Latest / BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show / Open Wheel Madness, Part 1 - Board Track Racing (Herb Anastor)

Transcript

Open Wheel Madness, Part 1 - Board Track Racing (Herb Anastor) · BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show

• 0:00
  BreakFix's History of Motorsports series is brought to you in part
• 0:04
  by the International Motor Racing Research Center, as well as the
• 0:07
  Society of Automotive Historians, the Watkins Glen Area Chamber of
• 0:11
  Commerce, and the Argettsinger family.
• 0:16
  Well, my name is Kip Sider.
• 0:17
  For those who may not know, I'm the Visitor Services Outreach
• 0:20
  Coordinator for the International Motor Racing Research Center.
• 0:23
  And I want to welcome you all here.
• 0:24
  Thank you for taking a little time out of your afternoon to come visit us
• 0:27
  as we talk about open wheel madness.
• 0:30
  Before we get going, I have several people I need to thank on this.
• 0:33
  First of all, and foremost of all, are our two speakers, Mr.
• 0:36
  Herb Anistore and Stephen Bubb.
• 0:38
  When we were considering putting this program together, I emailed
• 0:42
  Lenny Sammons from Area Auto Racing News and asked him what we were
• 0:46
  projecting to do and who might I get that would be experts in their field.
• 0:49
  And Mr.
• 0:50
  Sammons immediately suggested Herb and Steve.
• 0:53
  We are very happy and very honored to have them here today.
• 0:56
  I am personally fascinated at both of the things they're going to talk about.
• 0:59
  Herb is talking about board track racing, which I have been fascinated
• 1:02
  about for a number of years.
• 1:03
  And Steven's going to talk about sprint car and open wheel racing in the twenties
• 1:07
  and thirties and some guy named Al Capone and what he had to do with racing.
• 1:11
  And that was the hook that got me psyched on his talk as well.
• 1:14
  So I certainly want to thank both Herb and Steven for coming here.
• 1:17
  Herb, I'm going to invite you up now, so settle back and
• 1:20
  relax, and Herb, come on up.
• 1:22
  Kip, thank you, uh, gee, a nice crowd, and it's an honor to be here because
• 1:27
  I know the people who've been before me and the people who are involved in
• 1:31
  this organization, and it's something I never really would have ever
• 1:34
  expected, so thank you all for coming.
• 1:37
  I hope we have some fun this afternoon.
• 1:38
  This is something that I'm interested in.
• 1:41
  Kip has asked me to talk a little bit about myself.
• 1:44
  We live in Vineland, New Jersey.
• 1:45
  I was a school teacher for 25 years, taught health and physical education,
• 1:50
  and for much of that time while I was doing that, I was also working
• 1:53
  at the local newspaper in Vineland.
• 1:56
  I was a sports writer, and the last two years I was a daily columnist, which means
• 2:00
  I went into the office every night and I sat and looked at that screen for two
• 2:04
  or three hours before I wrote anything, which had to be printed the next day,
• 2:08
  so that, that was always a lot of fun.
• 2:09
  As far as automobile racing goes, I got involved as a kid going to the Vineland
• 2:15
  Speedway, which was in our community.
• 2:17
  It started out as a dirt track, then it became asphalt track.
• 2:20
  My family wasn't really racing fans.
• 2:23
  Before I was old enough to drive, my dad would take me to the races
• 2:26
  because he knew I liked the racing.
• 2:28
  Then when I got old enough to drive, I was a drag racer, became an official
• 2:32
  at the track, was a starter with flags.
• 2:34
  I'm that old.
• 2:35
  Our track closed.
• 2:37
  My racing got involved with more with what you could see on TV, reading National
• 2:41
  Speed Sport news, articles like that.
• 2:44
  I got involved with Lenny.
• 2:46
  I've been writing for about 40 years, area auto racing news.
• 2:49
  I was also a contributing editor for 20 years with stock car racing.
• 2:53
  I worked for Jimmy Horton when he was doing his modified racing.
• 2:57
  He still is.
• 2:58
  I was 11 years.
• 2:59
  I worked on that crew did tires crew set up car involvement and things like that.
• 3:04
  I'm really interested in the history of automobile racing.
• 3:07
  It's just so interesting to find out how we got to where we are.
• 3:11
  Board track racing is part of that.
• 3:13
  Before I go into what I'm going to speak about today, which is really
• 3:16
  more of an overview, because there's so much you can talk about in all this,
• 3:20
  I want to point out this painting.
• 3:22
  This was done by Joe Henning, and he's a motorsports illustrator, and the man
• 3:27
  in the white car is Frank Lockhart, and that's a rear wheel drive Miller, and the
• 3:32
  front wheel drive Miller is Peter DiPaolo.
• 3:34
  When I asked the people who had this painting if I could use it,
• 3:38
  they had no question about it.
• 3:40
  They thought this would be a terrific idea, and that's why I
• 3:43
  left the logo, which you can see, is the American Hot Rod Foundation.
• 3:48
  American Hot Rod Foundation is an organization much like this.
• 3:51
  They deal with old time auto racing.
• 3:54
  And the history of the sport, board tracks a little bit, mostly with hot rodding.
