Latest / BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show / Unearthing the Speed Kings: How One Woman Became the Guardian of Pennsylvania’s Forgotten Racing Legacy

Transcript

Unearthing the Speed Kings: How One Woman Became the Guardian of Pennsylvania’s Forgotten Racing Legacy · BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show

0:00
Welcome to Women of the Autos Sphere.
0:02
On Break Fix, we dive into the stories of trailblazers, engineers,
0:06
racers, designers, and disruptors who are shaping the automotive
0:10
and motor sports industries.
0:12
From the pit lane to the boardroom, from concept sketches to championship
0:16
podiums, these women are driving change breaking barriers, and
0:21
inspiring the next generation.
0:23
Whether you're a lifelong gearhead, a curious newcomer, or someone
0:27
who simply loves a good story.
0:29
You are in the right place.
0:30
This is more than a podcast.
0:32
It's a movement.
0:36
Welcome back to Women of the Autos Sphere.
0:38
On Break Fix podcast.
0:40
Today we're joined by a remarkable storyteller who has become inseparable
0:44
from the history and spirit of the Ohio pile, Pennsylvania area.
0:48
For more than 45 years, author, historian, and screenwriter, Marcy
0:52
McGuinness has dedicated her life to uncovering, preserving, and bringing
0:55
to life the rich and often overlooked stories of this iconic region.
0:59
From her extensive books and historical research to her ongoing work on the
1:03
Speed King documentary, Marcy has become one of the leading voices
1:07
illuminating the legacy of early motor sports, local legends, and the cultural
1:12
heartbeat of the Laurel Highlands.
1:14
Get ready for a conversation filled with passion, history, and incredible
1:18
storytelling as we explore her journey, her discoveries, and the
1:22
fascinating world behind speaking.
1:25
That's right.
1:25
And joining me tonight is returning co-host Lauren Goodman, associate curator
1:29
of exhibitions at the Revs Institute, and one of the many personalities
1:33
here on the Motor Inc podcast network.
1:35
So welcome back, Lauren.
1:36
Hi.
1:36
Great to be here.
1:37
And with that, let's officially welcome Marcy to break Fixx.
1:40
Thank you.
1:41
Glad to be here.
1:42
So let's talk about what first drew you to the history of Ohio Pile and when did
1:46
you realize it would become a decades long passion project and focus of your work?
1:51
Well, my grandmother owned this big hotel in Ohio, pal
1:54
on the river when I was a kid.
1:56
And my mom had grown up in Ohio pal.
1:58
And then when I was 17, I of course ran away to a higher pal
2:02
'cause it's up in the mountains.
2:03
It's beautiful.
2:03
All my cousins were there.
2:05
The two characters that I write about Charlie Johnson, and then in a
2:08
High Power I write about Congressman Andrew Stewart, who developed a high
2:12
power in the before the Civil War.
2:14
They both grew up here in the mountains in the same little tiny little
2:17
village over here, Gibbon Glade, which I always found interesting.
2:21
I lived on part of the property that Congressman Andrew.
2:24
Lived on and I didn't know it at the time.
2:27
And then when I started writing about him, I'm like, oh my Lord.
2:31
I was living on their property, huh?
2:34
Just always paid attention when I was old.
2:37
The state came in and, you know, evicted all these people with eminent domain
2:42
along the riverside and took over and built this huge state park in Ohio pile.
2:48
So I watched this happen later, 1991 when I moved into my grandmother's.
2:53
Home.
2:54
Laura Bell, Morrison Marietta, she had been very popular, her hotel
3:00
was popular, her homemade noodles or homemade breads and everything, and
3:03
she had this drawer in the kitchen full of all these little pieces of paper,
3:07
you know, note cards with recipes.
3:10
My cousins asked me to please put a cookbook together.
3:14
So after I decipher all these recipes, after talking to all the
3:17
old ladies in the neighborhood, you know, there were no measurements.
3:20
So I put together a nanny's cookbook.
3:22
And in that cookbook, my grandmother was also a shutter bug and she,
3:26
uh, had boxes of old photographs.
3:29
So I put about a dozen pages of these old photographs of the old Ohio Powell Hotel
3:34
and Landmarks, and people in the cookbook.
3:37
People kind of went wild over that and started knocking on my door
3:42
with boxes of old photographs.
3:45
The story was usually, I'm afraid I'm gonna die and my
3:47
kids will throw these out.
3:49
I had already written a history of Ohio PAL for a local magazine, the
3:53
Scene magazine out of Scottdale.
3:56
So I put together a yesteryear at a high PAL calendar for the annual
4:01
Buckwheat supper, the annual.
4:03
Fundraiser for the fire department and a High Pal and sold hundreds of them.
4:07
So I did that for a couple of years in a couple different towns, had a series of
4:12
calendars, and I had so many photographs.
4:14
I started a whole series of yester year books, yester Year in a High
4:18
Pal, volumes one, two, and three.
4:20
Yester in Masontown Yester in Smithfield.
4:23
So this led me to a friend of mine, introduced me to an old fellow Jim
4:28
Boyd, and he had been contributing to the Yes Year and a High Pal Books.
4:32
He had grown up in a little town that was also taken over by eminent domain
4:37
to build the YY River Dam Summerfield.
4:40
So he had a lot of interesting historical photographs and we became friends.
4:45
So one night he calls me seven 30 on a summer night and he said, can
4:49
you come to my house right now?
4:50
Meet me in my basement.
4:53
This is always a good story.
4:54
I said, well, you know, I, I have daughters.
4:57
All the kids are running around town and I kind of busy and
4:59
he's like, no, please come down.
5:01
He was, he had skin cancer and he was almost 80 and I went and met
5:05
him in his basement and he had his arms loaded with old newspapers and
5:11
panoramic photographs and just all this information programs from Summit
5:17
Mountain Hill climbs 19 13, 14, and 15.
5:20
And the Uniontown Speedway board track 1916 through 1922, and I had
5:26
never heard of either one of them, didn't know anything about them, and
5:30
he wouldn't show me what he had in his arms until he said, you have to
5:34
promise to do something with this.
