35 replies to this topic

[fines]

http://maps.google.d....01133&t=h&z=17

Okay guys, I am a bit thick...

But how do you get those Google Earth pics to appear on the thread?

I can only get that darn link to work, but no picture!

[Lee Nicolle]

You think you have problems! I cannot even post simple photos on this site. My technofobe tendencies show again! But yes I can search Google Earth succesfully.

[watkins]

I went on Google maps and found the fairgrounds. I then used the "email" link and sent myself an email of the image. Here's how it turned out:

[HistoricMustang]

Michael, you might want to download this software (free) for Google Earth:

http://pack.google.c...&utm_campaign=e

Find the track desired.

Then you simply save the photograph into your picture file and download that picture to TNF using ImageShack or one of the other free services.

This is what you get, and can save for future reference.



Does this make sense?

Henry

[fbarrett]

Another way to do it is to save the Google (or other) image to imageshack or smugmug, etc., then get a link and post it using the "IMG" tool. The image then shows up directly in the post, in the size you choose, not necessarily as just a thumbnail.

I gave up on imageshack and went to smugmug, which is much easier and more intuitive to use.

Frank

[watkins]

Henry's way is far easier than my "email" option. I mistakenly stated I used Google Maps, but in actuality I was on Google Earth.

After you get the image you're looking for, on Google Earth, go to the upper left hand corner of the window and click on "file" and then on the drop-down list, click on "save" and then "save image".

[fines]

Originally posted by fbarrett
Another way to do it is to save the Google (or other) image to imageshack or smugmug, etc., then get a link and post it using the "IMG" tool. The image then shows up directly in the post, in the size you choose, not necessarily as just a thumbnail.

I gave up on imageshack and went to smugmug, which is much easier and more intuitive to use.

Frank

Yeah, but how do you save the image?

Normally, you just right-click on it, but it simply don't work with Google Earth!

I tried the email "trick", too, but it just returned the web address! :

And thanks, Henry, but I don't want to download any software, I just want to post a picture...

Here's a link to a StreetView pic showing the entrance to the old fairgrounds:

http://maps.google.d..., ny&iwloc=addr

Sure hope it works though...

EDIT: Nope, it doesn't! Oh well...

[Rob Semmeling]

Press the "Print Screen" button on your keyboard, then paste and save the image in your photo editing programme of choice.

[fines]

Thanks Rob, but doesn't work for me either... [sigh!]


Anyway. Thanks to "watkins", this is roughly what I wanted to start this thread with, so maybe we can pretend the first eight posts never happened? Sort of, "first start aborted and declared null and void", Formula One style?;)




The Altamont Fairgrounds opened in 1893 with the first Albany-Schenectady County Fair on land purchased the year before. It is not exactly clear when the racetrack was built, or when the first horse races took place, but according to one source at least, some form or other of auto racing took place as early as 1910. The success story of auto racing at the Fairgounds did, however, not start until after the building of a new grandstand in 1925, with the grandstand eventually outliving all auto racing activity - it burned down some time in the nineties!

The first races proper were held on the final two days of the 33rd Albany-Schenectady County Fair, popularly known as the Bi-County, or even Capital District Fair. Indications are that these early races already carried sanctions by the American Automobile Association, as did most of the auto racing events that would eventually be staged at the Fairgrounds over the next quarter of a century, but nothing's for sure. In fact, the only notes I was able to find about the races in 1926 and 1927 concerned the accidents that took place - no info at all about race distance, the winning driver or even car! Frustrating...

But things changed, fortunately! The local weekly Altamont Enterprise, to whose accidental discovery I owe most of what I was able to find out this last week, warmed considerably to the concept of racing automobiles around a fairgrounds dirt track, and within ten years even went so far as to sponsor race meets by placing free advertisements. Additionally, most events were covered within the paper to a staggering degree, more often than not with (more or less) complete rundowns of qualifying times, sometimes even in the order in which the attempts were made.

The local populace took to auto racing, too, and soon promoters (including legendary figures such as Ralph Hankinson and Sam Nunis) regularly presented non-Fair programmes ("still dates") at the big holidays: Memorial Day, Independence Day and Labor Day. Thus, many local drivers had the chance to mix it with the big stars not only once or twice during the Fair, but several times a year, making investments in speed equipment more likely, and profitable. At the end of that development, one of these 'local yokels' would make it to the very top, and as a result is mentioned in every Formula One database these days...;)

[fines]

The Altamont races now cover approximately 1,600 lines in my Big Car database, most of them new! Here's a list of the main event winners:

Year  Memorial Day			 Independence Day		 Fair Friday			  Fair Saturday			Labor Day

1926  -						-						 ?   ??				   ?   ??				  -

1927  -						-						 ?   ??				   ?   ??				  -

1928  -						-						[b]10   Bill Albertson	  10   Bill Albertson[/b]	  -

1929  -						-						[b] 5   Bill Albertson	  10   Bill Albertson[/b]	  -

1930  -						-						[b] 7½  Ralph de Palma	  10   Henry Turgeon[/b]	   -

1931  -						-						[b]10   Fred Frame		  10   Frank Brisko[/b]		-

1932  -						[b]20 a Billy Winn		  10   Bryan Saulpaugh	  7½b Billy Winn[/b]		  -

1933  [b] 1½c Billy Winn		  19 d Johnny Hannon	   10   Johnny Gerber		0 e (rain/blue laws)[/b]	-

1934  [b]15   Lloyd Vieaux		 5 f Bob Sall			15   Bob Sall			 0   (rain)[/b]			  -

1935  [b]10   Vern Orenduff[/b]	   -						[b]15 g Bob Sall			15   Doc MacKenzie[/b]	   -

1936  [b]15   Bob Sall[/b]			-						[b]13 h Tommy Hinnershitz   15   Tony Willman[/b]		-

1937  [b]15   Bob Sall			15   Tony Willman		15 i Bob Sall			15   Frankie Bailey[/b]	  -

1938  10 j Lee Wallard		 [b]15 k Jack Moon		   15   Paul Young		  15   Henry Guerand[/b]	   20 l Jeri May

1939  [b]15   Joie Chitwood[/b]	   -						-						[b]15   Joie Chitwood[/b]	   -

1940  [b]15   Bob Sall[/b]			-						[b]15   Bill Holland		15   Bob Sall[/b]			-

1941  [b]12   Bob Sall			15   Joie Chitwood[/b]	   -						[b]15   Vic Nauman[/b]		  -

1942  -						-						-						-						-

1943  -						-						-						-						-

1944  -						-						-						-						-

1945  -						-						-						15 m Bill Holland		15 n Ted Horn

1946  [b]15   Bumpy Bumpus[/b]		 0 o (promotor bailout?) -						[b]10   Ted Horn[/b]			-

1947  10 p Hank Gritzbach	  10 p Earl Horne		  -						 9½p Eddie Gallione	  -

1948  10 p Amos Hill		   25 q Al Keller		   -						12½r Johnny Rogers	   -

1949  -						-						-						-						12½s Hank Gritzbach

1950  50 r Hully Brunn		 12½q Mike Nazaruk		-						-						[b]12½  Tommy Hinnershitz[/b]

1951  10 q Jiggs Peters		-						-						-						15 q Johnny Thomson

1952  12½q Nick Fornoro		-						-						-						 0 q (rain)

1953  [b] 0   (rain)			  10   Johnny Thomson[/b]	  -						-						 0 q (rain)

1954  [b]15   Wally Campbell[/b]	  -						-						-						-

1955   ? t ??				  10 u Eddie Gallione	  -						-						-



Notes:

Sunday holiday events (1937, 1948 and 1954) were held over until Monday (blue laws)

a  postponed to July 9 (rain)

b  stopped prematurely (accident)

c  postponed to June 3 (rain), then stopped due to more rain

d  stopped prematurely (accident)

e  postponed to October 1 (rain), then cancelled (blue laws)

f  postponed to July 7 (track conditions), then stopped (rain)

g  postponed to Sunday (rain?)

h  stopped prematurely (accident)

i  postponed to Sunday (rain)

j  AAA sanction, "Class B" event

k  June 18 "still date"

l  October 1 non-sanctioned "New York State Independent Automobile Racing Championship"

m  CSRA sanction

n  October 13 CSRA sanction

o  scheduled for the eve of Independence Day as part of a weekly Wednesday night schedule (CSRA sanction, rained out on June 26),

   make-up event by Fair Association on August 3 won by Freddy Carpenter (10 miles)

p  ESRA sanction, Fair event stopped prematurely (accident), other events on June 14 (rain), postponed to June 21 won by Ducky

   Pehlman (10 miles), July 19 (cancelled), August 9 (cancelled?) and September 20 (cancelled?) in 1947, and June 12 in 1948 won

   by Eddie Gallione (5 miles, stopped prematurely due to excessive dust)

q  ARDC Midget race

r  NESCRA Stock Car race

s  non-sanctioned (?) New York State Championship, 4-Crown sort of event, other winners: Bob Whitbeck (Hot Rods), Paul Venth

   (Midgets) and Russ Peterson (Stock Cars), all over 12½ miles

t  NASCAR Midget race, also NASCAR Stock Car races on July 28 (rain), postponed to August 1 in 1951 won by Fonty Flock

   (100 miles), and July 29 in 1955 won by Junior Johnson (80 miles, stopped prematurely due to track damage)

u  URC sanction

At one point, in the early thirties, the Fair even dropped the horse racing from the programme in order to upgrade the track with banked turns, but protests from the horsemen soon ended that enterprise. Still, the races during that time were second to none in the area, and most of the best drivers of the nation competed at one time or another.

After 50 years of the Albany-Schenectady "Bi-County" Fair, the event became a "Tri-County" Fair in 1945, officially the Albany-Schenectady-Greene County Fair. Alas, the good times for auto racing were over now, with a series of promotional and organisational disasters ruining the good reputation of the fairgrounds. A brief respite from decay was gained when a local boy, Lee Wallard, rose to national stardom, but his tragic accident at Reading forestalled any chance of an Altamont revival.

During his long period of recuperation, Wallard himself tried his hand at the business of race promoting (amongst many other things), but he was out of luck as well. Sam Nunis, having promoted the Altamont races for Hankinson Speedways and Pyramid Speedways in the early thirties, then later with his own SNS organisation, was the last AAA promoter in 1954, before Ed Otto closed shop with a couple of NASCAR shows (Midgets and Stocks), and a URC Sprint Car event.