• 3:58
  It's not a bad idea if you're interested one time and you're
• 4:01
  sitting at your computer to just type in American Hot Rod Foundation
• 4:05
  and see what they have to offer.
• 4:07
  I think you're here today because you enjoy this kind of thing.
• 4:10
  And that's a nice activity to get involved.
• 4:12
  Velodrome is a French term meaning bicycle racetrack.
• 4:16
  And this is what became very popular in Europe.
• 4:19
  People racing bicycles on these oval board tracks eventually
• 4:23
  came over to this country, and there were velodromes throughout.
• 4:26
  Bicycle racing was very popular at the end of the 1890s and early 1900s.
• 4:32
  Many of the early automobile racers were bicycle racers.
• 4:36
  The Wright brothers were bicycle racers.
• 4:38
  So if we're going to race bicycles on a wooden track, well,
• 4:41
  motorcycles aren't that much bigger.
• 4:44
  So let's try them and they did that too.
• 4:46
  Those people really did things that were just unimaginable.
• 4:50
  Motorcycles and velodromes were raced with the throttle wired full force.
• 4:56
  So they're going around full force with no brakes.
• 4:59
  A lot of accidents, a lot of people were killed, but this is what they
• 5:02
  did and people continued to do that.
• 5:04
  Someone thought, well, if we have bicycles and motorcycles, maybe we could
• 5:08
  have automobiles on a wooden track.
• 5:11
  The first track that was ever built.
• 5:13
  For automobile racing with a wooden base was the Playa del
• 5:17
  Rey in Venice, California.
• 5:19
  It was a one mile track 1910 and it was in Los Angeles and it was designed by
• 5:24
  Fred Moskowitz and built by Jack Prince.
• 5:27
  Jack Prince was a bicycle champion, came to this country to build these race tracks
• 5:33
  for motorcycles and bicycles and Moskowitz and Prince put this track together.
• 5:39
  This was a one mile track banked 30 degrees.
• 5:43
  Moskowitz was really excited about this, but Howard Marmon, who had
• 5:47
  the Marmon Automobile Company, said, You know, this is okay, but these
• 5:50
  guys aren't going to do that good.
• 5:52
  And Moskowitz said, 5, 000 bet that they would go over 100 miles an hour.
• 5:58
  Now 5, 000, as we see, is about 133, 000 today, so this wasn't a small wager.
• 6:04
  And he lost that bet by less than one mile an hour.
• 6:08
  The car that went the fastest at that time was Barney Oldfield,
• 6:12
  but this was the first track.
• 6:13
  There were 24 of them from 1910 through 1931.
• 6:18
  The second track was built in Oakland.
• 6:20
  This was where Jack Prince's headquarters was, and it was in 1911.
• 6:25
  It was a half mile track.
• 6:26
  You can see there were also three other half mile tracks that
• 6:30
  were built late in the 1920s.
• 6:33
  These tracks were wonderful board tracks for the racers, but they never had a
• 6:38
  triple A national championship race.
• 6:41
  That was always on a track that was a mile or longer.
• 6:44
  These four other tracks in Oakland, Akron, Bridgeport, and Woodbridge
• 6:49
  were more like a local weekly track.
• 6:51
  They had regular races, sometimes they had special events.
• 6:55
  Sometimes they were run monthly, depending on the popularity of the races.
• 7:00
  They were more of a local flavor, other than the rest of the tracks
• 7:04
  which we'll see, which were all National Championship tracks.
• 7:08
  You see, from 1910, it took until 1915 for the next track to be built.
• 7:14
  That was in Chicago, was a two mile track.
• 7:17
  Tacoma was a two mile track and Omaha, then Des Moines.
• 7:21
  So you had four tracks within one year that developed into something that
• 7:25
  became a national championship circuit.
• 7:28
  All of these tracks were run for a variety of years with a variety of winners.
• 7:34
  And the history of all these tracks, we could spend hours on.
• 7:38
  But we want to talk a little bit more about the overall
• 7:41
  nature of board track racing.
• 7:43
  And in doing that, here is what the coverage was in the newspapers
• 7:48
  of the first board track races.
• 7:50
  Now, Playa Del Rey, This was a week long activity.
• 7:54
  It had a wide variety of things that took place.
• 7:57
  Notice the headlines.
• 7:58
  They were running this mile track in about 37, 38 seconds.
• 8:03
  But notice the cars that were being raced.
• 8:05
  These cars were basically the cars that were by the manufacturers,
• 8:10
  and they were just stripped down.
• 8:11
  They had wooden wheels.
• 8:13
  Tires sometimes were solid tires.
• 8:15
  They weren't all necessarily rubber tires.
• 8:17
  But look at the coverage that was given.
• 8:20
  To what was taking place.
• 8:21
  Here's the Marmon Pier in the top corner.
• 8:24
  That was driven by Ray Haroon.
• 8:26
  You can see the other vehicles in there.
• 8:28
  How heavy they are.
• 8:29
  Imagine going 90, 95 miles an hour in something like that.
• 8:34
  And this is what these folks were doing.
• 8:35
  Notice the Michelin tire ad.
• 8:37
  Michelin was a great supporter of automobile racing.
• 8:41
  In fact, it was one of the leading automobile racing tires at the time.
• 8:45
  The Fiat ad on the side here.
• 8:48
  talking about Ralph De Palma and Caleb Bragg.