5:35
It's important.
5:36
No one has ever researched this.
5:38
You know, he was a hoarder collector.
5:40
He had buildings of stuff and he wanted to see this preserved, and so I promised him
5:46
not knowing what I was even getting into.
5:48
Now, 32 years later, here I am still creating for him, but
5:51
that's the story I promised him.
5:53
And he died before the first book even got out.
5:55
That was 1993.
5:58
And that was before the internet had everything.
6:00
And I was in microfilm in the library, you know, digging and digging.
6:04
And I had gone home and called an historian who was also pretty old
6:08
at the time, and he said, well, I can't help you with a book.
6:10
I'm too old, but I can lead you.
6:13
Two people and he did.
6:15
And then other people, you know, it, it was snowballing.
6:18
And in this 32 years I've been in more garages.
6:21
I mean, shattered with more car guys.
6:23
It's phenomenal.
6:24
I, I know a lot about cars now.
6:26
It's been a fun, fun journey.
6:28
This is amazing to me by word of mouth.
6:31
It's like you became the local historical society.
6:33
Yes, that is true.
6:35
People always want to know if I am in an historical site, and
6:38
I said it's just, it's just me.
6:40
You know, when I go to people for advertising, sponsorships
6:44
in the documentary so that I can get it across the finish line,
6:48
I tell them that it's just me.
6:50
I'm 70 years old.
6:52
Don't wait till I die because my kids will own it.
6:55
There's no promising you that we'll have a Speedway museum
6:59
and, and be showing this film.
7:00
You have this treasure trove from Jim Boyd about the Union Town Speedway
7:06
and the Summit Mountain Hill Climb.
7:08
And could you set the stage a little bit for us about what that looked like
7:11
in the town and what did that look like for Motorsport in early America?
7:15
What was a hill climb?
7:17
What was a board track to start out?
7:19
The cars and the horses?
7:22
Early 19 hundreds were fighting with each other.
7:25
The cars were trying to take over the horses.
7:26
Our roads were knee deep in mud and horrifying and manure.
7:30
Sheep and cow.
7:32
I mean, we had cattle going down the national road and all that.
7:34
Okay, so in Europe they had pretty good roads and they had road races, and I
7:38
had never heard of a board track before.
7:40
Jim Boyd laid this out for me.
7:41
I'd never, I'm like, what do you, people were driving on wood.
7:44
That's pretty wild.
7:46
Really wild.
7:46
So anyway, George Tutlow in Uniontown in 1902 had driven
7:51
the first car into the town.
7:53
Our understand southwestern PA was the wealthiest area in the United
7:59
States at the time due to our coal.
8:02
Coke and Steel.
8:03
Pittsburgh Steel.
8:05
I mean, we had more co barrens than dozens of them, and they are the
8:09
ones that opened this board track.
8:10
They're the ones who built the hotels and partied here.
8:13
World War I was going on the whole time when other tracks, Indy
8:17
500, closed down for two years.
8:19
During World War I, they couldn't afford to stay open.
8:22
But Podunk, Uniontown, pa, we were rocking and rolling, putting
8:26
50,000 people in the stands.
8:28
So before the board track.
8:29
We have Summit Mountain here, which is three and a half miles,
8:33
goes from maybe 900 at the bottom.
8:36
900 elevation feet, 26, 2700 at the top.
8:39
So, and it was def defying Turkey's nest curve was taking
8:43
people out and everything.
8:44
So in 1913, the first automobile club in the county.
8:49
Decided to have an amateur hill climb on the safest side of the mountain,
8:53
the other side, the east side.
8:55
And it was all amateur and it was very popular and there's just
8:57
thousands of people showed up.
8:59
So the next year they had it on the dangerous side of the
9:01
mountain, had a two day event and triple A sanctioned the race.
9:07
AA came in, sent a guy from Philadelphia in 19 14th Uniontown to
9:11
sanction this summit Mountain Hill climb, and some professional drivers
9:16
were coming in from Pittsburgh and.
9:18
Different states.
9:19
1915 comes along.
9:21
Now we've got Ralph De Palmer came three weeks after he won the
9:26
Indianapolis 500 to Uniontown.
9:29
He was determined to beat Charlie Johnson, who was the local speed
9:32
king, and he was ended up being the president of the Uniontown Speedway btr.
9:37
He was determined because Charlie knew that mountain
9:40
like nobody knew that mountain.
9:42
And of course, Charlie beat him by.
9:43
I don't know, 28 seconds or something.
9:45
So, you know, there's a quote in the local newspaper, Ralph DePalma
9:49
said, I'll be back next year.
9:50
Take that trophy from Charlie Johnson.
9:52
So, of course he never did.
9:54
So I write about the Speed King in the documentary is Charlie Johnson,
9:58
but it's also Barney Oldfield and Ralph DePalma and Louis Chevrolet.
10:03
You know, we had three years of these hill climbs.
10:05
1916, Charlie was planning this big hill climb, the Pennsylvania
10:10
Department of Transportation.
10:11
Shut them down four days before the hill climb.
10:14
Now, understand the county, the tri-state area, was full of tourists coming on
10:19
trains and buying mules and walking and carriages and buggies and cars in the mud.
10:23
Thousands and thousands of people, and they couldn't hold the race.
10:28
They scrambled and held it in a nearby town, Youngwood.
10:31
Immediately.
10:32
Charlie went to all the cold bears and he collected a hundred thousand
10:36
dollars to build a wooden trek.
10:38
He had like Louis Chevrolet and Barn Oldfield started out racing bicycles.
10:43
So he knew Jack Prince, who was the designer of all these.
10:48
Wooden racetracks.
10:49
They were built for bicycles and then motorcycles and then getting bigger.
10:53
Ended up there were 24 in America, because our roads were
10:56
so bad, we're driving on wood.
10:57
I wanna point out a hundred thousand dollars in 1916 is
11:01
$2.97 million in today's dollars.
11:06
That's an incredible amount of money.
11:08
He did it in two months time.
11:09
This is how much money was here.
11:11
People were lined up coming to his garage.
11:13
He had the big standard garage in town, sold cars and built
11:17
race cars, and they were coming there and just handing out money.