Attendance figures are hard to come by, but Fair events appear to have drawn generally in the vicinity of 10,000, with still dates about half of that, but the Memorial Day shows were usually better off, often rivalling the Fair races. Earliest attendance figures I could find (1930) were also BY FAR the largest, for what it's worth: 55,000 over the two days of racing at the Fair! I very much doubt the accuracy, though, with a reported grandstand capacity of 3,000...

[MPea3]

When in google earth

file>save>save image

[fines]

Lap records in qualifying, possibly incomplete:

30.0" - 60.0 mph - Bill Albertson, 1920? Duesenberg (1928-09-14)
29.6" - 60.8 mph - Fred Frame, 1930 Duesenberg (1931-09-18)
29.2" - 61.6 mph - Billy Winn, 1933 Perriman/Miller? (1933-06-03)
??? 28.6" - 62.9 mph - Billy Winn, 1933 Perriman/Miller? (1933-09-15) ???
29.0" - 62.0 mph - Lloyd Vieaux, 1934 Vieaux/Cragar (1934-05-30)
28.2" - 63.8 mph - Bob Sall, 1934 Sall/McDowell (1934-09-14)
??? 27.8" - 64.7 mph - Bob Sall, 1934 Sall/McDowell (1935) ???
28.0" - 64.2 mph - Tommy Hinnershitz, 1933 Strupp/Miller (1936-08-14)
27.1" - 66.4 mph - Frankie Bailey, 1936 Hopf/Hal? (1937-08-28)
27.0" - 66.6 mph - Mark Light, 1939 Kauffman?/Miller (1939-05-30)
26.2" - 68.7 mph - Joie Chitwood, 1938 O'Day/Offenhauser (1939-05-30)
26.12" - 68.9 mph - Walt Ader, 1932 Schrader?/Offenhauser (1945-10-13)
25.72" - 69.9 mph - Mike Nazaruk, 1947? Kurtis/Offenhauser Midget (1950-07-08)
25.05" - 71.8 mph - Tommy Hinnershitz, 1947 Horn/Offenhauser (1950-09-04)

[fines]

Thanks for the pointer, Mark, I'll try it next time.

A few notes on a few drivers of note:;)

Bill Albertson - here's an almost completely forgotten ace of the roaring twenties, at best remembered as an obscure car owner at Indianapolis, just maybe as a relief driver of 16 laps on a car that had a fighting chance of a top six, perhaps even a top three finish before it retired. Yes, some bios show him dying at the wheel while qualifying for a dirt track race somwhere in New York State, but what else?

A shame really, because Albertson was as good as they come. His four wins at Altamont, for instance, were far from being hollow victories over motley heaps of local scrap, driven by an assembly of juvenile road ragers, with a sprinkling of the senile racing veteran in a car of like vintage - no, not at all! Finishing second in three of those races were Messrs Ira Vail and Billy Winn (twice), so Albertson was really defeating the champions, old and new! And all of this in an ancient Duesenberg that, as far as I can substantiate, originated as one of the "ReVere Special" Indy Cars of 1920!!

From Penn Yan in upstate New York, not far from Seneca Lake and Watkins Glen, Albertson had been a terror on the local halfmiles since the end of the Great War at the very least, possibly longer. Far from being a shallow youth, he was already well into his thirties when he caught the headlines in major racing news for the first time by finishing second at the 1922 New York State Fair Race at Syracuse, in a field dominated by racing pros from all over the country, the winner Tom Alley coming straight from San Francisco (CA)! Apropos racing pro: Albertson himself remained an amateur all his life, running a service station in Penn Yan for a living.

Apart from his brief Indianapolis interlude, he tried the board track Altoona Speedway in Tipton (PA) at least once, but stuck to the dirt tracks in the main, where he continued to be successful, although his business kept him from running too far abroad. In 1930, however, he was really beginning to blossom, with a series of brilliant results in dirt track 100-milers at Langhorne (PA), Toledo (OH) and Langhorne again: 4th, 1st and 3rd, beating all the top cats in the business, from Wilbur Shaw to Bill Cummings.

In August, he was back in Middletown (NY), 50 miles north of New York City, to defend his laurels as the 1929 winner of the Orange County Fair Sweepstakes. Starting his time trial, he unaccountably lost control on the backstretch, was thrown from his flipping racer and crushed his skull upon hitting the ground. He didn't stand a chance.

This is a qualifying picture of Albertson's Miller 122 at the 1929 Indianapolis 500, the driver in the cockpit is Frank Farmer. I believe the man on the far left, behind the car, to be Bill Albertson: http://www.indy500.c...olis_500/47372#

[fines]

Billy Winn - Speaking of him, have we sung his praises loudly enough, lately, or do we accept that he merely "competed in four Indianapolis 500 races with a best finish of 9th, and drove in four more races as a relief driver, finishing 6th with Shorty Cantlon in 1935"??? Alright then, it's "Billy Winn Appreciation Day"!

Let's start with a little game: before USAC, as a sanctioning body, began its long slide into (relative) insignificance and obscurity, it inaugurated its "Dirt Track Division" in 1971, and began awarding a seperate championship for the "soil movers". By extrapolating National Championship points, won on dirt tracks, for the years prior to 1971, it is possible to "reconstruct" a Dirt Track Division for a time when AAA and USAC races carried rather more prestige, and a list of "Virtual Champions" can be created that reaches back until 1916.

Don't get hot, Don, it's just a game!;)

To this day, only one person managed to win more than three of these championships, whether virtual or real, and this one person did it no less than seven times: without a doubt, A. J. Foyt is and remains the master of all dirt track races "over a substantial distance" (to quell the protests from the Steve Kinser factions!!). But the list of drivers with three "championships" to their name is a bit longer and very illustrious, as is the list of drivers with less than three!!

Going back in time, the "three-peaters" are, six in number: Jimmy Sills, Mario Andretti, Jimmy Bryan, Ted Horn, Rex Mays and... Billy Winn! Yes, that's right, our little friend was the first "certified" super star of dirt track racing, even if this is perhaps a bit unfair on even earlier stars like Ralph de Palma or Ira Vail, who didn't have much of a chance to score dirt track points at all. But "Billy" doesn't even need artificial enhancement of career facts to make his case, although in these days of countless championships it is not always easy to digest facts from a time when there were hardly any at all, and single race results meant so much more, even if they were difficult to set into context.

And anyway, how did this bloke James M. Winn end up with a nickname like "Billy"? That, like so much of his earlier life, is still very much shrouded in mystery. What is known, is that he competed on Eastern dirt tracks since the mid-twenties, often heralded as the "youngest racing driver of America", reputedly driving since the age of sixteen - that would've been circa 1921. By 1928, he was competing with the AAA (as the youngest driver in the association's history, of course - never change a winning slogan!), and already a frequent winner. Born and raised in KCMO, how on earth did he end up in the Northeast? So far, I haven't found an answer for that.

But I have a theory: the "silent partner" theory! Silent partner, that would've been the role for fellow KCMO resident Eddie Sejnost, perhaps of Swedish descent, otherwise a man of mystery. Sejnost was the owner of a fast Model T racer with a Fronty DO head, built sometime around 1926 according to unsubstantiated reports - nothing's for sure here. Already at home, he must've seen the "spark" in the driving of the diminutive Winn, and taken him along to the seaboard in search for better purses and/or more opportunities to race.

Soon, the "boy wonder" would find other rides, as every owner was sure to go for a fast "shoe" like him, and in such cases Eddie would drive his Fronty himself - every now and then over a period of several years, the name Sejnost (in various permutations!!) appears in promotional blurbs of racing promoters, always for events in which Winn is also entered! If no other owner stepped forward, Billy would take over the Fronty, usually #36, and drive the dickens out of the old Tin Lizzy... both car and driver were soon legends!

In the early thirties now, Billy "the kid" (perhaps that's the source for his nick?) won about ten high-profile AAA events every year, and was a consistent high-scorer in championships, although he never won a AAA title. Still, he won the very prestigious and rewarding Hankinson Circuit Championship two years in a row, and finished runner-up the third. Ralph A. Hankinson was the most prolific AAA race promoter with dates and venues all over the country, and he soon developed a special liking for Winn, even though Billy's winnings must've been the single largest post in his business expenditure!

In 1934, Helene Yockey entered his life, and there are some stories, perhaps apocryphal, perhaps not, connected to this: for one thing, Helene was the new wife of fellow driver Joe Russo who was, according to reports at the time, driving "on probation" - to see whether Helene could stand the strain of being a racing driver's wife! The big test was going to be the Indy 500, and Joe came through with flying colours, finishing fifth for his best ever result at that level, and his biggest ever pay cheque. Not that he needed the latter, because Helene was wealthy, you see: a society lady with business interests and a (horse) racing stable.

Ten days later, the "circus" moved on to Langhorne, the deadly "Big O", the never ending left turn that spiralled up and down through Pennsylvania marshland, waiting to wear out scores of inattentive racing drivers - and there were reports of unrest in the Russo marriage! Rumours of betrayal on the side of the bride, and with a fellow racing driver at that!! Billy Winn was entered in Lou Moore's Indy Car that day, but reportedly couldn't make the beast handle - and who would replace him but Joe Russo In the light of subsequent events, almost too spooky to be true!!!

There may actually have been a very simple reason for this driver substitution, like Russo's car breaking down in practice, and him moving into another to keep the promoter's star attraction in the game, but it all adds up to a rather odd tale! Whatever the circumstances, the bare facts remain: Russo crashed the Moore racer, and succumbed to his injuries the next day, while Billy Winn would be Helene's next husband...

With or without her money, Winn was now able to build up his own racing stable, so Eddie Sejnost could sell his Fronty racer, and retire back into obscurity - and Winn continued to be in demand by other owners, so he was never short of work, while keeping the mileage on his own equipment to the bare minimum! Perhaps his greatest feat in racing was his performance in the two Vanderbilt Cup races, in 1936 and '37: In both events, he managed to outqualify some of the visiting European road racing specialists, and ran with the best of them as long as the simple in-and-out transmission of his Sprint Car tolerated the treatment. Of the other Americans, only Rex Mays was able to live with his speed, and that only by driving a sophisticated Grand Prix Alfa Romeo...