• 8:51
  They were two of the drivers that were Fiat racers and what they talked about
• 8:55
  when the Fiat and the power of the race car, and then the records that were being
• 8:59
  set this first week of racing board track in California had a variety of things.
• 9:04
  There were races of maybe five laps going on.
• 9:08
  There were challenge races.
• 9:09
  They had a wide variety of engine sizes, so that someone would race.
• 9:14
  We're going to try and set a record for a 100 cubic inch engine.
• 9:17
  We're going to try an engine that's 300 cubic inches.
• 9:20
  Things like that.
• 9:21
  And this went on for that week.
• 9:23
  1910, the Playa del Rey.
• 9:25
  Notice the people standing outside the track.
• 9:28
  Notice that the track wall is perpendicular to the ground.
• 9:34
  Not perpendicular to the racetrack.
• 9:36
  In the early tracks, this caused a lot of problems.
• 9:39
  Cars would go into that and just go over the top.
• 9:42
  They wouldn't necessarily come back in.
• 9:44
  But you see how these cars were?
• 9:46
  There were two man cars.
• 9:47
  There were one man cars.
• 9:49
  Notice the gas tanks.
• 9:50
  Just regular gas tank that was in the automobile before they
• 9:54
  stripped the body panels away.
• 9:56
  Here is more coverage.
• 9:58
  This is Ray Haroon driving his Marmin.
• 10:00
  He won a 100 mile race.
• 10:02
  Hello Los Angeles Herald, this was a front page story.
• 10:05
  This was April 10th, it was in early April when the track opened.
• 10:09
  In June 1910, here was an article by the New York Times comparing
• 10:15
  the board track in California with the Indianapolis Motor Speedway,
• 10:19
  which had only been open since 1909.
• 10:22
  How the comparison of the two, what could be done to the automobile
• 10:26
  industry, because automobile racing at that time was really a development.
• 10:31
  of the automobile industry.
• 10:33
  This is how people tested their cars.
• 10:35
  There was no test track.
• 10:37
  They were racing on fairgrounds.
• 10:39
  They were racing point to point from city to city, or a city would lay out a
• 10:44
  course and they would race around that.
• 10:46
  And there was questions about the board tracks getting bigger and
• 10:50
  more popular and things like that.
• 10:52
  New York Times at the time was the newspaper of record.
• 10:55
  Here's another photograph, Beverly Hills racetrack.
• 10:59
  This was 1920 to 1924.
• 11:01
  Notice what it looked like when it was in operation.
• 11:05
  That's Santa Monica Boulevard and Wilshire Boulevard.
• 11:08
  Where the big red dot is is the approximate location of the racetrack.
• 11:12
  The racetrack actually came back beyond where the red roofed houses are.
• 11:17
  You can see the size of this.
• 11:19
  This was a two mile track.
• 11:21
  This was in 1920, and this was the first track that used Searle's Spiral.
• 11:28
  Easement curve.
• 11:29
  This actually was used by railroads to make it easier for
• 11:33
  trains to go around the curve.
• 11:34
  Let's say you had a curve on your track.
• 11:38
  First turn was 1, 500 feet around.
• 11:40
  Let's just use that for numbers.
• 11:42
  Easement curve would, every 500 feet, it would shorten for a little bit the
• 11:48
  radius on that curve, so it would be easier to turn the car through the turn.
• 11:53
  Then when you got through it, it would go the other way.
• 11:56
  And Art Pillsbury used this with Jack Prince.
• 12:00
  This is when they first became partners.
• 12:02
  Pillsbury believed this was his way for the cars to go around these tracks at
• 12:07
  the high speeds that they were going.
• 12:09
  And he also said an ideal board racing track would allow a car to go around
• 12:15
  without turning the wheel at all.
• 12:17
  When we drive on the highway, you're going around the curve.
• 12:20
  You're going to turn the wheel a little bit, little bit this way.
• 12:23
  You would just hold your hand steady and the car would go around.
• 12:27
  What made it so possible for these cars to go very, very fast for their time.
• 12:32
  Imagine now how many people realize that where they once lived was a racetrack.
• 12:37
  I don't think many people would 2019 picture of Santa
• 12:44
  Monica and Wilshire Boulevard.
• 12:46
  Board tracks were easy to construct because it was
• 12:49
  framing a house, effectively.
• 12:51
  You had long, 18, 20 foot, sometimes longer, pieces of wood
• 12:56
  that were put down on a frame.
• 12:57
  And in other photographs, you'll see the outside of how it looked.
• 13:01
  And you just needed a lot of men with a lot of nails and a lot of hammers.
• 13:05
  The Atlantic City Motor Speedway was a mile and a half.
• 13:08
  They built it start to finish with 700 men, and all they
• 13:12
  did was just pound nails.
• 13:13
  The tracks approximately on the straightaway were from 40 to 60 feet wide.
• 13:19
  Turns were 70, 75 feet wide.
• 13:22
  They used millions of board feet.
• 13:24
  They used whatever they could to bring the product into the
• 13:29
  area where it was being built.
• 13:30
  From heavy trucks to horse drawn wagons, because remember, this was
• 13:34
  the early part of the 20th century.
• 13:36
  You see the steep nature of the board track.