11:20
So Jack Prince comes in, who designed all these tracks all over America.
11:24
He set up an office in Uniontown at the standard garage and was collecting
11:28
the money, and it took no time.
11:31
They had the first race in December.
11:32
They outlawed the race in July, signed the lease in the end of
11:36
August, and boom, boom, boom.
11:38
And the war was on.
11:39
The men were.
11:41
Off to war.
11:42
And the United States hadn't declared war yet, but many
11:45
men were already being taken.
11:48
They hired 168 teenage boys, high school boys to put that track
11:53
together to pound nails after school.
11:55
So that's who built the track.
11:56
And it was just under 4 million square feet of hemlock lumber, two
12:01
by fours, you know, side by side.
12:03
The curves were 34 degrees.
12:05
I mean, they were so steep and they went over a hundred miles an hour.
12:08
They were breaking records.
12:09
The last race in 1922, Jimmy Murphy broke all the records at
12:14
109 point something mile per hour.
12:17
This is what I like to point out to folks about the birth of American
12:20
racing is we didn't have great roads, so we built these board tracks.
12:24
Firstly, the wood allowed you to build those crazy bankings.
12:28
I'll put it in perspective.
12:30
34 degrees on a wooden track today, the steepest track in NASCAR on the schedule
12:37
is still Talladega at 33 degrees, so that was one degree steeper back
12:43
then than the most steep track today.
12:45
That's absolutely incredible that they could build something like that.
12:48
Crazy, crazy angles so cars could just keep going faster and faster and faster.
12:53
Second of all, building a board track meant that you could fence
12:57
off the area and charge tickets.
12:59
Oh yeah, many tickets.
13:01
It was quite amazing.
13:02
And today I live maybe five miles from the old track, and Hopwood
13:07
is not a, you know, just a few businesses and not much going on.
13:11
And even people who live down there don't even know about it.
13:14
And Uniontown.
13:15
I'd said there were 24 of those tracks.
13:17
A lot of 'em were quarter mile circles.
13:20
You know, they grew, grew.
13:21
But the ones that lasted the longest, most of 'em didn't last two years.
13:24
They would burn.
13:25
They're just different things.
13:26
They're just run outta money.
13:28
Tacoma, Altoona, and Uniontown.
13:31
Lasted seven and eight years.
13:33
The three of those, and then really most of them burnt or were, like I said, they
13:37
were abandoned or half-built and all that.
13:40
Were any of 'em phased out because there were new techniques to
13:43
building tracks by that point, or had they moved to dirt track racing?
13:47
They wore out.
13:48
There were so many splinters, I mean, filling up radiators and tires.
13:52
Barney Oldfield and Firestone Tire created the old field tire for racing.
13:56
It was like a solid, like a tricycle tire, you know, that solid rubber to
14:01
avoid having to change tires constantly.
14:03
And guys were getting big splinters in their elbows, in their eyeballs,
14:07
and they didn't have a helmet.
14:08
They had no windshield, they had no roof.
14:11
So when Miller and ER.
14:13
Built the first race car with a roof, which cost Barney
14:17
old filled $15,000 in 1916.
14:20
A lot of money.
14:21
He brought it by train in his own special car to Uniontown
14:25
for the grand opening in 1917.
14:28
He was the world's speed king and he was here.
14:30
Can you even imagine they paid him $4,000 just to show up?
14:35
He didn't even have to do anything, but he did race.
14:37
He did bring his fancy car, and I have a photograph of Fred Dusenberg
14:42
standing there looking at it with this awful scowl on his face.
14:45
He didn't think of it, but it was the big time.
14:49
I have a photograph of in 1915, Vivian Prescott.
14:53
Her husband, uh, Neil Waylan sitting on top of a sign on top of Summit
14:57
Mountain watching the Hill Climb.
14:59
Vivian Prescott was a silent film store for Universal Films.
15:02
She made 202 films and uh, she was married to Neil Waylan, who owned
15:07
auto dealerships in New York City and Philly, and he was a race car
15:10
driver at Indian, blah, blah, blah.
15:12
And they were promoting Sheepshead Bay, another very
15:15
popular New York wooden track.
15:17
So in 1916, when.
15:18
They started putting the board track together.
15:20
They became the promoters for Uniontown Speedway, and she brought in the
15:24
president of Universal Films, Carl Lemley.
15:27
He spent $3,000 on a solid silver, three foot tall universal film trophy for the
15:34
annual big race, 225 mile race every year.
15:38
So in 1916, Louis Chevrolet won that trophy.
15:41
It's hard to believe it.
15:41
So the last race was 1922, but racing was still gaining popularity pretty hard.
15:48
Post World War I, especially in Europe.
15:51
You had the birth of the Milam and a lot of other big races and racing had returned
15:55
to Indianapolis and things like that.
15:56
What happened in 1923 and beyond?
15:59
We weren't in the depression area yet.
16:01
There was still plenty of good life in that area, obviously in
16:03
a lot of affluence and whatnot.
16:05
Why not another race?
16:07
Or another location.
16:08
That was the interesting thing that took me decades to really
16:11
discover for a hundred years.
16:13
People in the area here in the newspapers said that Charlie Johnson, president
16:19
of the Union Town Speedway, ran off to Cuba with the Speedway money.
16:23
Now that was the normal.
16:24
What I discovered was a rumor about Charlie.
16:27
Charlie was their golden boy.
16:28
He brought more people than Uniontown than anyone's ever
16:31
brought to Uniontown or ever will.
16:33
And then they turned on him in that way.
16:36
But this is what actually happened.
16:37
It took me a lot of research.
16:39
Charlie Johnson grew up right down the road here in the mountains, but he in the
16:43
standard garage, he and his father, they owned a brewery, the Johnson Brewery,
16:47
they owned a dairy, they owned coal mines.
16:49
They owned, you know, rental properties.
16:51
Well, prohibition hit in January, 1920, and this is a time when they
16:56
were putting more people in the stands.
16:57
You know, the war was over the, it was just 50,000 people was the record in 1920.