Promoters loved Billy Winn, because he was a crowd pleaser wherever he raced. Car owners loved Billy Winn, because he was making lots of dough for them. His fellow racing drivers respected and befriended him, as he was easy to get along with, and fair (if sometimes "robust") on the track. When owner/driver Bob Sall broke a few bones in a crash on Long Island in the summer of 1938, Billy Winn was his first choice to drive his Sprint Car while he was on the mend, so as to get the most out of an unfortunate situation. Sadly, Winn didn't have much chance to work on Sall's bank account, as within a month he crashed fatally.

At the time of his death, Billy Winn had won over fifty AAA Big Car races, more than any other driver with the possible exception of Rex Mays. He had competed in eight National Championship 100-mile dirt track races, winning half of them, and finishing second, third and fifth in the others, with one retirement. And though he had never won a AAA Championship, he had finished in the top five in at least one division every year. True, his Indianapolis record was miserable in comparison, and while it must have bothered him every May, he had plenty of reason to smile the other eleven months of the year. Let us remember him for eleven out of twelve!

[MPea3]

Originally posted by fines
Billy Winn

And anyway, how did this bloke James M. Winn end up with a nickname like "Billy"?

I almost just spit out my hot chocolate all over the keyboard. While I'm not sayign this is necessarily the case, there's at least one plausible hypothesis.

It's not totally uncommon in US culture to assign a different name to someone simply to avoid confusion. Somewhere along the line there may have already been someone named James, Jim or Jimmy that caused them to choose a nickname for him.

I know for example that when Americans first attempted to climb K2 in 1938, the British Transport Officer was a young officer named George Trench. With there being a member of the climbing team named George Sheldon, they assigned Lt. Trench the arbitrary name "Joe".

My own father had a similar problem growing up, although his example has a very odd twist. He was born John Edward Pullen in 1919, but uncles in the same town named John and Edward caused the family to call him Billy, a very common name in the US at that time. He went through his life being called Billy or Bill, even to the point of being shown as "Billy Pullen" in his high school yearbook. When drafted into the service in 1942, he - for what reason I don't remember - had reason to get a copy of his birth certificate, only to find out that the name listed was William Russell Pullen. While it was a simple mistake, he was already known as Bill so he made no effort to correct it and lived out the rest of his life as William Russell.

[fines]

Yeah, I know the problem, too! In school, there used to be at least one other Michael in my class, often more than one. I recall one particular year we were four Michaels, one Horst-Michael and one Michaela!

But nobody called me Billy, thank gawd!;)


__________________
Fines

aka Michael Ferner

[Peter Leversedge]

At one stage when I had a auto repair shop I had 2 mechanics working for me and they were both Peter so there was 3 Peters out of a staff or 3 !!

[Lee Nicolle]

Originally posted by Peter Leversedge
At one stage when I had a auto repair shop I had 2 mechanics working for me and they were both Peter so there was 3 Peters out of a staff or 3 !!

You should have just called them Fred and John to save confusion.
I once had a young bloke called Lee, he got called Leetoo!

[fines]

Frank Brisko - Doing the Google/Wikipedia test, there appears to be little noteworthy about Frank Brisko: one of a myriad of American racing drivers, covering countless miles each May at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway without much success. Yep, he appears to have survived the ordeal. No, he never won anything of note, and yes, that's all there is to it. Next...

That would already be a harsh verdict even if it was about the racing driver Frank Brisko alone, but it totally neglects the racing mechanic, engineer and craftsman Frank Brisko, for that is what he was, closest to his heart! Few of his contemporaries in racing could actually be described as a klutz with a spanner, but Frank was certainly one of the most gifted when it came to servicing, developing or even building a racing car. And most likely, he did all that without any formal training, too.

A resident of West Allis (WI), home of the Wisconsin State Fair Park and thus one of the earliest temples of speed in the country, Frank began racing as a teenager on motorcycles, soon after the Great War. By the middle of the twenties, he was one of the best known drivers in Wisconsin, and began racing (and winning) in several other Midwestern states, for almost any "outlaw" sanctioning body then in existence. In 1929 he felt ready for the next step and, together with his longtime sponsor Eddie Burbach, he purchased the former Doc Shattuc Miller 122 off Pennsylvanian Deacon Litz, registered with the AAA and entered the car for Indy, where he managed a solid 11th place finish.

Over the next two or three years, Brisko raced this machine in many AAA dirt track events with much success, until the old Speedway horse, never much of a threat on dirt anyway, couldn't keep up with the latest 4-cylinder cars anymore. Nothing loath, he shoehorned half of an Hispano-Suiza V8 aircraft engine into the Miller chassis, and continued to race the car a few years longer, before selling it on. Brisko certainly wasn't the first one to race one of the fabled "Hisso" engines, but he just may have been the first to do so with a specially fabricated crankcase - usually, Hissos were run with one bank of cylinders removed, and the resultant holes in the crankcase closed with simple bolt-on plates. Brisko's tailor-made solution was soon imitated.

Of course, he also went back to Indy, and to this end he bought the Dave Evans two-man car in 1931. Based on a 1925 Miller FD, in fact the special "outboard brakes" car, Frank would own, maintain and develop this racer over the next 15 years, and though it was never very successful, it was certainly an interesting technical exercise, and by 1946 he had it totally transformed, both technically and in appearance! His engineering prowess was soon in demand, also by other teams, and in 1932 he was engaged by the Four Wheel Drive Auto Co. of Wisconsin, who earlier that year had contracted Harry Miller to design and build a 4wd Indy Car.

Brisko certainly was an ideal choice for FWD (and Miller!), as he was not only a capable tester and engineer, but also a fast driver: he qualified on the front row for the Indy 500 two years in a row and led most of the 1934 race, the best the car ever ran at the IMS. He also took in some dirt track races, and finished 2nd at Langhorne, the best ever result in any race for this type of car. After Miller's bankruptcy, he built up a "grey" Miller 255 engine, using patterns and drawings loaned from Fred Offenhauser and boat racer Dick Loynes. With this engine, the car finished 4th at Indy in 1936, and helped Mauri Rose win the National Championship that year.

In 1933, Brisko built a new engine for Mike Boyle's two-man Indy Car in return for sponsorship, using some Miller "Marine" components and a new block on a split crankcase, as opposed to the typical Miller one-piece unit. Neither he nor Boyle sought any lasting fame as constructors or manufacturers, they were merely racers looking for an edge, and so they probably didn't think much about specifying their chassis and engine as "Miller" on the entry form, but of course, Miller never built such a car or such an engine, and was anyway going out of business fast. Thus, in my opinion the car should actually be called a Boyle/Brisko and not a Miller, as it led a substantial part of the 1933 Indy 500 in the hands of Babe Stapp, winning outright a year later with Bill Cummings, and taking third in 1935.

In that year, Frank showed up at Indy with a development of that engine, and now he called it a Brisko as it was in effect a combination of his last two engine projects, basically a 2-valve version of the Miller/Offenhauser 255. It didn't qualify at first, but the next year it was comfortably fast enough, yet a multitude of problems prevented it from finishing. For 1937, he appeared with a couple of new 6-cylinder engines in old cars (the aforementioned Evans front-drive chassis and the Sparks-Weirick "Catfish"), without much improvement in fortunes, but he used those two old war horses to build two new cars for 1938, with updated engines to comply with the new rules. Usually qualifying well enough over the next few years, sadly he didn't have much luck in the races and finished only once, in 9th place.

By now Brisko had moved to Chicago, where he and his son Gerald worked mostly for the local Elgin Piston Pin Co., a longtime sponsor of racing in Illinois, and in 1946 tasted sweet success for the last time when Emil Andres brought the team's Maserati 8CTF home in 4th at Indy. The Briskos soldiered on for a few more years, until the money ran out, then they quietly disappeared.

Brisko was always well liked by his peers, and when you see pictures of him in period you instantly know why: his ever present and infectious smile is impossible to ignore. My favourite picture of him (Indy Cars of the 1940s by Karl Ludvigsen, p54) shows him in 1948, toiling away over the tired old Maser with his son and crew, obviously cracking jokes along the way, and the huge smiles on the faces of all and sundry tells you all you need to know - these guys are having fun at work! Sadly, on race day the supercharger would pack in after only a single lap, and that would be the end of an illustrious career, at Indy and elsewhere.

[fines]

Lloyd Vieaux - Few of the 10,000 people in attendance at the 1934 Memorial Day Sweepstakes at Altamont can have doubted that, a year on, this resident of Beverly Hills with the Hollywood good looks would be starring at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, rather than the Albany-Schenectady County Fairgrounds, so convincing was the show of the "Flying Frenchman"! Almost effortlessly, Vieaux set a new track record during the time trials, then went on to win his heat and the 15-mile feature event, seriously rattling the confidence of runaway championship leader Johnny Hannon, who trailed by a full second in qualifying, and spun out of the main event in frustration.

Five weeks later, July 4th, Vieaux repeated his holiday show at Atlanta, Georgia's Lakewood Speedway: lap record on the dusty one-mile track in qualifying, winner of trophy dash, fast heat and feature event, defeating Indy 500 starters Johnny Sawyer and Chet Gardner in the process. No question, this man was on the move! Hannon may have had a head start, by winning the first three races of the season, including a point-heavy 100-miler at Langhorne, but the year was still young, and the many events during the fall would provide plenty of opportunity to whittle away at the Pennsylvanian's edge. Before the fair season was to begin in earnest at Harrington, Delaware's Kent-Sussex County Fair at the end of the month, there was one more opportunity to eat into Hannon's advantage on the red clay of Georgia...

Lloyd Vieaux started racing in the mid-twenties, but his early years are still shrouded in mystery. Of French stock, he was very probably a descendant of a prominent family of early settlers in Wisconsin, and spent most if not all of his youth in the Dairyland, but does not seem to have raced there until very much later in his career. In fact, the first trace I can find of "Frenchy" Vieaux, the racing driver, is a 1926 event in... Nevada! So he was likely already living in California then.