• 13:39
  This is a turn, and it looks much like someone when they're going
• 13:43
  up the roof of a house sometimes.
• 13:44
  It's really pretty effective.
• 13:46
  They went up rather quickly when they were built.
• 13:48
  The only problem with wood out in the weather is unless you do
• 13:52
  something to preserve it, you're going to have some problems, and
• 13:54
  there were no tracts effectively that used any kind of wood preservative.
• 13:59
  Most of the wood was pine wood like you'd use in a house construction.
• 14:03
  Some tried harder woods, but that didn't necessarily work either.
• 14:07
  And you can see the damage to this board track.
• 14:10
  What would happen during the races when something broke, which did,
• 14:13
  it would sit from underneath.
• 14:15
  Peter Palo one time said the most interesting thing he experienced as
• 14:19
  a board track racer was the head of someone popping up in the hole to
• 14:24
  see where he had to fix the track.
• 14:26
  This is a picture of the Laurel Speedway, which was also known as
• 14:30
  the Baltimore Washington Speedway.
• 14:32
  This is opening day, July 11th, 1925.
• 14:35
  You can see in the far corner the, uh, banking and how that
• 14:39
  looks, and the massive size on acres of ground these tracks were.
• 14:44
  But the thing that impressed me most about this picture, and look at all
• 14:47
  the straw hats, there were not very many women that were in the grandstand
• 14:52
  and wherever area this was taken.
• 14:54
  This was one of the more popular tracks, and as I pointed out here, you went
• 14:58
  to the races to see things, but you also saw things besides racing cars.
• 15:03
  Frequently airplane demonstrations, because in the early and the
• 15:06
  late teens, it was a new item.
• 15:09
  They had balloon races, daytime fireworks, bands that were there.
• 15:13
  My uncle and my grandmother and grandfather went to the track in
• 15:18
  the Atlantic City Motor Speedway.
• 15:19
  And my dad said that he remembered all the people that were there.
• 15:23
  There were 85, 000 or so at the time he went, and all the cars.
• 15:28
  And they had an interesting race besides the automobile race.
• 15:32
  They had what they called an ambulance race.
• 15:34
  They had half a dozen race car drivers, a half a dozen ambulances.
• 15:38
  A half a dozen doctors and a half a dozen orderlies.
• 15:42
  And on the backstretch of the Atlantic City Motor Speedway, they had six dummies
• 15:46
  that were supposed to be injured people or someone who were needed medical care.
• 15:52
  And the idea of the race was to see who could get to the dummy first
• 15:56
  and get back to the starting line and that was going to be the winner.
• 16:00
  They also had stock car races at these and we'll talk about this later.
• 16:04
  My father said, because he became a doctor, that was something he
• 16:08
  remembered from the race, other than all the excitement of that.
• 16:11
  But this is just a general good look at an opening day at a board track speedway.
• 16:17
  Notice all the people in the infield.
• 16:19
  Notice all the people in the grandstand.
• 16:21
  Ticket prices were a dollar.
• 16:23
  Up to 10, 12, which again, we're talking about times in the 20s
• 16:28
  and so you could say a dollar in the 20s is worth about 15 today.
• 16:32
  So it was a good chunk of your money, but the people had a good time and the
• 16:37
  board tracks attracted a lot of attention.
• 16:39
  Here again is the board track in at Baltimore, Washington.
• 16:42
  Notice the extreme banking of the speedway, the cars, millers down on the
• 16:49
  lower picture going into the first turn.
• 16:52
  Fields of races had anywhere 15, maybe 20 were the top number in the entry.
• 16:58
  But you can see on the outside of this lower picture what some
• 17:01
  of the support structure was.
• 17:03
  All wood.
• 17:04
  There were two tracks that didn't have a wood base.
• 17:06
  The Sheepshead Bay in Brooklyn.
• 17:08
  That was a metal base, and the other was the Tacoma track, which
• 17:12
  was actually built in the ground.
• 17:14
  This was a mile and a quarter track, and because of the nature of board
• 17:18
  track racing, speed was the thing that was involved, pit stops, and
• 17:22
  so those weren't really expected.
• 17:24
  If you had a pit stop, you were not going to race for first place.
• 17:28
  This was a 45 degree banking in this track, and that's generally what the
• 17:32
  banking was in these bigger tracks.
• 17:35
  Here is the Tacoma track, and what's interesting about this track, as I said,
• 17:39
  is this track was built in the ground.
• 17:41
  You can see in the picture on the right here, they built the banking.
• 17:44
  You can see the dirt.
• 17:45
  They put the boards in the ground.
• 17:48
  And then they filled it with asphalt.
• 17:50
  Notice the two race cars on the bottom here.
• 17:53
  You can barely pick it out, but they have a screen in front of
• 17:56
  their radiator because the asphalt and gravel didn't do anything but
• 18:00
  come up and bang into the cars.
• 18:02
  In fact, there were frequent tire explosions.
• 18:05
  The drivers were injured.
• 18:07
  Notice they're two man cars.
• 18:09
  Tacoma, to compensate for this, placed high winning prizes so they
• 18:14
  would get all the top drivers.
• 18:16
  But of all the tracks that were national championship tracks, this was the one
• 18:21
  that was most disliked by the racers.