17:03
But in January, 1920, prohibition hit and shut down all the breweries, the hotel,
17:08
you know, they were busting everybody.
17:10
Charlie Johnson, he had a car called the Greyhound, who is
17:13
the big star of this film.
17:15
He was a Packard and he won all the races that he ever drove in, in the
17:19
Greyhound Packard, and he outran the prohibition agents several times
17:25
in that Packard trying to be the decoy so that his trucks of booze
17:29
could go to Pittsburgh or wherever they were going during prohibition.
17:33
They kept throwing him in jail.
17:35
Now he's the big shot of the region, of the country, really in racing.
17:39
And they kept throwing him in jail and that, you know, sheriff's,
17:42
his buddy, he'd pop him out.
17:43
And this happened in 1921.
17:46
They threw him in jail just before the big race, the universal film.
17:50
Race Sheriff popped him out right after the race.
17:52
He had to go to New York.
17:54
He had just a year or two before that formed a National Speedway
17:58
Association with some of the other guys at these big tracks, and they
18:02
would meet annually in New York City.
18:04
Well, those same guys were in the same position as Charlie.
18:08
You know, they owned breweries, they owned this and this and that, and
18:10
having trouble with prohibition.
18:12
Well, they started rum running.
18:14
Bringing in ships from Cuba and rum running all over to Detroit
18:18
and Chicago and Uniontown.
18:20
And so Charlie became big time rum runner in his Greyhound Packard, trying
18:25
to keep his parents afloat because they had shut these businesses down.
18:27
His parents are like 65.
18:30
And broke.
18:31
So he went to this meeting in New York in 1921 and his wife
18:36
begged him not to go, but he went.
18:38
And when he came back she had had a fatal heart attack.
18:41
I had for many years, been so curious about these panoramic
18:45
photos from each big race.
18:48
Every year.
18:48
Charlie's cock of the W three piece suit in his cigar, the
18:51
1922, a year after his wife died.
18:55
He doesn't even have a hat.
18:57
He has.
18:57
Sunglasses on no one.
18:59
The thousands of photographs I've seen of his board track, he's the
19:02
only one I've ever seen in shades.
19:04
He had lost 50 pounds.
19:06
He didn't even have a suit on.
19:07
Crooked tie, and you know, he was a wreck.
19:10
You could tell.
19:10
So I did all this deep diving and really found out what happened to her,
19:14
what hap It was just a big snowball.
19:17
Not only did Prohibition take his wife, prohibition took the Greyhound and
19:23
every business, they shut him down.
19:25
They took everything.
19:26
Charlie owned days after that last race, they busted the ship from
19:31
Cuba out in the New York Harbor, and the federal agents were leaving
19:35
those guys out there freezing.
19:36
And the guys actually started burning the ship trying to keep warm.
19:40
So he took off to Cuba.
19:42
He moved his parents, his siblings, his entire family to Florida.
19:47
I have all their addresses and I figured it all out.
19:50
He continued rum running.
19:51
I have manifests of him on banana boats.
19:54
Literally it says fruit boat, but I'm like, that is the banana boat,
19:58
Cuba and New Orleans, Cuba and Miami.
20:00
He did that throughout prohibition and then he came
20:03
back home and he spoke at the.
20:05
Opening Race of the Second Uniontown Speedway in 1940.
20:09
Okay.
20:11
Wow.
20:11
There's a lot to unpack here.
20:12
I know.
20:13
Yeah.
20:14
Where does this intersect?
20:16
The legends of NASCAR Junior Johnson and the stills and the
20:20
moonshine Runners of the South.
20:21
Does this predate that way?
20:23
Predates that really?
20:24
I know that the NASCAR thinks they invented it.
20:27
They did not.
20:29
You know, this is 1922 through 34.
20:33
Prohibition ended in.
20:34
33. And Charlie's parents died right around that time.
20:38
And then they all moved home.
20:40
You know, nascar, that stuff was in the forties.
20:42
There was a big jump in between these two things.
20:44
They were the moonshiners, these were the rum runners.
20:47
Charlie was one of the first race car drivers who was a rum runner.
20:51
We had a question here about how do you, uh, balance factual accuracy with
20:55
narrative engagement, but it doesn't sound like you need to with a guy like Charlie.
20:59
No, because everyone wrote about him.
21:01
He was in awe the papers, there was a paper trail, no internet back then, but by
21:06
golly, if you dig deep enough and with the internet today, you know, I couldn't find
21:10
all that stuff in 93 for the first book.
21:14
When I decided to actually do the documentary, I'm like, I have to find
21:17
out what actually happened to Charlie.
21:20
You know, rumors are rumors and I don't wanna make a documentary about
21:24
the rumors or prove it was true.
21:26
So let's close the loop on Charlie's life.
21:29
So he is a rum runner.
21:30
We're in the thirties.
21:31
You talked about his parents dying.
21:33
What did he do for the rest of, how long did he live?
21:35
What happened next?
21:36
He had remarried in Miami, 1928.
21:40
You know, he was coming back and forth Miami, back and forth
21:42
in New Orleans and La, la, la.
21:45
His second wife.
21:46
Edna met her and married her.
21:48
She was from Vermont, and that was another rumor.
21:50
Someone had told me he had brought a Cuban woman back with him and his wife,
21:54
and they had all kinds, people have told me many things, but you know, you have
21:59
to figure out what actually happened.
22:02
And he actually moved back here.
22:04
I have his address, Gallatin Avenue in Uniontown.
22:07
And like I said, he spoke at the dedication of the Bryson's.
22:11
Uniontown Speedway, which was built inside the old wooden track, half mile track,
22:16
and it was dirt with asphalt curves.
22:19
They ran that for seven years.
22:20
But yeah, they really honored him in the newspaper at that time.
22:23
You know that he did so much for road safety.
22:26
He worked a lot with the Triple A. He did a lot of road races
22:29
trying to get the Department of Transportation to spend money on.
22:33
Roads, fixing roads and all that kind of thing.
22:35
So they honored him for that.
22:37
And he's, he was here for about 10 years and then he and his
22:40
wife moved to Chattanooga.
22:42
Some of his other family had a real estate office down there.