Speaking of California, Vieaux was a prominent figure of the "Ascot crowd", naturally... but as a car owner! It was his racer, as best as I can determine, in which Jimmy Sharp had the accident that not only cost him the 1930 championship, but almost ended his career. To date, I haven't found any evidence that Vieaux ever raced at Ascot, indeed the only Pacific Coast appearance as a driver that I have is a consy win at Oakland in early 1932. The next month finds him racing at Langhorne, on the other side of the continent, and an entirely new chapter of his life begins.

Whatever it was that made him race on the Eastern seabord, he was an instant hit: he won heat races at Langhorne, Ho-Ho-Kus and Reading, and before the year was out he had taken a main event at Readville in Massachusetts. The next year was even better, with another feature win (Labor Day at Atlanta), fifth place in AAA Eastern Circuit points, and fourth in the Hankinson Circuit Championship, one place better than Indy winner Fred Frame!

The 1934 season started on a high for Vieaux, after beating Billy Winn to third place in the Langhorne 100 on April 28 - that was a massive 120 points to build upon, when he had scored less than 500 throughout the whole of his 1933 campaign! By winning that event, Johnny Hannon made 240, though, and continued to add to his score with wins at Pottsville and Reading. Winn won a second Reading event, and then Vieaux at Altamont, and before long the three of them were engaged in a bitter fight for the championship.

Having won the two previous events at Lakewood Speedway, Lloyd had high hopes of doing well on July 22, when a 25-miler promised an opportunity to "make hay" - the main event alone would be worth a fine slice of 60 championship points. Buoyed by another fast time in qualifying, he was dicing with Johnny Sawyer and Billy Winn for the lead in the fast heat, when he lost control on the front stretch, crashing just past the grandstand. 15,000 onlookers, including his wife, watched in horror as Vieaux was catapulted from his car high into the air, with Winn actually missing him by passing underneath his body (!), but it didn't matter, he was out of luck anyway.

Pruned before he had a chance to fully blossom, Lloyd Vieaux had been a sure-fire candidate for the IMS rookie class of '35 - he died just before reaching "immortality".

[fines]

Bob Sall - When remembering the careers of US racing drivers, the trouble with Indianapolis is that it is too big an event, and that it tends to overshadow everything else. Dominant drivers of the past, like Rex Mays or Ted Horn, in reality super stars of their era, these days are generally viewed as a couple of unlucky guys, who just couldn't find the way into that victory lane. Other great champions like Ernie Triplett, Doc MacKenzie, Billy Winn or Chet Gardner, hugely popular and successful in their times, are almost forgotten today because they had an indifferent record at the brickyard - no disrespect meant, but looking at their obituaries at Motorsport Memorial, for example, one could be forgiven for thinking they were "mere amateurs" of the sport! Well, at least they rate a mention at all...

But, there is probably not one single driver in the history of our sport, where the difference between period stature and contemporary acclaim is as disproportionate as that in the case of Bob Sall. Googling his name, one finds that he "was an American racecar driver", accompanied by extensive statistics of his one miserable attempt at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Oh yes, he "was inducted in the National Sprint Car Hall of Fame in 1992", but for what? Nobody seems to recall... a twenty-year career at the very top of his profession, reduced to about an hour of driving a recalcitrant mongrel of a semi-stock racing car (a failed experiment at best)? One doesn't really know whether to laugh or to cry about that sort of "appraisal"...



So, who was he really, this "Bob Sall" - was he the Italian ace, Roberto Saldi, racing under a nom de course, as some authors have us believe? Or was he Roberto Saluti, "merely" a descendant of Italian forebears?? Or even, as the anonymous author of his career resumé at the "National Sprint Car Hall of Fame & Museum" has it, Antonio Saldutti of Dutch-Italian descent??? Actually, his name was simply Robert (junior) Sall, and he had probably as much Italian blood in his veins as Joie Chitwood had Cherokee Indian! Never underestimate the imaginative power of racing promotions...;)

Sall was raised in Bergen County, in the heart of New Jersey, and home of the "Bergen Herald", whose Motoring section was soon to become the "National Auto Racing News", and later "National Speed Sport News", the granddaddy of all US racing papers. There must've been something in the air, for apart from a number of racetracks in the immediate neighbourhood (e.g. Woodbridge, Ho-Ho-Kus and Union Speedways), Bergen also borders Passaic County and its seat Paterson, home of "Gasoline Alley", the biggest accumulation of racing teams in the country just before and after WW2! And Sall was a big, big part of all that!

Speaking of "big", there can hardly ever have been a racing driver with more unlikely looks, given that Sall was small and slim, almost frail looking, and on top of that bespectacled! But, belying his appearance, he was tough, and then some! Yes, he was a "money driver", and thus almost always around at the finish of a race, so he rarely crashed at all, of course, but when he did, "he didn't take no prisoners" - like on that day at Altamont, when he upended so hard, his head actually carved a furrow in the track surface, with the somersaulting car on top of him!!! Photographs of that spectacular encounter with fate made the news across the whole nation! But Sall not only repaired his racer and took the start of the postponed event three days later - he even won it! Talk about being a tough guy...

And, talk about a winner: that victory at the 1934 Fourth of July Race on the Altamont Fairgrounds was the first of - count'em - nine wins at that track alone! And, whisper it quietly, but that wasn't even the track with most of his wins! Unlike his peers, Sall was a multiple winner every year, without fail, even if he missed out on the busiest part of the year, the fair season, no less than three times: once through injury, and one season each by running for "outlaw" organisations, IMCA and CSRA. And yet, according to figures from the research of the late Phil Harms, no other driver has won as many AAA Sprint Car races before WW2 - actually, apart from Rex Mays, no one comes even close: Sall 64, Mays 60, Winn 46, Triplett 36, MacKenzie 30, Horn and Hinnershitz don't even make the top ten. Impressed? You should be!

So, with all of this background, why was it then that he didn't get a break at Indy? Perhaps, and that is just a supposition, Indy Car owners didn't believe he had the stamina to go 500 miles - after all, the vast majority of his wins came in 10-, 15- or 20-mile jaunts around county fairgrounds, fifteen to twenty minutes the most! Yes, he did win a tough Langhorne 50-miler in record time, and finished well in a number of 100-milers at Syracuse and Langhorne again, but add to all that his physical attributes and one can see them having a point. Also, Indy tended to be a "closed shop" at the top, and over the years successful dirt track drivers have always found it difficult to attract good rides at the brickyard. Sall made the trip to the Hoosier capital for many years, until he despaired of ever finding even a just reasonable enough car, so he finally gave up on Indy, and stuck to the Sprints and occasional Midget or Stock Car events.

Having been an owner/driver throughout most of his career, racing appears to have been a hard habit to shake for Sall, after selling his equipment at the end of the thirties. Too many of his old friends in Gasoline Alley asked him to do "one more race" for them, including the new owner of his former car, and most of the time he did more than one, simply because he was too good to let go of! So, he got to race his old car again, only now as a second-string entry for another owner/driver, who now had to accept getting beaten by Bob from time to time. This new owner, by the way, just happened to be Ted Horn, and Sall not only beat him and his newer number one car at some county fair schmooze, but also at Langhorne, the world's toughest dirt mile. Oh, and he bettered Horn's Langhorne track record, too!

He was still in demand, after WW2, but was already setting his sights on a more sedate occupation, as a "Field Manager" for NASCAR, of all things! After a few more races in the fall of 1945, he called it a day. Still, when the traveling AAA "circus" came to New Jersey on Memorial Day in 1946, Bob Sall was on hand, evidently to watch the programme, but when Johnny Shackleford failed to arrive in time for time trials (he had stayed at Indianapolis until the last moment, hoping to garner a ride), car owner Ted Nyquist asked Bob to qualify his newly acquired Sprint Car, the famous Peters/Offenhauser (out of Gasoline Alley, of course). Sall acquiesced, took the car out, broke the track record and returned to the pits, quietly handing over the car for the late arrival to win the consy, and then the feature.

A class act, like all of his career before.

[fines]

Doc MacKenzie - Alright, folks, it's myth debunking time! I've made

Sensational Discoveries in Recent Research!!!

Doc MacKenzie did not die because he shaved off his beard!!!! He actually shaved it off more than a full month before his fatal accident! It was widely reported in the papers on July 21, the day after his marriage to Verna Mather of Langhorne in the hospital at Reading, that it was already gone - in fact, the shaving was actually presaged a day or so before it eventually happened!!

Thousands of racing drivers around the world have stopped shaving on race day morning for NOTHING!!! What's more, I've made even

Further Sensational Discoveries in Recent Research!!!

Removing facial hair is actually not an unlucky omen, but a lucky one!!!! Doc MacKenzie did not die in his first beardless race, no! The truth is, he raced the day before in Springfield (IL), and you will never guess it, he broke the track record in qualifying!!! Yes, it was broken again by another driver a few minutes later, but MacKenzie led the 100-mile race comfortably from second on the grid, until he tired and called for relief at the pits - imagine, such good judgement for a driver, to accept one's limits so soon after an injury!!! GOOD LUCK! His teammate took over, and the two of them finished second again - GOOOOD LUCK!!! And,

The Most Sensational Discovery in Recent Research!!!

Doc MacKenzie died because he tied his right shoelace first on race day morning!!! It wasn't the shaving, it was the shoe!! And Ted Horn shunned the knife to no avail, because he also tied the right the shoelace first on that October day at Du Quoin, that's why he rode to his death, with a stubble! I will now try to do more research about shoelaces, and see if I can find out which shoe Rex Mays, Johnny Hannon et al tied first!