• 18:23
  In fact, one of the comments was at the time, board track racing
• 18:27
  is really not that much fun because the tracks are not good.
• 18:30
  And then there's Tacoma.
• 18:31
  The other thing that's interesting about the Tacoma track is, notice that it's not
• 18:35
  a round track or it's not an oval track.
• 18:38
  It was built on the land that was available, much like the Darlington
• 18:42
  Speedway has the two different curves.
• 18:44
  But the other thing that's interesting about this track, it's one of the
• 18:48
  very few that is even recognized today as having been there.
• 18:53
  There's a historical marker in the center of the track.
• 18:55
  picture that shows where the Tacoma track was.
• 18:58
  What is located where Tacoma is now is a community college.
• 19:02
  These are the people who I would say are probably the most famous people
• 19:07
  to come out of the board track era.
• 19:09
  Jack Prince over on the left.
• 19:11
  You can see he was a big, strong man.
• 19:14
  Most of the big, rugged guys, because the race on big bicycles,
• 19:18
  they weren't the three pound machines that are available now.
• 19:22
  Jack Prince was from 1910 to 1927 involved in just about all the tracks.
• 19:28
  Although when Art Pillsbury joined him in 1920, the whole nature of the
• 19:33
  board track development changed just because of that spiral easement curve.
• 19:37
  The interesting thing also about Art, after he designed all these board
• 19:41
  tracks, he also became a top ranked official in the American Automobile
• 19:46
  Association's, uh, racing situation.
• 19:49
  He was the West Coast supervisor for a long time, and he had important
• 19:53
  roles at the Indianapolis 500.
• 19:55
  The bottom four people are four men who did a lot for board track
• 20:00
  racing, especially in the second part in the 20s, because most of the
• 20:05
  cars were Miller's or Duesenberg's.
• 20:07
  Harry Miller, of course, was a famous person before he even
• 20:11
  got involved in racing because he manufactured carburetors.
• 20:14
  Here's an ad for a Miller carburetor.
• 20:16
  Dario Resta, Johnny Aiton, and Eddie Rickenbacker all used the
• 20:22
  Miller Carburetor, and that was a popular carburetor used by lots
• 20:26
  of people in lots of different things, not only in automobile
• 20:29
  racing, but in make your car better.
• 20:32
  One of the things that was interesting, the research of this era, there
• 20:35
  were a lot of aftermarket companies that were making things to make
• 20:39
  the automobile that the people were driving daily a better automobile.
• 20:44
  Lower picture shows Harry Miller with one of his Miller engines.
• 20:47
  They were straight A.
• 20:48
  He was involved with the Puget Grand Prix car before he got involved
• 20:53
  in racing on a full time scale.
• 20:56
  The maintenance of that car and the Puget had a lot to do with the
• 21:00
  development of the Miller engines and also the Offenhauser engine,
• 21:04
  which you see on the right here.
• 21:06
  Interesting thing about Harry Miller is his shop foreman was Fred H.
• 21:10
  Offenhauser, who became the man who developed the Offenhauser racing engine.
• 21:15
  It's also another Fred Offenhauser, Fred C.
• 21:19
  Fred C.
• 21:19
  was Fred H.
• 21:21
  's nephew.
• 21:21
  And they worked together, but they didn't like each other very much.
• 21:25
  They had problems working together, but they did.
• 21:28
  And Fred C.
• 21:29
  was a pretty decent machinist, so Fred H.
• 21:32
  caped him around.
• 21:33
  Fred C.
• 21:34
  went in the Navy and World War II.
• 21:36
  And after he got out of the Navy, he saw it.
• 21:38
  Well, I don't want to work for my uncle again.
• 21:40
  I'm going to start my own business.
• 21:42
  He's the man that developed the Offenhauser speed equipment.
• 21:46
  The stuff you see, the valve covers, the intake manifolds,
• 21:49
  this, that, and the other.
• 21:50
  They had problems with the name.
• 21:52
  One thought the other shouldn't be using the name.
• 21:54
  So each one sued the other.
• 21:57
  Took this to court, and they sued because they wanted the exclusive
• 22:01
  right to use the name Offenhauser.
• 22:03
  Well, the judge, I guess this must have been a fun time too, having two
• 22:07
  people yell about the same thing.
• 22:09
  The judge decided they could both use the name Offenhauser
• 22:14
  because it was their name.
• 22:15
  However, legally, the judge ruled that the only thing that could be called an
• 22:21
  offie Is the four cylinder racing engine.
• 22:24
  So if you hear I got off the head covers, actually they're often Hauser ed covers.
• 22:28
  They can't use the name.
• 22:30
  The other thing about the, uh, off the engine is that Leo Goosen from
• 22:35
  the time he began working with Harry Miller right up until his
• 22:39
  death, and he passed away in 1974.
• 22:42
  He did a great deal with automobile racing engines.
• 22:45
  He was the one when George Sally decided he wanted to have the lay down
• 22:49
  engine in his 1957 Indianapolis car.
• 22:53
  He's the one that redesigned that so the oil would flow properly because
• 22:58
  it was 18 degrees from being flat.
• 23:00
  An outstanding gentleman and Harry Miller thought enough of Leo Goosen
• 23:05
  to tell him In 1925, you've done outstanding work for my company.