22:44
He died in Chattanooga in 1954.
22:47
It was a heart attack.
22:49
And I do make this up at the end because I don't know exactly what happened.
22:54
Fell asleep and had a, i, i have no idea, but in the edit documentary, I have him
23:00
in his garage fixing a 1912 Packard.
23:03
He's telling his wife, just let me die here with the greasy rags and,
23:07
you know, let me die in my garage.
23:08
And she calls an ambulance and Charlie says, you know, I might've
23:11
lived if I drove that ambulance.
23:13
But the, the driver was no speed king.
23:16
That's how I ended up.
23:18
All right.
23:18
And I do have a picture of his.
23:20
Grave.
23:21
There you have it.
23:22
History is not linear.
23:23
Hmm.
23:24
This is one thread of many threads all happening simultaneously.
23:27
So we got a glimpse of Charlie's life.
23:30
Let's take a step back.
23:31
The original track closed 1922, and there's some famous names in there that
23:35
we can follow their history, right?
23:37
Louis Chevrolet and Barney Oldfield and all those guys.
23:39
But where did the rest of the racers who obviously were
23:42
addicted to racing at that point?
23:44
If they weren't rum runners, where did they find themselves participating
23:48
in races during all those years?
23:50
1923, Pennsylvania and California had the most tracks, 'cause
23:54
that's where the money was.
23:55
Pennsylvania had three wooden tracks nearby.
23:58
Altoona, Pennsylvania.
23:59
Altoona built a track.
24:01
They did the curves different for safety.
24:03
They ran for eight years.
24:05
Now that was all during prohibition and I don't know how they handled
24:09
that, but the same people were riding.
24:12
Fred Dusenberg actually died over there, test driving a car
24:16
on the mountain near that track.
24:18
There were a couple other ones built after that time.
24:21
They actually finished the last race in 33 or so, these wooden tracks,
24:27
and then there was more dirt.
24:29
There were dirt tracks and drag tracks, you know, around, but the big crowds were
24:34
coming to those wooden tracks because they put on the shows at the Uniontown
24:38
Speedway during the war, they had a guy named Deloitte Thompson flying in a war
24:43
plane, and they had built a fake fort in the middle of the infield, and he was
24:47
dropping fake bombs during intermission.
24:50
All this kinda stuff.
24:51
So really big show.
24:54
Let's bring that back During Grand Prix Indian Fields bombs,
24:58
dropping glitter bombs on a fake Ford or something like that.
25:02
Well, on that bombshell, why don't we switch gears?
25:06
Let's talk about the world of making films.
25:08
So let's dive a little bit more into the documentary itself.
25:12
I had never made a film.
25:14
I've been in a bunch of documentaries and, you know, whatnot through the years and
25:18
done a lot of radio shows and all that.
25:20
But friend of mine, two years ago in January now, he said, you know, it's
25:25
about the time you did that documentary.
25:27
I haven't a clue how to even go about that, but I, I get it because.
25:32
It's now or never really now or never.
25:34
So I dropped, literally dropped what I was doing and delved into it, educated myself.
25:41
And then I was in Florida at the time and I, when I got home, I
25:45
started visiting all my old car guys who have sponsored all my books.
25:49
I have four books on this track.
25:51
So you know, they've been sponsoring my books or racetrack programs and
25:54
all these years, and I first sent them out a note about what I was
25:58
thinking about doing with an outline.
26:00
They're like, yeah, come see me.
26:02
So I started visiting them and collecting sponsorships, and then I bought the
26:07
Da Vinci Resolve Studio Software.
26:09
I have no idea that I was gonna have to be the one to do it.
26:13
'cause I thought, well, I can just put the photographs and
26:16
captions together and pass it on.
26:17
Somebody put together, but there's no way, because I literally would've had
26:21
to remove my brain and put it in someone else's brain because they don't know
26:25
all the extra stuff, all the zillions of silly, crazy facts and whatnot.
26:30
I ended up putting it together and now it's a 72 minute film.
26:34
What a trip this has been during this, I had a fellow who does videos and
26:39
things around here and he has a good sound room and I was looking for someone
26:43
to do the voice of Charlie Johnson.
26:45
'cause I wrote the screenplay and I'm like, I can fill in the blanks.
26:48
I can narrate blah, blah, blah.
26:49
But I needed Charlie.
26:51
So he found me a guy who has a great voice and he did a great job.
26:54
He, he's not a reader, he's reading the screen.
26:56
He, he'd never heard this story.
26:58
He didn't read the script that I'd sent him in.
27:00
He's a busy guy and he runs a Derby race promotion business,
27:04
hardcore Derby promotions.
27:06
Frankie guy, he did really a great job when I. Started going through it and
27:11
trying to piece everything together with photographs and blah, blah, blah.
27:14
He really nailed it.
27:15
He had a lot of the same emotions.
27:17
You know, he used to drive and he understood what Charlie went through.
27:21
He even teared up, you know, when the wife died.
27:24
I'm like, whoa, stop.
27:26
I've gotcha.
27:27
You know?
27:28
But, so putting it together has been a lot of fun.
27:30
So I had that recording.
27:32
Him and just all my stuff and I actually went and house, sat for
27:36
a friend of mine and sequestered myself to try to put the story
27:41
together, you know, in the first form.
27:44
Took me about two months and I did it, but mine are the only eyes had
27:47
been on this film except for my grandsons and a couple of two friends.
27:54
While I was doing that, I need some old film clips.
27:56
So I dug around and dug around till I could find some
27:59
film clips that I could buy.
28:01
I started out in 1902.
28:03
I'm like, okay, I need a, a big guy who kind of looks like George Tutlow and
28:07
he's driving his car over a hill and into this town, just like George Tutlow
28:12
drove into Uniontown with the first car, and I have all these old clips in
28:15
between all of my photographs and articles and stories, and I found clips like.
28:22
1913 when we were having our first hill climb.
28:26
Henry Ford was developing his first assembly line.
28:31
I bought a clip of him, Henry's standing on the steps with his stopwatch going go.
28:38
And these guys, he call, he calls him a strong young man, but he's my age.