[fines]

Doc MacKenzie - On a more serious note...;) "Doc" MacKenzie, born George MacKenzie to a prominent physicians family in Pennsylvania in 1906, was he "the man who died twice racing", or what happened on that August afternoon in 1928? Confusion? Let's hear Spencer Riggs, author of Langhorne! - No Man's Land, the recent best-selling racing track monograph:

MACKENZIE COUSINS
Over the years, there has been a measure of confusion over the Mackenzie cousins, George W. "Doc" Mackenzie, who became a great champion driver, nearly winning Indy in 1936, and his cousin George D. "Doc" Mackenzie, who died at Langhorne, in 1928. The young racers came from well-to-do families, where physicians were the norm. Actually, George was a common name throughout the family. The only distinction between the two cousins was different middle initials.
The more famous of the two, George W. Doc Mackenzie, was a tremendous dirt track driver. His father was a general practitioner with an office in Eddington, where the family lived, plus an additional office in Philadelphia proper. At one time, Dr. Mackenzie owned approximately forty percent of the real estate in Bucks County.
In 1935, Doc became the first driver to claim both the AAA Eastern Sprint Car Championship and the Hankinson Circuit title in the same year. Many of his exploits at Langhorne have gone down in history as some of the greatest races ever driven on American soil. Doc's brother Malcolm - known as "Mac" Mackenzie, also raced and was an excellent mechanic.
George D. Doc Mackenzie, who died of his Langhorne injuries, lived in Somerton, Pennsylvania, where his father was a well-known eye, ear, nose and throat specialist.
When he was fatally injured, "Young Doc," as he was sometimes referred to, was only 20-years-old [sic!]. In February 1928, he had graduated from Frankford High School where he'd starred in football. Reportedly, despite his age, the youngster had been married three years and had two children. All this occurred while he was still attending Frankford. No doubt this was quite a sensation in that day and time. It was said that he intended to attend Pennsylvania State College in the fall of '28.
The original race car the Mackenzie boys put together was a rocker-arm Chevrolet. The first time they tried to enter the car at Langhorne, they were turned down for safety reasons. Thereafter, they took the car to Mac's house in Andalusia, well away from their fathers' watchful eyes. Mac was George D's brother and a mechanical wizard. Under Mac's expert mechanical prowess, the once bundle of odd parts and bailing wire became a race-worthy machine. When the two fathers found out what the cousins were up to, they tried every way in the world to dissuade them from racing, but nothing could change their minds.

(Full quote in order ot get to the bottom of this)

Aha! So there were two drivers by the name of George MacKenzie!! Mind you, Doc wouldn't have been the first (nor the last!) US racing driver to read his own death notice in the papers! But something's fishy here, have you noticed? For a start, whose brother was "Mac" now, George W. or George D.? Later in the book, in different chapters, he's once more mentioned both as the brother and the cousin of the surviving, or shall we say, the "famous MacKenzie"! Mmh! :

Which brings us to another conundrum: I have always understood the real name of the "famous MacKenzie" to have been George D. - I am sure I have seen more than one such reference, and from a time well past the other one's death, so there's no chance of a confusion here! The only reference to a George W. MacKenzie I could ever find was the death notice of August 1928!! I know, I know, middle initials are a mine field, best avoided, and I wouldn't hesitate a minute to accept another man's thorough research, but in the light of him obviously going against all accepted wisdom here, wouldn't it have been worth a sentence or two to acknowledge that fact? Or is he just as confused about it as I am??

And anyway, while it's certainly possible that the "not-so-famous" MacKenzie was known as "Young Doc" to friends and relatives, I doubt very much that he raced under the name "Doc MacKenzie" also, and it's obviously only confusing the issue even more! In fact, there is evidence that he actually raced under the nom de course of "Speedy Maxwell", something which would tie in well with the reported family aversion against his racing. For future reference, I will go on to call the famous driver "Doc MacKenzie", and the other one simply "George MacKenzie", thus improving clarity without unnecessary clutter (I hope!).

Having said all that, and apart from getting George's accident date wrong by one week, Riggs did a pretty good job of unearthing some interesting biographical information here. Reports at the time were split on George's hometown, between Philadelphia and Somerset, but since the latter is nearer to Pittsburgh I believe Somerton to be right. In fact Somerton, like Eddington and Andalusia, is just over the Pennsylvania Turnpike from Langhorne, barely five miles away, while Frankford is just down the Delaware, so it all fits in nicely. About the correct middle initial, and the exact relation of Mac to George and Doc, maybe our genealogy experts can help?

[fines]

Tony Willman - What do Tommy Hinnershitz (legendary seven-time AAA/USAC Sprint Car champion), Buster Warke (one of the best ever chief mechanics and a former driver) and John Bagley (one of the most successful car owners of all time, and also a former driver) have in common? They all have, at one time or another, independently from each other and without reservation, stated that they regarded Tony Willman as the best American driver of his (or any) time! That's not a shabby recommendation to get from one's peers, helpers and employers, especially from such well known and versed colleagues of the trade - can his record back that up?

Do you recall Phil Harms's statistics of pre-war main event winners, mentioned in the Bob Sall post? I only listed the top five positions to prevent his name from cropping up "too early", but yes, Tony Willman was sixth overall, with 29 wins. Not too shabby, yet again, but still: if he was that good, why doesn't he show up higher than sixth? Mind you, he still ranks higher than such well known and acclaimed throttle pushers as Joie Chitwood, Chet Gardner, Duke Nalon, Al Gordon or Bill Holland, to say nothing of Horn and Hinnershitz again. Or Fred Frame, Bill Cummings, Kelly Petillo, Wilbur Shaw, Mauri Rose and Floyd Roberts, for that matter - they all competed regularly against Tony and all the others, it is just that they hit "the jackpot" (at least) once, and the others didn't. Another case of "bad luck in May", then?

Well, in any case, everybody's entitled to an opinion, and we may chose to ignore such statements as mentioned in the first paragraph if we wish, but we may also try to look for clues as to why somebody (and not just anybody!) would utter such an opinion. So, let us take a good look at the career of Tony Willman, and at the characteristics that made up the man. From South Milwaukee (WI), Willman started racing in the mid-twenties already, and had his first really big win in 1931 at the Altoona Speedway, the last of the great board tracks!

He dallied around the "outlaw scene" for a couple more years, before joining the AAA for good in 1933, racing a variety of mostly local cars around the few Midwest tracks of the organisation, like the Cook County Fairgrounds in Chicago, and the Wisconsin State Fair Park in his hometown. No, he didn't exactly "go places", but he was a reliable finisher, almost always in the money even in "shitty" cars, just waiting for the big break to come his way. Which is exactly what happened in 1936!

Doc MacKenzie had dominated dirt track racing in 1935 like no other driver before him, and to celebrate the fact (and put the race winnings to good use) his car owner, the aforementioned John Bagley, built a new car for him in 1936, and put Willman in the other one. Tony grabbed this chance with both of his hands, and at the end of the year he had not only won a second consecutive Hankinson Championship for Bagley, but also had had his first drive in the National Championship, at the Vanderbilt Cup, where he retired early but helped an ageing Deacon Litz to a solid tenth place finish.

From now on, he had it "made": My records aren't entirely clear about it, but I believe that Willman placed in the top ten of the final point standings in both AAA regional championships for every year from 1936 to 1941, a very rare feat indeed!!* At Indy, he was now getting rides worthy of his talent, if not exactly up to the task of covering 500 miles in a single race - in five years, he never once finished the long grind in the Hoosier capital, but once again served as a relief driver for a top ten finish (Harry McQuinn, 7th in '38). That same car, by the way, also gave him the biggest of heartbreaks, two years later: he was "bumped" from the Indy starting field at the last minute, by the "spare" dirt car of the team he drove for the year before!

So yes, an indifferent career at "the Speedway" (we've had that before!) and a good (yet hardly outstanding!) dirt track resumé - have we missed anything? Let's dig a little deeper: Tommy Hinnershitz has been quoted as saying: "If he had stayed around - he was getting better equipment to drive all the time - he would have been another A. J. Foyt. I really believe they would have been comparing Foyt to him." Wow! That's some statement to make, ain't it?

But here's also a clue for us, the "equipment"! And it's true, Willman never really got those first-class rides, except here and there, and once in a while. Even at Bagley's team, he continued to drive the "old nail" after MacKenzie's death, while Frankie Beeder drove the new car to another Hankinson/AAA "double". Willman ended up buying the car from Bagley, painted an ironic "Old Rusty" on the side of the scuttle and towed it from track to track as a backup car, in case he couldn't find a better ride - if he did, he would let a young hopeful drive the Bagley. Buster Warker was amongst those getting such an inside view into the (un)competitiveness of Willman's equipment, so he really should know what he's talking about!

But why, then, didn't he get those better rides? We haven't yet looked at the man Tony Willman, have we? I guess there's another clue waiting for us: Photographs of a person can't tell you everything, but sometimes you get a sort of "feeling" about someone, especially when that visual impression is supported with a bit of background knowledge. And there is something about this background info, namely that there is hardly any at all! While other drivers of his standing have had interviews and stories published in the papers of the days, or at least some "flashy" token of a personality, Willman appears to have been shy to a fault! He was the north-and-south-pole opposite to the brash, arrogant stereotype that racing promoters (and Hollywood) liked to portray, and by extension wasn't getting any media coverage at all, except for the odd (and memorable) hillbilly portrait!

Then, there's his physique! In one of his books (The Eastern Bull Rings, p11), Buzz Rose has captioned a well known photo of Willman (after a tough Langhorne race), "Would you pick a fight with this man?", fully well knowing that any reasonable man with a sense of self-preservation would instantly cry out "Hell! NO!!!" - which actually and in all probability owes at least as much to his partly tired, partly annoyed facial expression. Well, I guess Tony really didn't care too much for victory smiles and press photographers, apparently all he ever wanted to do was race... and win!


* If true, it is actually unparalleled.

[bpratt]

Just stumbled across the Altamont newspaper pdfs myself. Also a short film clip of what is supposed to be Altamont Fairgrounds in 1947 here:
http://blip.tv/file/1697729/

[fines]

Nice find, Brian! Gives one an idea of the conditions on those county fairgrounds: dusty! Even the starter had a busy time avoiding an accident involving himself!

A little postscript to Lloyd Vieaux:

Having won the two previous events at Lakewood Speedway (...)

... is not quite right, I'm afraid, but Lloyd's Atlanta record was still second to none: a total of five AAA races had been held at Lakewood Park before that fateful day, with Vieaux winning two of them, and finishing second in the other three, so Lloyd was a very popular fellow in the South!