• 23:10
  I appreciate everything you do.
• 23:12
  This year, I'm going to pay you a dollar an hour.
• 23:16
  That was a high, high rate for him.
• 23:18
  And at that time, that was about 15 an hour in today's money.
• 23:22
  So those are people, and of course, the Duesenbergs are interesting.
• 23:25
  Because they were in automobile racing, actually, to sell automobiles.
• 23:29
  They made their racing cars because the Duesenbergs were sold to
• 23:34
  people only as rolling chassis.
• 23:36
  If you wanted a Duesenberg, you would buy the Duesenberg rolling chassis, then take
• 23:41
  it to a body man, and he would make it.
• 23:45
  for you.
• 23:45
  Here's a example at the top left of Eddie Hearn, who was a Duesenberg racer.
• 23:51
  And if you can see the ad, it tells about the engine, how powerful it is
• 23:57
  because they're selling the engine.
• 23:59
  They're selling.
• 24:00
  The Duesenberg Model J, the lower part, talks about the frame and the engine.
• 24:06
  And you would buy Duesenbergs for 8, 500, then take it to a coach
• 24:12
  builder who would complete your car.
• 24:14
  In the time that the Model J Duesenberg was being sold.
• 24:19
  8, 500 was about 125, 000 in today's money.
• 24:24
  That's just for the chassis, tires, wheels, running gear.
• 24:28
  Then you take it to the coach builder and he would charge you
• 24:32
  at least that much or even more.
• 24:34
  It's possible that these cars together were worth a quarter
• 24:37
  of a million dollars in.
• 24:39
  The late 1920s.
• 24:41
  There you see Duesenberg Model A chassis.
• 24:43
  That's what the ads were all talking about.
• 24:45
  The top picture there is of Peter DiPaolo's 1925 Indianapolis 500 winner.
• 24:53
  That was a Duesenberg and the difference between Duesenberg Racing and Duesenberg
• 24:58
  Motors is all the Duesenberg engines were fashioned by the Lycoming machine and
• 25:02
  they were designed by the Duesenbergs.
• 25:04
  But they didn't have an engine manufacturing situation like Miller did.
• 25:08
  I mentioned E.
• 25:09
  L.
• 25:10
  Cord in the back, in the end of that sentence there.
• 25:13
  E.
• 25:13
  L.
• 25:13
  Cord bought the Duesenberg company in the late 1920s.
• 25:18
  And he developed the Duesenberg as part of the, uh, companies that he owned.
• 25:22
  And there's that straight eight Duesenberg logo, which was very famous at the time.
• 25:27
  This is maybe the most interesting car that ever raced on a board track.
• 25:31
  See, Hal Scott Aviation Motors.
• 25:33
  This was a man who developed aviation engines in race cars, not in airplanes.
• 25:39
  And you see, it looks really like a giant go kart.
• 25:42
  And he raced it at least one time, I've been able to find, in April
• 25:46
  1912, on the half mile Oakland track.
• 25:49
  So it was just an unusual thing, but it was also a very fast car.
• 25:54
  It was one of the first to ever go 60 miles an hour, which at the
• 25:57
  time was really going something.
• 26:00
  Just the kind of things during the early years of board track
• 26:04
  racing that you would see.
• 26:05
  These next few pictures are just to give you an idea of
• 26:09
  some of the cars that are raced.
• 26:11
  Caleb Bragg is the man who beat Barney Ofield in that
• 26:14
  first race at Playa del Rey.
• 26:16
  But he was considered a novice driver because he wasn't professional
• 26:20
  in his racing, he was a novice.
• 26:22
  And he actually took the place of Ralph De Palma, who was
• 26:26
  supposed to race against Oldfield.
• 26:28
  But there was something wrong with De Palma's Fiat, so he substituted and
• 26:32
  he beat the famous Barney Oldfield.
• 26:34
  Barney, of course, was a bicycle racer before he became an automobile racer.
• 26:39
  Also notice that these were both chain drive automobiles.
• 26:44
  And that Blitzen Benz, that was the world speed record holder at the time.
• 26:48
  Now we're going a little later.
• 26:49
  This is 1916, a DeLage from France.
• 26:53
  There's a Hudson.
• 26:54
  These, again, were cars that were stripped down, racing bodies put on,
• 26:59
  and they used them as race cars and used them to test the vehicles that
• 27:03
  were being built by Hudson and DeLage.
• 27:06
  Here's a Stutz Bearcat and an early Duesenberg.
• 27:10
  Imagine, I'd say, going 100 miles an hour and something like that.
• 27:13
  With no safety belts.
• 27:15
  Nothing safety wise at all except what was built into the race car.
• 27:19
  Another thing that was interesting doing research on board track racing
• 27:24
  was the artwork and how the things were designed, the race programs.
• 27:29
  And so this is a 1915 souvenir program at Sheepshead Bay.
• 27:34
  Just a beautiful painting.
• 27:35
  Look at some of the cars in the pictures below.
• 27:38
  These were standard automobiles that had been converted.
• 27:41
  They were all two man cars with a variety of engines.
• 27:45
  And again, note the guardrail perpendicular to the ground, not
• 27:48
  perpendicular to the race course.
• 27:51
  Now we're getting into some of the more famous names.