28:43
He ties a rope, the front of the chassis, pulls it and there's a
28:47
little crew here and they puts parts on, pulls it up some more.
28:50
There's a crew, puts some parts on.
28:51
That was the first assembly line he was trying to.
28:54
Drop the price on his cars.
28:56
He wanted to get that going.
28:57
So then the second assembly line is also in this clip.
29:00
They built a one wheel track and they pushed the cars to each crew.
29:06
I mean, it's just stuff like that.
29:08
I've found so many.
29:09
I have a clip of Barney Oldfield driving.
29:11
Henry Ford's first race car 9 9 9 on wood, and he comes around the track and
29:17
he stops and he the car in his mouth and he takes his golfers off and grin.
29:21
Here's some good stuff.
29:22
I have Louis Chevrolet winning the Harkins Trophy at Sheephead Bay
29:26
and Gaston Chevrolet's fatal crash.
29:29
Where three of those guys got killed in Beverly Hills.
29:33
Oh my.
29:34
They card him off in this clip.
29:36
I couldn't believe I found that and things like that.
29:38
So I would have what's going on with the speedway, but what's going on in the
29:42
automotive world and the racing world.
29:45
And then what's going on with the war at the same time?
29:48
So I have clips like 1918, so we are neck deep in the war.
29:53
The United States is, at that time we put 4.8 million men from the United
29:58
States over France and oh my gosh.
30:00
So I have clips of our soldiers marching down the streets of Paris
30:04
and women throwing flowers at them and cheering because we won the war.
30:08
And I have clips of our guys bombing a German sub torpedoing it.
30:15
You know, it says, while Charlie's planning, uh, three big races
30:18
for 1918, here's the navy, boop, you know, that kind of thing.
30:21
I feel very keenly how you feel like such a guardian and a steward of this
30:26
legacy and making sure that going back to the day in the basement with Jim.
30:31
You're gonna make sure that it gets passed on.
30:32
I have such respect for that.
30:34
I mean, of course I a little biased.
30:35
I work at a car museum that also has a library and archive
30:39
dedicated to the automobile.
30:41
So all we do is we think about how can we save these things, and not just
30:45
the physical objects, the ephemera, the photographs, but talk to people.
30:49
Because so much of the wisdom and the history is in people's heads.
30:53
Especially on the automobile.
30:55
It's trying to capture that while they're still with us.
30:57
It's true.
30:58
I've only met two people who actually met Charlie.
31:03
One is his niece and she's 94.
31:06
She contributed photos recently and remembered a lot what a character
31:12
he was and remembered him coming back from Cuba and all this stuff.
31:15
Another guy who was almost a hundred when he passed away had ran into
31:20
Charlie in the street during the 1940s.
31:23
And Charlie told him stories about building race cars, showed him where the
31:27
standard garage had been and all that.
31:29
You're right.
31:30
And you can't piece things together without talking to people.
31:33
'cause it's like, ah, okay.
31:35
That makes sense and it's a lot of work.
31:38
It's crazy.
31:39
Sometimes you just feel kind of insane, but you just have to
31:42
keep on trucking to get it done.
31:43
I want my grandsons, I want all my car guys, grandkids.
31:48
And that's what, when I first went to see Gary Sissen about it, Gary's
31:51
always been a sponsor of mine.
31:53
He has a car lot down here in Uniontown.
31:55
He put his.
31:56
Fingers under his chin and he said, oh my grandkids.
32:00
Exactly.
32:01
So these car guys that are sponsoring the film is an hour of Charlie's story,
32:06
and then the next 12 minutes are clips from the Speed King meeting that I held
32:12
last year at the Summit Hotel on top of Summit Mountain, where all these
32:16
guys stayed, where Barney and Louis stayed across the hall from each other.
32:20
We had a meeting in the uh, Harvey Firestone room and filmed it,
32:25
and all these guys talked about the importance of this story.
32:28
They talked about their own lives racing.
32:31
LJ Dennis, he's won over 400 races.
32:34
He's in the Hall of Fame in North Carolina, but he lives right up the road.
32:37
Here he is 90 and he's still working on cars.
32:39
I pulled my car in there a couple weeks ago and said, what is this weird noise?
32:43
You know?
32:44
But you know, they're all in the film.
32:47
And throughout the main film, even several of them were talking about the
32:52
coal mining, the, the wealth, and the, you know, how we could open such a track.
32:58
In Southwestern Pennsylvania, uh, you know, people don't understand how wealthy
33:02
this area was, and that's Uniontown.
33:04
Pennsylvania is undermined.
33:06
That's how Andrew Carnegie made his money.
33:08
But Greg Dahl speaks to it in the film under Uniontown.
33:12
That's Pittsburgh still, and Pittsburgh still supplied 50% of the Still for World
33:18
War I that kind of brings it all home.
33:21
It's how we could race and Indy couldn't throughout.
33:23
That war and now, now it's, it's still a tourist area here,
33:27
but for different reasons.
33:28
In your work as an author and a screenwriter, how do you decide
33:32
which of these stories, which of these threads deserves a closer look?
33:37
It's gut.
33:38
When John May called me and said, you, you really need to do that documentary.
33:42
I'm neck deep, just launched a book on a higher pal to do a three
33:47
book series and then a documentary, and all my car guys are aging.
33:51
In January, it'll be two years since we had the conversation.
33:55
And I'll tell you this summer, I was really tired.
33:58
Really tired after spending months and months in Da Vinci resolve Studio 'cause
34:04
I'm a writer that was so technical and hurt my brain, but learned a lot, really
34:10
happy that this is the way I went.
34:13
Then I'll be ready for my second high power would be easy because I
34:16
mean, I know that I don't even need to interview anybody about that.
34:19
I can just spill it.
34:21
So as we close out this thought on the film and the making of the film and
34:25
everything that went into it, how do you think this is going to resonate
34:30
with younger Motorsport enthusiasts?
34:33
Now, that's a big question.
34:34
I know that there are a few things.
34:36
The documentaries I've been into are running local schools.