1933-07-04, 25m, 1st Chet Gardner, 2nd Lloyd Vieaux, 3rd Buddy Callaway
1933-09-04, 30m, 1st Lloyd Vieaux, 2nd Johnny Moretti, 3rd ?
1933-10-07, 20m, 1st Wes Breeding, 2nd Lloyd Vieaux, 3rd Speedy Goff
1933-10-08, 20m, 1st Gus Schrader*, 2nd Lloyd Vieaux, 3rd Wes Breeding
1934-07-04, 20m, 1st Lloyd Vieaux, 2nd Johnny Sawyer, 3rd Chet Gardner

* in what appears to have been his last ever AAA appearance.

There is some confusion about the Lakewood track record, and how often and when it was broken by Vieaux (and others). Apparently, before the first AAA event, Sig Haugdahl held the record at 44.4" (possibly 44.8"), and Vieaux broke it unofficially in practice (43.8") on July 1 in 1933, but it was apparently Gardner who took the record in the official time trials (44.2", possibly 44.4") three days later. A year on, Lloyd was said to have taken the record on July 4 (44.2", with some sources showing a different time), and again on July 22 (43.6"), but in any event it seems that Gus Schrader had done a 42.9" on November 4 in 1933, in what appears to have been an independent ("open comp") event - the "Southern Championships", postponed to November 12 and won by Buddy Callaway. In those days, drivers moved around sanctioning bodies relative freely, but AAA would only recognise records in its own events, and quite rightly so since "outlaw" timing and scoring was often subject to fraud and hype.

Contrary to my earlier post, Vieaux seems not to have been ejected from his racing car, and Winn apparently dived underneath both car and driver! As to the cause of the accident, expert opinion was apparently divided between "overdriving" and mechanical failure, with a slight edge for the former. Death was said to have been instantaneous, "his skull [having been] crushed and his neck broken in several places" - a rollover bar might have saved him. The crash happened in full view of the grandstand, just passed the finishing line and into turn one, and at the very next event (Labor Day) some hearts must've stopped beating when Billy Winn and Chet Gardner, after almost dead-heating for the main event victory, collided at the very same spot, still at maximum speed (and probably maximum adrenalin, too!) :eek:, but both escaped injury.

[fines]

A few loose ends to tie up outside of the time limit for editing posts:

Billy Winn - I recently re-read Johnny Gerber's thoughts about Billy's death in "Outlaw Sprint Car Racer" (Winn won many races for Gerber in 1936/7), and it's quite moving even in Gerber's matter-of-fact style of recollection. He was convinced of a mechanical failure as to the cause for the accident, and relates how he went to the hospital after the race. "He was under oxygen but never regained consciousness and died at 11:45 that evening. (...) He was a cocky little fellow, not appreciated by some, but we always got along well." Gerber goes on for about a full page, much more than the "usual quota" for deceased drivers in his book, and you can feel he was genuinely touched. I thought I'd include that here since there's no substitute for first-hand accounts.


Doc MacKenzie - More on his genealogy: "He was the son of Dr. Arthur MacKenzie of Eddington and a nephew of Dr. George W. MacKenzie of Philadelphia, ear, nose, and throat specialist who in 1932 received the gold medal of the University of Vienna for his surgical work." (Chicago Daily Tribune, Aug 24, 1936)

Perhaps I should expand a little bit on the racing driver Doc MacKenzie, as he's probably not that well known today - not at all surprising even for a man who was often (and accurately!) described as "colourful" in a time before the invention of modern colour photography! In a way, MacKenzie was the Jeff Gordon of the thirties: handsome, eloquent, married to a model - and a flashy dresser! He was also constantly in the news, often quoted as the "fatalist racing driver" - he said openly that he expected to die at the wheel of a racing car, which certainly served to make him a plausible interviewee at the time!

He also had a reputation for being reckless on the track, although that is probably an embellishment post mortem, based on the two accidents in his last three races, for apart from that, he didn't crash too often - unlike Johnny Hannon, for example, who not only crashed in three of his last four races, but was generally quite "crash-happy"! Nevertheless, the Doc's first venture into the national headlines came about because of an accident, in an Indy Car two-seater on a dirt track, which killed his riding mechanic William Berry, and put MacKenzie out of racing for almost a year.

After that (1930), he did take quite a few years to make it to the top, hampered as usual by less-than-perfect equipment, but by 1934 he was beginning to win regularly. His big breakthrough came about far from home, on the other side of the continent, and at a rather unusual event: a road race in California! True enough, it was a rather Americanized version of a road course, not that different from an oval, but in any event, the enthusiasts from the West Coast, long since secure in the knowledge that "their own" drivers and cars were the bee's knees, looked on in astonishment when the Doc, starting from pole position by the luck of the draw, commenced to run away from the field and hide! Only bad luck in the form of a badly executed pit stop strategy (nothing's new) forced him back into 4th finishing position, but he was now clearly "hot property"!

Back on the East Coast, he was quickly snapped up by car owner John Bagley from Nebraska, and together they went on a rampage without parallel. Almost twenty AAA feature wins, including 50-milers at Langhorne and Milwaukee, and the Eastern Circuit as well as the Hankinson Championships to boot. Not until Ted Horn in the forties would there be another dominant force as that on the halfmiles in the country! He was all set to repeat in 1936, and possibly even add the Midwestern Championship to his collection, when that accident in Reading intervened. Ever the showman, MacKenzie didn't waste his "sheet time", and continued to be the news item he always was: the shaving of his famous goatee beard, the impromptu marriage in the hospital, with fellow racing driver Floyd Roberts as best man (simply because he was injured the same day as the Doc, and thus available!), everything he did was the perfect fodder for the media - and the papers loved every minute of it! If there had been TV at the time, he'd have had his own show, no doubt!

But racing is a dangerous business, especially in the thirties, and even the mightiest can fall deep - a moment of inattention, not even of his own, during the scrap for the lead after the start of a 25-miler, and it was all over. When he died later that evening, a light was switched off - it would be ages before another driver of his type would emerge. Or, has there ever?


Tony Willman - I didn't want to neglect to mention his many Midget wins, as that was certainly a major part of his career - and sadly, also his undoing (he was thrown from his "doodlebug", probably because of a steering failure, and run over by a fellow driver)! Which brings me to another point: the fact that, much like the great Achile Varzi, he only ever had two major accidents in his career - and the second one killed him!

Let's listen again to Sprint Car legend Tommy Hinnershitz: "In long races he would just wear you down. He could manhandle a car, but look smooth at the same time. Not too many people can do that. Willman was the best driver I ever raced against. He'd never so much as bump you, let alone wreck you. He was so talented he didn't need to drive that way." What better endorsement can one get?

[fines]

Vic Nauman - The first time I saw mention of Vic Nauman was when I started out doing Sprint Car research on the early post-war years. Back then, in the forties and fifties, the biggest and most prestigious race in the East was the Williams Grove Championship Trophy Race (soon to be named the Ted Horn/Bill Schindler Memorial Race), often attracting crowds in excess of thirty or even forty thousand people - at a half-mile track! Each year, the papers would do previews with the names of the past winners, as the first repeat winner was to be entitled to keep possession of the huge gold trophy. These lists always read like a who's who of eastern dirt track racing, with names like Ted Horn (1947), Bill Holland (1946), Joie Chitwood (1941), Duke Nalon (1940) and, er... Vic Nauman (1939)!?

Nauman? Who he?? In such illustrious company??? Hmm... It's certainly no more than a truism that WW2 marks an incision in many lives, a break in the orderly run of things, and motor sport is quite obviously not exempt from that - we know many examples of driver careers ruined by the conflict, or even coming to an end due to injury or death in combat, so I thought for a long time that Nauman had been such an unfortunate victim of cicumstances. But then I found his name again, in a list of non-qualifiers for another Williams Grove event in 1947 - so he was alive, and still competing! But why was he now an also-ran, unable to even make the field, when he had once won such an important event? Had he just been lucky, that one time back in '39, or was he now having trouble to find a ride worthy of his talent? And if the latter, why for heaven's sake? You don't win the Formula One World Championship and end up in a Minardi, do you? A winner will always be a past winner at the very least, and get some sort of opportunities! Puzzling questions, indeed...

It took a little while (and some pre-war research) to find out the true story: Nauman had, indeed, been one of the rising stars before the big conflict, but was injured rather seriously just before the involvement of the USA in the hostilities, and the subsequent cessation of racing. He recuperated and continued in racing, but from accounts he lacked strength in one of his arms, injured in 1941, and apparently had to drive - literally! - single-handedly. He wasn't able to overcome this handicap, although he later raced Touring Cars quite successfully, but in the meantime he was one racing hero who was practically forgotten before he even retired from the sport! Needless to say, there isn't much you can find on him these days, and even the "Eastern Museum of Motor Racing", located at the Latimore Valley Fairgrounds near York Springs (PA), and a well meaning institution of considerable repute, appears to pretty much ignore him and his achievements, even though Nauman was once Track Champion at that very same location!

That was in 1937, and Vic, a former resident of Palmyra and now of Lebanon, both in Central Pennsylvania between Harrisburg and Reading, was just beginning to make his presence felt in the many independent racing organisations of that region. By August of the following year, he was ready to make the leap when the AAA "circus" came to his hometown, and he finished an impressive third in a race won by his experienced neighbour, Mark Light. That was just the beginning, and in no time at all Nauman established himself as a natural frontrunner, finishing his first (half-)season of Eastern AAA competition 15th in points!

By 1939, the two Lebanon drivers began staking their claims, with "Lightie" finishing a distant runner-up in points to Joie Chitwood, and Nauman a very solid 7th, thanks to his surprise victory at Williams Grove against a full complement of eastern stars, and another four wins (at least) in his first full year! He continued this form throughout 1940, winning several more races, mostly still driving the #28 Kreiser/Hal which became as famous and feared as he himself, but getting guest drives in much more competitive machinery then and again. Sadly, his season ended prematurely when he crashed badly while attempting to repeat his Williams Grove Championship Trophy win, so he finished a somewhat disappointing 8th in points.