• 27:54
  This is Lewis Chevrolet.
• 27:55
  This is a red Buick Bug.
• 27:58
  We forget a lot about, uh, people back then that there
• 28:01
  were colors for these cars.
• 28:02
  And this was a beautiful red car.
• 28:04
  Buick's the oldest active name in the American automobile industry.
• 28:08
  And this is a car that Lewis Chevrolet raced on board tracks and so.
• 28:12
  Just a pretty car.
• 28:14
  And it was something, again, you see, uh, very basic and a lot to handle.
• 28:18
  And in the bottom, you see the Frontenacs, which were the
• 28:22
  cars that the Chevrolets built.
• 28:24
  We talk about the Fronties and the Fronty Fords.
• 28:26
  We talk about them.
• 28:27
  In research, I found these Fronty cars were sometimes called Chevrolet
• 28:33
  cars, even though Chevrolet was no longer involved with General Motors.
• 28:37
  But so famous, they were recognized as such, and there had
• 28:41
  board track victories in these.
• 28:42
  And again, these were two man cars that were done because that's the way the
• 28:48
  AAA had their ruling for that time.
• 28:50
  High speeds, 115, 120 miles an hour as we see.
• 28:54
  622 cubic inches.
• 28:57
  It's a big engine to produce just 58 horsepower, isn't it?
• 29:00
  This is the racing car that Harry Miller ever built, called the Golden Submarine.
• 29:04
  He and Barney Oldfield built it, as Bob Berman, who we mentioned
• 29:09
  before, was their great friend.
• 29:10
  And Bob had a Peugeot, and Bob was racing in the Corona race in California in 1916.
• 29:18
  When off the track, he was killed.
• 29:20
  His riding mechanic was killed.
• 29:22
  Several other people were serious injuries because it was a road race
• 29:27
  and something happened to the car.
• 29:29
  And you're standing a couple of feet away from the racing surface or the
• 29:33
  highway, because that's, there just wasn't any thought to anything.
• 29:36
  So they thought, how can we do something to protect the driver?
• 29:40
  Harry Miller and Barney Oldfield put their heads together and they
• 29:43
  thought, well, if we build something that can enclose the driver and put.
• 29:48
  something over the top and that's just what they did.
• 29:51
  As it points out here, this is the first racing car with a roll cage and it's the
• 29:56
  first all electrically welded steel frame automobile ever produced in this country.
• 30:02
  This was a gold car, that's why they called it the Golden Submarine.
• 30:06
  Harry Miller built a four cylinder engine.
• 30:08
  It was a two man car and you got in it and out the door.
• 30:12
  The exhaust pipe, however, From this design of the car went through the car
• 30:17
  between the driver and the passenger.
• 30:20
  Barney Oldfield raced this car quite a bit.
• 30:23
  He did, however, flip into the infield lake at Lakewood Speedway in Atlanta, and
• 30:28
  that brought about picture number two.
• 30:31
  He almost drowned in that thing.
• 30:32
  So they cut everything away but the front of the bodywork, and he's racing
• 30:37
  around in a vehicle that looks like that.
• 30:39
  With some success.
• 30:40
  And after he quit racing that car in 1908, the engine still ran very well.
• 30:47
  And he liked the way that performed.
• 30:49
  He made this into the old field special Roscoe Sorrell's
• 30:52
  riding mechanic, Waldo Stein.
• 30:54
  And this was the first car that was the Miller brand at the
• 30:58
  Indianapolis motor speedway.
• 30:59
  This is Ralph De Palma, very famous, very popular.
• 31:03
  One thousands of races, supposedly.
• 31:06
  Steven's going to talk a little bit more about Ralph De Palma.
• 31:09
  How he could win a thousand races?
• 31:11
  Well, you figure races of one mile, one lap, because it was a challenge race.
• 31:17
  So you beat so and so, you won.
• 31:19
  That's how that happened.
• 31:20
  But anyway, he was an excellent racer.
• 31:22
  And this is an automobile that's built on the Packard chassis, but it was built
• 31:26
  by Packard because they were interested in airplane engines prior to World War I.
• 31:31
  But they didn't want to go through the expense of testing the
• 31:35
  airplane engine in an airplane.
• 31:37
  So they tested it in a racing car.
• 31:40
  They made a 299 or 300 cubic inch V 12 and they tested this engine for several years.
• 31:48
  And this is the engine that became the Liberty V 12 engine in World War
• 31:53
  II and it eventually powered the P 51, which was one of the outstanding
• 31:57
  airplanes of the Second World War.
• 32:00
  The other interesting thing about this particular car is we think, well,
• 32:04
  they didn't have the Indianapolis 500 during the World War I and sometimes
• 32:08
  people say, well, there was no automobile racing during World War I.
• 32:12
  There actually was.
• 32:13
  There just was no national champion.
• 32:15
  There was no Indianapolis 500 because the 500 depended a lot
• 32:19
  on the European cars coming over.
• 32:21
  So they raced quite a bit during the World War I years.
• 32:25
  But while they were doing that, Ralph DePalma was actually a
• 32:28
  captain in the United States Army, working on the development
• 32:33
  of this engine for airplane use.
• 32:36
  And Jesse Vincent was his manager at Packard.