34:39
When I started the documentary, uh, one of my car guys, John over, took me down to
34:43
South Union Township to see one of their township supervisors who wanted to put
34:49
a trail over to Hopwood on Route 40 from this sheep's skin trail that is there.
34:56
And John said to him, you know, that goes right through the old
35:00
Uniontown Speedway property.
35:01
And Bob didn't know he just wanted it where he went.
35:04
In the meantime, they're waiting on grants.
35:06
To put the Speedway Trail in the unit, Speedway Trail and
35:10
it there on the National Pike.
35:12
This old gas station, the uh, national Road Heritage Corridor Group are
35:18
trying to get grants to put the Uniontown Speedway Museum there.
35:23
Now this is a tourist area.
35:24
So what I would we would like to do as this comes into fruition is of
35:30
course continually play the film there.
35:32
I'd like to design a, some kind of games where these guys can come in and
35:36
drive on the wooden board track and play the film in schools and get them
35:41
interested and and excited about it.
35:43
And through this museum and.
35:45
Just let 'em know where cars come from.
35:47
I think people take their cars for granted something terrible, so I'm
35:51
going to do my best to launch this and get it on streamers and everything,
35:55
but it's a step by step thing.
35:57
It will be in some film festivals next year and all that jazz, and
36:01
definitely I wanna show, and there's middle schools and high schools.
36:04
So let's talk about the future a little bit here.
36:07
As you mentioned, the racing in the Ohio pile and Uniontown areas ended
36:12
in 1922, over a hundred years ago.
36:15
Yeah.
36:16
Despite all the run running and everything else, but there's a hundred years of
36:19
history in that area, and you alluded to the fact that it's still a very much a
36:23
tourist area in southwestern Pennsylvania.
36:26
What does that a hundred years look like?
36:28
Are there other chapters of the Ohio pile story that you wanna explore
36:32
and talk about outside of, you know, speed King and, and things like that?
36:36
Oh yeah.
36:36
Ohio Pile is on the Yoki Gny Whitewater River.
36:39
During the French and Indian War, George Washington came down the yak.
36:44
A log canoe almost drowned.
36:46
They saved him right above the high Powell Falls.
36:48
I write about all this kind of thing, but a High Powell was the busiest
36:53
commercially run Whitewater River in the world for a long time, and my family
36:57
owned a couple of those companies.
36:58
And so.
37:00
What I'm writing about as far as how Haal goes is the beginning of
37:04
a Haal after the Revolutionary War.
37:07
A lot of soldiers out of Virginia in these areas were not paid with money.
37:12
They were paid with bounty land grants, and they would send these guys
37:18
who were broke, just been shot at.
37:21
Up into the hills, you know, like they owned 400 acres,
37:24
but they didn't have anything.
37:25
So anyway, Congressman Andrew Stewart, these guys would come up here and he would
37:30
buy their land from them and set them up.
37:32
Like one of 'em was raising mules and one of 'em was raising different things
37:36
on all these different properties.
37:38
He bought up 80,000 acres of Fayette County, this congressman.
37:44
So I write about him.
37:45
I don't know what a high Powell would've been without the Congressman.
37:49
He almost became president and when there was a flub in Philadelphia during the
37:54
voting and all this stuff, and he came back home and they had been nominating
37:58
him for vice president at the time.
38:00
So he came back home and he had several hotels in this
38:02
hotel down by the courthouse in Uniontown, the Clinton house.
38:06
President Taylor came.
38:07
Stopped there to see him and offered him the position of Secretary of the Treasury.
38:12
He turned it down and bought up a high power.
38:15
Instead, he came up here, built bridges over, you know, you
38:18
couldn't get into high power.
38:19
I mean, it's mountainous and it was just forests and a river and
38:23
creeks, and you couldn't cross.
38:25
I mean, he built bridges and gristmills and homes and made electricity out
38:31
of the waterfall and built hotels, and he fought for 20 years to bring.
38:36
The B and O railroad up through a high pal to his hotel, the Ohio Pal Hotel,
38:42
which my grandparents later owned.
38:44
You know, he made a town out of this frontier, which just had travelers and
38:50
Indians hunting the ground and fishing, and then poor soldiers coming up here
38:55
trying to build log cabins and stuff.
38:57
He really put people to work.
38:59
He had made tons of money.
39:01
He did a lot of good for a Ohio pal.
39:03
Ohio Pal is this incredible setting.
39:05
Beautiful kind of the stage for all these human dramas.
39:09
Mm-hmm.
39:10
Do you have any words of wisdom or advice to, let's say, younger folks today who
39:14
think, gosh, I wonder what happened.
39:16
If there's a similar history in my town, I wonder if I could get started
39:19
looking around and seeing about that.
39:21
Do you have any advice for budding local historians?
39:24
Right, about what interests you?
39:26
And do your research.
39:27
Research is so much fun.
39:29
The discovery, you know, putting things together and every town has a
39:32
story and every town has interesting people and a lot of times, like
39:36
Charlie Johnson and the congressmen are really unsung heroes around here.
39:41
Like Hyatt Powell doesn't have a bust of the congressman.
39:44
I always say this, where's the bust of Congressman Andrew Stewart?
39:47
Because he gave land for the fire department, the community center, the.
39:51
Playground, everything.
39:52
I mean, built all the homes.
39:54
There's nothing about him.
39:55
The township is called Stor Township, but nobody knows
39:59
why unless they read my books.
40:00
But I think a lot of places do have historical societies.
40:04
I would start there if that is available, but many libraries have,
40:09
like we have the Pennsylvania room.
40:11
You know, it used to be microfilm and everything.
40:13
The libraries have collections of the oldest stuff.
40:17
If you're lucky and had really good people in these libraries.
40:20
Libraries and historical societies, and talk to the oldest people.
40:23
You can find the oldest people.
40:25
I've interviewed three 105 year old women, and I think the oldest man was 99.
40:33
And they were still sharp.
40:34
Listen to older people.
40:36
Don't ignore these people when they talk, ask them questions,
40:40
ask them about their lives.
40:41
They've been through more.
40:42
I've lived seven decades now and I cannot believe Higher Pal is nothing
40:48
like it was when I was a child.