But Vic was back for 1941, and started the season in dream fashion: 1st, 2nd, 1st and 2nd again in the first four races, taking a clear lead in the championship (286 points) from Ted Horn (222), Bill Holland (177), Ev Saylor (174) and the rest of the boys before it was time for Indianapolis and "the 500". Indications are that Nauman went to the Hoosier capital in search of a ride, as he doesn't show up in any other races that Memorial Day, but unlike Horn, Saylor and other Eastern Circuit frontrunners such as Chitwood and Hinnershitz, he was unable to qualify a car. However, his (likely) presence there on raceday would appear to indicate that he was prepared to drive in relief if neccessary, which would mean that he must've driven in practice, and perhaps completed a "rookie test"? Sadly, no positive proof of that could be found so far, []and so he remains an anonymous US racing driver with no Indianapolis Motor Speedway record... [/:rolleyes:]

Vic returned to the sprint circuit, and was probably still leading the championship when he won at Altamont on August 23, making a clean sweep of the programme with fast time in qualifying, and first place in the fast heat. The next day he returned to Williams Grove, not far from his home, for the third running of the Championship Trophy Race, and another chance to carry off the valuable trophy. Sadly, just like the year before he tried too hard, ending his frontline career three years, almost to the day, after his first AAA start.

In those three years he had won about a dozen main events, perhaps even more, and was establishing himself as a genuine contender to be ranked amongst America's top ten racing drivers, but the quirky way of running the National Championship in those days makes that a difficult thing to evaluate from this distance - there were hardly a dozen competitive Champ Cars around back then, competing in only a couple of races per year, and Nauman missed most of them through injury anyway. A good pointer to what could have been may be the career of the man who would eventually usurp Vic's lead in the Eastern Circuit Championship, as he was of approximately the same age, and had about the same experience level, having competed under AAA sanction for only a couple of months longer - his name? Bill Holland.

Fate can be a fickle fellow, and while Holland died a famous man, Nauman is not even a name in the stats books today - like Lloyd Vieaux or, to a lesser extent, Frankie Bailey, Wally Campbell or even Bob Sall, they are blank pages in an age that is so captivated by the word "information" that it often confuses simple numbers with achievements. The German word for computer science is "Informatik", and it's not an accident that it's so close to "Information" (which has the same meaning as the English word) - but it's not the same, and today many people have a hard time understanding that. If my articles on those forgotten heroes can save a few names from vanishing in the darkness of a past era, I will have accomplished a goal worth accomplishing. In my humble opinion, Vic Nauman's is a name worthy of remembrance - he was a GREAT RACER!

[fines]

Mike Nazaruk - "Only" a Midget winner at Altamont, but I'd be truly mad to let this opportunity slip by without elaborating upon one of the truly iconic figures of US autoracing - "Iron Mike" - Hollywood! Here's a story waiting for you!!

Nazaruk! Maverick, or Maniac? "Merely" Desperate, or even Destitute? Driving, or Driven? Chicken or Egg - was Nazaruk made for Racing, or Racing made for Nazaruk? - Of Ukrainian descent, Mike had seen hell during World War Two: Guadalcanal, Bougainville, Guam, Iwo Jima. When he returned to the US, he was barely twenty-four, and the prototype of a new generation of racing drivers: with that sort of experience at that age, his appetite for adrenalin was boundless, insatiable - if the war couldn't kill him, what in heaven's name could? He was frighteningly fearless, simply FEARLESS.

Originally from upstate New York, he moved to Long Island to find work with Grumman Aircraft, and settled in North Bellmore, near East Meadow and Hempstead. What he also found there within walking distance was Freeport Stadium, a busy one-fifth-of-a-mile oval where the Midgets of the American Racing Drivers Club filled the stands on a regular basis. ARDC was Bill Schindler's club, the charismatic New Yorker who'd lost his left leg in a Big Car crash on Long Island in 1936, and subsequently moved there to become a legend in Midget racing circles. By 1948, Nazaruk was racing alongside Schindler in the team of another Midget legend, Mike Caruso, and the two of them were battling other stars, such as Ted Tappett, Georgie Rice and Steve McGrath, for owners like Frank Curtis, Bill Cheesman or Eddie Bourgnon. It was the Golden Age of Midget Racing, and Freeport Stadium was the hub of the Midget world.

By 1949, the so-called "Midget craze" was dying, and drivers as well as owners began looking for another way to make a living. Schindler returned to his first love, racing Big Cars under AAA sanction, and was instantly successful at that. Nazaruk followed in "Bronco Bill's" footsteps as the 1949 ARDC Champion, and would have loved to continue the route to AAA (and Indianapolis!), but with a surplus of Midget chauffeurs on the lookout for Big Car rides, he was having a hard time attracting attention. Luckily for him, his team boss Mike Caruso was also fancying the leap, and got one of his Midgets "stretched" into a Sprint Car, complete with a supercharged Midget engine! The car was a little bit late in getting ready, but when it was there was no stopping "Iron Mike" and his little hand grenade: in the first six starts, they collected three wins, two seconds and one third place finish, besides two fast times in qualifying!

In a word, Nazaruk had arrived, and he didn't look back. In five years, he would win nineteen AAA Big Car main events and finish in the top 5 in points six times, alongside fourteen AAA Midget feature wins. So much for his (impressive) statistics, but as every so often they don't tell half the story! For one thing, there was his public image as the toughest sonofabitch ever to sit behind the wheel of a racing car, something he came by real honestly, and which made him hugely popular in an age when superhuman bravery was all the rage. He was always at his best during the really long grinds, the 100-lappers on dirt as well as on asphalt, the latter due to his early training at Freeport, no doubt. But still, nobody could believe how quickly and easily he took to the high-banked ovals of the Midwest, where he was soon to become a real master of the art. Usually, it would take a driver years to come to terms (if at all!) with the demanding "hills" at Winchester, Dayton and Salem, but Mike felt at home right from the start, and won his fair share - "Ain't nothin' to it"!

He'd use the same attitude, a kind of macho stance, to intimidate other drivers, whom he would look straight in the eye, with an icy stare, and declare "Don't get between Nazaruk and the checkered flag - you won't like what happens!" But, most famously, he was the same kind of tough bastard against himself: with his super-aggressive style of driving, he crashed quite frequently, but he never once missed a race through injury, even when lesser men would have considered retirement from the sport! Like August 31 in 1953, when he was thrown from his flipping Sprint Car at the Minnesota State Fair, except for his left foot which got entangled in the cockpit, so that Mike got dragged along down the track, hanging from the car like a rag doll from the hand of weeping toddler - a hush fell over the crowd, fearing the worst.

Amazingly, when he came to, he was found to have broken no bones at all, but basically he had been skinned alive, and twisted every joint in his body. When they dressed his wounds at the hospital, he was told to rest for a week, at which he exclaimed "Oh no, I can't do that!", rose to his feet and walked gingerly out the door, calling for a taxi to the track, from where he single-handedly drove back to his seasonal residence in Indianapolis, a trip of 600 miles! Arriving there on Tuesday morning (the race had been on a Monday), he had barely time to take a nap and change, then it was off to Cincinnati, two hours away, for a 100-lap Midget race on Wednesday, which he won (!), and a five-hour trip to Detroit on Thursday, finishing third in a 50-lapper there. Then a day's rest before a 500-mile round trip to Du Quoin, and a pair of 100-mile dirt track races there over the weekend, winning with the Midget again, and qualifying on pole for the Champ Car race - "Iron Mike", indeed...

When asked about his feverish activity, Nazaruk would always retort: "I can't stay put, I need the money!", which seemed like an odd answer, his wife and two kids notwithstanding. After all, here was one of the top ten moneymakers in the business, and thrifty like any racer who ever lived - he couldn't possibly need all that money and more to support his small family alone? One almost can't escape the impression of a man deep in hock, trying to stave off financial ruin by taking every chance he can get to make a dime, and really, some of the purses he was running for can hardly have paid the expenses! Yet, according to Clint Brawner, top chief mechanic on the Championship trail in the fifties, Mike had something else on his mind: "He wanted to make as much money racing as he could in a short time, then quit." So, it was simply his way of calculating the risks: better to go for it all out and get done with it real quick, than holding back and risking your neck for a long time? Sounds crazy, perhaps, but in a time when simple metal fatigue of one kind or another could put you on your head, and no rollover bar to protect your melon, he may have had a point there...

Which brings us neatly to his biggest payday in racing, $21,362.12 in one fell swoop - it was his first ever start in a National Championship race, less than a year after joining AAA, and typically, he was mad as a wet hen about finishing "only" second, as he was catching the leader hand over fist, but simply ran out of time. If the 1951 "Indy 500" had been the "Indy 600" instead, he might've become the first rookie winner since George Souders, but even so the pundits were thoroughly impressed. Within a year, he would team up with millionaire car owner Lee Elkins, perhaps the nuttiest eccentric ever to own a racing car (which must stand as something of an achievement in an era of owners like Joe Thorne, Sam Traylor, Bruce Homeyer or Emmett Malloy!), commencing a love/hate relationship that took them both to the brink of despair, at times.

In the fall of 1954, they had their "final" bust-up, and Mike made a deal to run Ted Nyquist's new Sprint Car in the East, rattling off a string of wins to celebrate the fact. After several years of concentrating on the asphalt high-banks of the Midwest, Nazaruk's return to the dirt bullrings of the East must at least in part have been influenced by the comeback of Langhorne to the AAA schedule, after several years as an "outlaw track". Here was a temple of speed made in heaven for "Iron Mike", and in October he won a 25-miler at 105 mph, the fastest race ever on a dirt track - actually, it was even faster than the fastest high-bank race so far! In qualifying, both he and Al Keller had smashed Tony Bettenhausen's Champ Car lap record to smithereens, averaging almost 110 mph!!

The AAA "circus" returned for a sprint programme early next year, in what turned out be a bizarre crashfest: on a slow track due to early morning hoar frost (!), IMCA Champion Bob Slater, trying to break into the AAA ranks, flipped during hot laps, then Don Wood crashed in the first heat, while team mates Johnny Thomson and Al Keller collided in the third, costing the latter a thumb and setting his career back seven years, and then Larry Crockett blew out his own candle by leaving the regular orbit in a big way in the feature while contesting the lead with Jerry Hoyt and Nazaruk. Mike came through to win this one, but even he was in a state of semi-shock afterwards! Yet it was only the beginning...

