory Collins and Deb Snyder exercised their 318 CID Offies at the Kansas State Fair in Hutchinson, beating no more than a handful of no-hopers with their 300-plus horsepower giants. Actually, the fastest two of those five were mere Midgets, and none too hot, either, with two of the three remaining big cars lasting no longer than a couple of minutes before the engines let go. Whether this poor show had any sanctioning at all is perhaps a moot point, but suffice it to say, there do not appear to have been any other races, IMCA or not, in the area.
52,000 spectators had crammed into the Trenton grandstands for a local record, yet six days later there was a reported 70,000 (!!) crowd present at the Allentown Fair in Eastern Pennsylvania, watching Wilburn win after an accident to Chitwood had stopped the main event, while Bumpus turned a few heads by yet again finishing second. That same Saturday, Horn and Hinnershitz scored another THE 1-2 a few miles west at the Kutztown Fairgrounds, another Nyquist promotion, followed by Ted's old chum, Mark Light. The next day, Williams Grove experienced its third rain-out in three tries, driving Richwine nuts, while Chick Smith won from Charley van Acker and Les Adair on Funk's eccentric Jungle Park oval. On Saturday, the 29th, Ira Vail joined the club with a promotion at the venerable Bloomsburg Fair in the northern part of Pee-Ay, a former Hankinson venue that had somehow slipped through Nunis's grasp - Holland was the feature winner, from Chitwood and New York stalwart, Hank Gritzbach.
The last day of September saw Richwine finally succeed, with a full programme in front of 26,732 patrons, and a pair of two-car teams filling out the first four places: the "usual" THE duo of Horn and Hinnershitz beating Lee Wallard and Mark Light in Bud Sherk cars. And all of that despite the presence of Wilburn, out early with mechanical problems! Nunis had a better field at Trenton, but only 10,000 showed up to watch for this still date, and another Chitwood benefit: track records in qualifying and the fast heat, and leading when the main event was stopped prematurely. Nothing, it seemed, could faze Joie here at the State Fairgrounds, leading "a charmed life" as one paper put it, since Johnny Shackleford in the Christie/Miller had actually passed him during the "featch" and was running away when a flat tyre slowed the "Ohio flash", enabling Chitwood to repass just in time before Holland, pressing both of them for the lead, crashed the fence two laps from the scheduled finish. Earlier in the race, one of the backmarkers had crashed clean through both the wooden rails and a wire fence into some parked cars outside of turn one. The driver, one Harry Hutchinson from Pennsylvania, was a recently discharged ex-Marine, repeatedly decorated for bravery in the Pacific theatre. Carrying over this bravery into the sport of auto racing did him no good, however, as he was pronounced dead upon arrival at the local hospital. Quite obviously, amongst many other things, the war had also produced an entirely new breed of racing driver, almost totally devoid of fear, and Hutchinson's death after barely two weeks of racing experience proved to be a sad portent of things to come.
Another interesting sidelight of the Trenton meet helps to illustrate the adverse conditions in which those races were run in the face of ongoing rationing, and the way the racers as well as the fans coped: Bill Holland experienced "one of those days", when he broke not one, nor two, but three cars during the course of the afternoon, even before the start of the main event! He barely made the field with the Judson=Gardner/Offy, once again graciously given up by Bob Sall, who was fast reaching the conclusion that it was about time to call it a day, but a persistent misfire threatened to keep Holland out of the feature race unless he would be able to change the magneto, which it was not possible to do in the available time. Caught between a rock and a hard place, Sam Nunis took an unusual route of action in asking the public over the PA whether they were willing to wait for the repair work to be done, and receiving an affirmative vote! To fully grasp the situation, one has to understand that in those days, delays during a racing programme constituted one of the cardinal sins of promoting, and were usually considered to be as bad for business as poor visibility due to dust, or the absence of advertised star drivers. With the crowd now patiently waiting in the stands, mechanics from several rival teams offered to help, and a reported seven-strong crew finally finished the job, only for Holland to wreck the car within the next quarter of an hour - one of those days!!! Car owner Al Judson's reaction is not recorded, but Holland did not drive for him ever again...
Death was again a visitor to the circuit on the following Sunday, when Mark Light crashed during a time trial at Williams Grove and went into the crowd. A 60-year-old spectator was killed, and more than a dozen injured, two of whom tried to sue Richwine for damages, totalling $65,000. The case hung over the future of the speedway like the
Sword of Damocles, until a jury denied the charges on February 20, 1947 - another portent of things to come, as the carefree days of the prewar era vanished fast. Lighty himself sustained serious injuries that threatened to end his career, but luckily he was to recover fully, and enjoy an Indian Summer of his career. The fact that Jimmy Wilburn finally cracked Joie Chitwood's track record that had stood since opening day back in 1939 went almost unnoticed, as did his main event win and another fine runner-up finish for Bumpy Bumpus. Chitwood himself was meanwhile campaigning in the South, winning at Winston-Salem on Saturday and Greensboro on Sunday, while Ted Horn won at Gratz in central Pennsylavania (not
Graz in Austria!). Charley van Acker took a main at Jungle Park, beating Les Adair and Swede Carpenter after fast timer Chick Smith failed to start on account of transmission trouble.
Sam Nunis and the Allentown fair board tried to capitalize on the sensational turnout for the fair races and scheduled a still date, but it was not to be a success. Rained out on October 6, it finally went ahead a week later before a dismal four-digit crowd and in chilling weather, with Chitwood winning from Frank Luptow. Meanwhile, Ted Horn had made the third of his four cars race ready, and together with Tommy Hinnershitz and new recruit Walt Ader he (almost) swept the Altamont still date on October 13 - Lee Wallard needed both of the Bud Sherk cars (taking over from Light substitute Vic Nauman after transmission failure on his original car) to nose the new track-record-holder Ader out of third place. On Sunday, Horn beat Hank Rogers and Hinnershitz at Kutztown, while Elbert Booker (Jewell/Hal) and Johnny Shackleford (Christie/Miller) shared a couple of southern race dates. Deb Snyder took his big Offy to Charlotte on Saturday, the 20th, but could only win after Chitwood blew the smaller Offy in the Peters=Cunningham car. The next day, the big Williams Grove Championship event turned into another THE benefit, with master Ted ahead of pupil Tommy; Wilburn retired halfway through the feature. Five more Nunis shows in the South completed the picture, while a single event on the West Coast attracted but little attention: the Imperial County Fairgrounds near El Centro hosted a fine field of WRA racers on October 28 after a rain-out the week before, but the event proved somewhat abortive. Bill Sheffler took fast time in the trials, but a one-lap trophy dash was already more than his car would take, shearing off not one but two wheels in the process!! Bud Rose was there to pick up the pieces, winning the dash, a pursuit race and the twenty-mile main. No info at all about the other entries, including George Connor, George Robson, Frank McGurk, Bayliss Levrett, Mel Hansen, Ed Haddad, Joe Thorne, Tex Petersen, Art George, Ed Barnett, Rajo Jack, Dave Champeau and another dozen of California hot shots. More's the pity!
Edited by Michael Ferner, 10 April 2013 - 17:59.
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) in my research. For instance, one of the articles about the Imperial/El Centro race mentioned that it was the second since the war! There were, of course, numerous Midget races in the area, and elsewhere.