40:51
Nothing.
40:51
You know, sometimes I just lay on a river rock and think about 1960 and 1955.
40:57
Oh my gosh.
40:58
So you really have to write about what interests you and
41:02
do your homework and have fun.
41:04
You know, besides the, you got some upcoming books planned
41:06
about Ohio Pilot history.
41:08
Any other kind of projects you have cooking?
41:10
Oh my gosh, a few years ago I wrote my memoir, it's called Writer's Life in
41:16
case I croak or something, some cry.
41:18
My kids hate when I say that, but I'm like.
41:20
It's gonna happen, but I'm writing my memoir and hopefully after I get
41:25
done with the Higher Pal documentary and books, I will finish that thing.
41:29
I wrote it actually up to maybe two years ago, and it's a comedy.
41:33
I write all the crap, you know, boo blah, blah, blah, and I
41:36
come up from a huge family.
41:37
So there's a lot of funny stuff.
41:39
I'm writing it as a comedy, so anything I was bitchy about,
41:43
you know, in the first draft is.
41:46
Out, get out.
41:47
You know, life is fun and who knows?
41:50
I mean, it's gonna take me a while to get all this done.
41:53
There's no end to subjects I don't think.
41:56
Well, that being said, Marcie, when you look back at all this and you
41:59
think about the history of Ohio pile and racing and everything else,
42:03
what would you say is the one thing that motor sports has taught you?
42:07
Those are good people.
42:08
Those car guys.
42:10
I didn't know anything about racing.
42:12
You know, not really.
42:13
I mean, I've been to races, but I didn't know anything about it.
42:16
They've taught me so much.
42:18
It's flabbergasting, and they're such good, good people.
42:22
When I promised to do something with this information, I had no idea I was gonna
42:27
make so many friends, so many long, I mean, they've been with me for 32 years
42:32
on this speaking project, 32 years.
42:35
I think back, I'm like, oh my gosh.
42:37
We were young.
42:38
When we started this stuff, beyond the writing and the research, I've
42:42
just learned that racing people are good people, family oriented, and.
42:47
Solid, solid people.
42:49
That's what I've learned.
42:50
All right, Marcy.
42:51
Well, we've reached that part of the episode where I'd like to invite
42:53
our guests to share any shout outs, promotions, thank yous, or anything
42:57
else that we haven't covered thus far.
42:58
I'd like to thank Jim Boyd for torturing me for 32 years with
43:04
this and all of my sponsors.
43:06
I have a website@speedkingstory.com.
43:10
I have some clips from this Speed King documentary Uncut on YouTube
43:16
Shore Films, S-H-O-R-E Shore Films.
43:19
You can find, just go Uniontown Speedway.
43:22
You'll find it.
43:23
The last 10 minutes of the film or the funny part where all the guys are talking,
43:27
telling their stories, and uh, just talking about each other, talking about
43:31
their dead friends and all that jazz.
43:33
But all my books are on Amazon.
43:35
I mean, I sell them locally, et cetera.
43:38
Marcy McGuinness.
43:39
Just look up Uniontown Speedway books, you'll find, you know,
43:43
I have like 40 books on there.
43:44
I have an High PAL info website.
43:47
It's a lot of information on that end of things, and I would just
43:51
like to thank anyone who has ever contributed to any of my projects
43:55
since 1981 when I started writing.
44:00
Well, that brings us to the end of today's conversation with Marcy McGuinness, author,
44:04
historian, screenwriter, and one of the most passionate guardians of Ohio,
44:09
pys past her decades of dedication from uncovering forgotten stories to bringing
44:14
the Speed King documentary to life.
44:16
It reminds us how powerful history can be when it's preserved
44:20
by someone who really cares.
44:22
If Marcy's work inspired you today, be sure to explore her books,
44:25
follow the progress of speaking, and dive deeper into the rich
44:28
heritage of Ohio Pile, Pennsylvania.
44:30
For more information, be sure to check out her websites, Ohio
44:33
pile.info and speed king story.com.
44:37
Marcy, I can't thank you enough for coming on Break Fix and sharing your
44:41
story with us, and it's one of those reminders that no matter where you
44:46
look, no matter what corner of the world you're in, there's always.
44:49
Something that pulls us back to motor sports, and I think you've proven
44:54
that yet again, and I appreciate what you're doing and keep up the good work.
44:58
Thank you guys so much.
44:59
It was fun.
45:00
Yay.
45:00
It was a pleasure to meet you.
45:01
You too.
45:02
We hope you enjoyed this journey through racing history and the personal stories
45:06
that keep the spirit of Motorsport alive.
45:09
The Eastern Museum of Motor Racing is a premier destination for motor
45:13
racing enthusiasts, showcasing a vast collection of historic racing
45:16
cars, artifacts, and memorabilia.
45:19
To learn more about the EMMR or to be a part of the next
45:23
in-person racers Roundtable.
45:25
You can plan your visit or support the museum's mission to preserve
45:28
and celebrate the legacy of racing by heading to www dotr.org.
45:35
Follow them on social media for the latest news, upcoming
45:38
events, and exclusive content.
45:40
Until next time, keep the engines running and the memories alive.
45:51
We hope you enjoyed another awesome episode of Break Fix Podcast, brought
45:56
to you by Grand Tour Motorsports.
45:58
If you'd like to be a guest on the show or get involved, be sure
46:01
to follow us on all social media platforms at Grand Touring Motorsports.
46:05
And if you'd like to learn more about the content of this episode,
46:08
be sure to check out the follow on article@gtmotorsports.org.
46:13
We remain a commercial free and no annual fees organization through
46:17
our sponsors, but also through the generous support of our fans,
46:21
families, and friends through Patreon.
46:24
For as little as $2 and 50 cents a month, you can get access to more
46:28
behind the scenes action, additional pit Stop, mini SOS and other VIP
46:32
goodies, as well as keeping our team of creators fed on their strict diet of
46:37
Fig Newton's, Gumby bears, and Monster.
46:39
So consider signing up for Patreon today at www.patreon.com/gt motorsports.
46:46
And remember, without you.
46:48
None of this would be possible.