Six weeks later, Mike was on his way from Indianapolis, where he was slated to drive Ed Walsh's roadster, to Langhorne for another Sprint Car race, stopping at Mutt Anderson's place in Xenia (OH). Anderson was the Elkins crew chief, hired when Nazaruk had recommended him after preparing his winning Midget several times, and the two were having "reconciliation talks" - the Nyquist car was a good ride for the East, but Mike wasn't going to miss out on the Midwest season! Like everyone else that weekend, Anderson noticed Mike's heavy flu, and asked him to take a rest. "Aw, it's just a lousy thirty-miler, and you know, I need the money. I'll be passing again late Sunday night, and take a nap in the car so I don't wake you up and the family. See you on Monday morning!" But when Mutt looked in his driveway on Monday, he didn't need the confirmation that came in later that day - "Gawd, that was a tough one!"

At Langhorne, on a lightning fast track this time, a distinctly on-form Charlie Musselman had been leading the first half of the race in record time. His defences weakened by the flu and the medication, Mike still wasn't going to settle for second, and pushed into the lead in a heart-stopping move, even edging away a bit, but looking hairier by the minute! Then, it happened - Musselman, still following at about a hundred paces, couldn't believe his eyes: Nazaruk never lifted when Nyquist's Hillegass went out of control, and banged the wall not once or twice, but three times before barrel-rolling out of the premises, crushing and ripping his body apart before ejecting it into the countryside. It was not a pretty sight, but at least he didn't feel anything.

Mike left the world exactly like he had lived every day of his professional life: full-bore, no quarters asked and none given. He also left a profound impression on those who had worked with, or driven against him. Anderson and Elkins lay low for a while, then slowly disentangled themselves from the scene over the next couple of years, though both would eventually come back a decade or so later. Ted Nyquist, after more than twenty years in the sport, couldn't stomach losing Wally Campbell and Nazaruk in less than ten months, and sold his team to John Pfrommer. As for the drivers, well... most resorted to blaming Mike's illness, a "blackout" or the "Langhorne winds", and continued driving - but losing someone of Nazaruk's stature was a shock to many, even in a year as bad as 1955.

Again, sometimes a picture will tell you more than a thousand words can do, and my favourite Nazaruk picture can be seen on page 160 of Joe Scalzo's "The American Dirt Track Racer" - it shows Mike, for some unexplained reasons wearing Eddie Sachs's driving uniform, and Bob Slater on the morning of that fateful March 20 in 1955 at Langhorne, the scene of his last ever feature win. Standing behind the Erickson/Offy, its broken windshield bearing witness to the wild ride it had given "Slats" just minutes earlier, their respective faces clearly show their different emotions and attitudes on that strange day: the IMCA Champion broken, defeated, aching, his head bowed in the pain of the moment, impossible to say whether it's purely his curbed ambition or some physical ailment caused by the crash. And then Nazaruk, grabbing his arm and attention, gesticulating towards the track and explaining with a fire in his eyes what happened, and why it happened, and what "Slats" would have to do to avoid it happening again - pure PASSION!

Racing has been called "The Cruel Sport", and all that passion and animated conversation couldn't prevent Mike from paying the ultimate price at almost the exact location a few weeks later, and Slater following him into death just another five weeks on...

[Nanni Dietrich]

Michael, here you posted a newspaper article about a fatal accident which happened at Altamont Fairgrounds in 1928
http://forums.autosp...721#post3398721

According to the book "The History of America's Speedways, Past & Present", by Allan E. Brown, the Altamont Fairgrounds (NY) is listed as "1/2-mile dirt oval (1932-1941)(1945)(1948)(1951)(1953-1955)".

Was the 1928 track the same track which opened in 1932?
When did Altamont Fairground actually open?

[Pete Lyons]

Thanks for all this fascinating info on a track I only know about because my dad left some photos he made there at Altamont, which was fairly near the family home in Cohoes, NY (close to Albany). I believe the year was 1938, but there's nothing on the 4x5 negative sleeves to ID the specific event. Anyway, if you'd like to see Ozzie Lyons pictures of a day at the dirt track races, please visit:

http://www.petelyons...tTrack 1938.htm

[fines]

Hi Pete, welcome and thank you very much for these fascinating pics! I'm not sure, but I believe I can even identify one of the cars, "Photo ID: No6_Altamont38" which should be the Gritz-Riley of Hank Gritzbach, a regular of the Altamont races for more than two decades. Unfortunately, as far as event identification goes, the car ran in all five 1938 races there, driven by Eddie Cox, George Markie (= Markiewicz) and Gritzbach himself. Looking at the trees and flowers, my guess would be June 18?

Originally posted by Nanni Dietrich
Was the 1928 track the same track which opened in 1932?
When did Altamont Fairground actually open?

You haven't been paying attention, Nanni, have you?;) It's all there, here in this thread, e.g. post #9:

Originally posted by fines
The Altamont Fairgrounds opened in 1893 ...;)

[Pete Lyons]

Grampa Gritzbach! Thank you, fines! You've provided a piece of a puzzle for me.

When I discovered my dad's negatives of that race, one of the individual 4x5 paper sleeves had a penciled note reading "Grampa Gritzbach?" But studying the neg itself through a loupe showed the picture, a close up of a driver grinning from the cockpit of a Midget, clearly was somebody else. None of the other neg sleeves contained any image that could have been mistakenly swapped with this one. So a small mystery began gnawing on my mind.

Google—oh, how pleased I am to have lived into the Internet age—turned up some information on the driver Gritzbach (listed with more than one spelling) but the real wealth came from a human resource. At the Amelia Island Concours a few years ago I ran into Chris Ekonomaki, the aging but still tack-sharp National Speed Sport News man, Who Was There. I seized the moment to ask Chris if he remembered anything about a NY State track called Altamont and a driver named Gritzbach.

"Hank Gritzbach? Yes. Old Hank Gritzbach was what we called a third-heat qualifier..." And he went on to pour out mountains of memories that allowed me to do a nice column on my little mystery for Vintage Racecar magazine.

Incidentally, Chris mentioned that early in his career he used to call races at Altamont over the PA—that's Tannoy to you blokes out there—and so it's at least possible that, in the shot showing the start of a race, the man standing at the microphone on the second level of the building COULD be the legendary Mr. Ekonomaki. I'm choosing to think so. At least until someone contributes more info.

Thanks again.

[fines]

Originally posted by Pete Lyons
Grampa Gritzbach! Thank you, fines! You've provided a piece of a puzzle for me.

When I discovered my dad's negatives of that race, one of the individual 4x5 paper sleeves had a penciled note reading "Grampa Gritzbach?" But studying the neg itself through a loupe showed the picture, a close up of a driver grinning from the cockpit of a Midget, clearly was somebody else.

Grinning? No, can't have been Gritzbach - scowling, more like it!

Gritzbach was certainly an interesting character, but calling him "a third-heat qualifier" is perhaps a tad unfair, even if Ole Chris probably didn't mean to denigrate. In a full AAA field, with lots of expensive Millers and/or Offies, Hank was unlikely to do better with his low budget approach, but he was very successful as an independent, winning several championships. He died in Atlanta (GA) in August of 1971.

[erkelly2]

Doc MacKenzie - On a more serious note...;) "Doc" MacKenzie, born George MacKenzie to a prominent physicians family in Pennsylvania in 1906, was he "the man who died twice racing", or what happened on that August afternoon in 1928? Confusion? Let's hear Spencer Riggs, author of Langhorne! - No Man's Land, the recent best-selling racing track monograph:(Full quote in order ot get to the bottom of this)

Aha! So there were two drivers by the name of George MacKenzie!! Mind you, Doc wouldn't have been the first (nor the last!) US racing driver to read his own death notice in the papers! But something's fishy here, have you noticed? For a start, whose brother was "Mac" now, George W. or George D.? Later in the book, in different chapters, he's once more mentioned both as the brother and the cousin of the surviving, or shall we say, the "famous MacKenzie"! Mmh! :

Which brings us to another conundrum: I have always understood the real name of the "famous MacKenzie" to have been George D. - I am sure I have seen more than one such reference, and from a time well past the other one's death, so there's no chance of a confusion here! The only reference to a George W. MacKenzie I could ever find was the death notice of August 1928!! I know, I know, middle initials are a mine field, best avoided, and I wouldn't hesitate a minute to accept another man's thorough research, but in the light of him obviously going against all accepted wisdom here, wouldn't it have been worth a sentence or two to acknowledge that fact? Or is he just as confused about it as I am??

And anyway, while it's certainly possible that the "not-so-famous" MacKenzie was known as "Young Doc" to friends and relatives, I doubt very much that he raced under the name "Doc MacKenzie" also, and it's obviously only confusing the issue even more! In fact, there is evidence that he actually raced under the nom de course of "Speedy Maxwell", something which would tie in well with the reported family aversion against his racing. For future reference, I will go on to call the famous driver "Doc MacKenzie", and the other one simply "George MacKenzie", thus improving clarity without unnecessary clutter (I hope!).

Having said all that, and apart from getting George's accident date wrong by one week, Riggs did a pretty good job of unearthing some interesting biographical information here. Reports at the time were split on George's hometown, between Philadelphia and Somerset, but since the latter is nearer to Pittsburgh I believe Somerton to be right. In fact Somerton, like Eddington and Andalusia, is just over the Pennsylvania Turnpike from Langhorne, barely five miles away, while Frankford is just down the Delaware, so it all fits in nicely. About the correct middle initial, and the exact relation of Mac to George and Doc, maybe our genealogy experts can help?

[erkelly2]

Gents,

This may have been cleared up before, BUT

About the two "Doc" MacKenzies:

Page 22 of the new "Langhorne!" book by L. Spencer Riggs transposed the initials of the two Docs.

The simplest answer to this is found on one man's headstone:

GEORGE W. MACKENZIE, III
1908 - 1928

Both men are buried in the MacKenzie plot at the William Penn Cemetery in Philadelphia.

George W. is said to have been married with two children - in spite of his young age.

I found two possibilities, both widows in Pennsylvania, in the 1930 U.S. Census:

Josephine MacKenzie, (26), mother of Joseph C. (7), and Betty J. (4)

and

Rose MacKenzie (31), mother of George (6), and Laura M. (2)

All ages are as of 1930 census. [Please do not start a new rumor of bigamy! http://forums.autosp...fault/drunk.gif ]

- - - -

Lou Fink, the first fatality at Langhorne, has a more complete biography in Motorsport Memorial.

Rick Kelly
Oklahoma City