• 32:40
  He was a colonel in this same unit, Wright Field in Ohio, working on the development
• 32:46
  of this engine during World War I.
• 32:48
  Which became the World War II engine.
• 32:50
  There was racing and there was quite a lot of racing everywhere except Indianapolis.
• 32:55
  This is Lewis Chevrolet's business.
• 32:59
  The Frontenac Lewis and Arthur and Gaston Chevrolet were
• 33:02
  very famous automobile racers.
• 33:05
  This particular car is showing Gaston Chevrolet and it's in his Monroe.
• 33:11
  The Monroe race cars were green.
• 33:14
  The Frontenac race cars were the exact same race car, except they were red.
• 33:18
  So a Fronty and a Monroe were the same cars, just different colors.
• 33:23
  And Gaston Chevrolet was a very popular racer, very good racer.
• 33:28
  He was also posthumously Team 20 AAA champion because he was killed in an
• 33:33
  accident at Beverly Hills Speedway.
• 33:35
  But you can see the board track, he's there, see the wider panels on the infield
• 33:41
  and the racing 2x4s which were put on their end is what the race cars raced on.
• 33:47
  The front and ax cylinder heads were very popular on the Ford
• 33:50
  Model T and also you can see the advertisement talking about the fronty
• 33:56
  cylinder heads for other models.
• 33:57
  Application Chevrolet, whippets, things like that.
• 34:00
  These were again, part of the large number of people making aftermarket product.
• 34:05
  Match racing was popular during the early board track years.
• 34:08
  Here we have the golden submarine.
• 34:10
  We have the white, the palm of the car and the Chevrolet in the center.
• 34:15
  They toured.
• 34:16
  As a group, and we did match races together.
• 34:18
  This particular race, there were three races.
• 34:21
  Ralph De Palma won all three.
• 34:23
  But look at all the people in the grandstands.
• 34:24
  This is Sheepshead Bay in Brooklyn, New York.
• 34:28
  1917.
• 34:29
  40, 000 spectators at this board track event.
• 34:32
  This was the main attraction.
• 34:34
  All right, we talked about not having races during the World War I years at
• 34:39
  Indianapolis, but they did at Cincinnati.
• 34:41
  This was, again, a two mile track, big track.
• 34:43
  Look at the grandstand, look at the lineup of cars.
• 34:46
  They ran five abreast, paid a lot of money.
• 34:49
  It was a thing that people were interested in doing even during the World War I time.
• 34:54
  Again, there's a advertisement for the race.
• 34:57
  Look at the pretty colors, the artwork, look at the admission
• 35:00
  price, dollar and a half.
• 35:01
  Multiply that 10 or 15 times because the dollar was worth a lot more then
• 35:06
  than what it's actual shows there.
• 35:08
  Here it says on the bottom about the Cincinnati track actually closed because
• 35:12
  of the exposure to the elements, but some of the wood was used to make a bar.
• 35:17
  That's what happened a lot of these tracks too when they closed.
• 35:20
  They couldn't do anything anymore with the racetrack.
• 35:23
  But they would sell the wood to construction people and they would
• 35:26
  use the, uh, wood to build houses and whatever needed to be done.
• 35:29
  July 4th, 1919, celebrating Eddie Rickenbacker.
• 35:34
  Eddie Rickenbacker, some of you may know, was a very prominent automobile racer
• 35:39
  prior to his service in World War I.
• 35:42
  And I'm just going to read here just a little bit about Rickenbacker to
• 35:45
  give you an idea, not only about Eddie, but the kind of success that
• 35:50
  people who were professional auto racers could have in these eras.
• 35:55
  Rickenbacker was from Columbus, Ohio.
• 35:57
  He was a young man whose father died when he was 12, so he had to
• 36:01
  quit school and go out and work.
• 36:03
  He got a lot of Part time jobs, a lot of jobs involving his hands.
• 36:07
  He became very interested in mechanical things and began taking
• 36:11
  correspondence courses in engineering.
• 36:14
  He would get a letter every so often and here's this information he would
• 36:17
  do is send it back and get another one.
• 36:19
  And so.
• 36:20
  This is another way of education during this time when people couldn't
• 36:24
  go to school, but they wanted to improve themselves in 1910.
• 36:28
  He was 19 years old.
• 36:29
  He had been working at the Firestone Columbus factory in Columbus,
• 36:34
  Ohio, that made automobiles.
• 36:36
  They were made one of the first left hand automobiles in this country.
• 36:39
  He had been a riding mechanic in the Vanderbilt Cup races with Lee Frayer.
• 36:44
  He had been involved in this so much and had done so well that by 17 years old,
• 36:50
  he was the shop foreman of the machine shop for the Firestone Columbus company,
• 36:55
  but he wanted to do something better.
• 36:56
  He wanted to improve himself and go on and do other things.
• 37:00
  So they made him a salesman of Firestone Columbus cars, and he
• 37:04
  was given the Omaha territory.
• 37:06
  He was 19 years old at the time in 1910.
• 37:09
  And what this required was he would take people for rides and how good it was.
• 37:13
  And how powerful it was and how much this and that try and get them to buy it.
• 37:18
  And then he'd encourage them to come out to the races and see how the
• 37:22
  engine performed against other cars.
• 37:24
  Cause they had lots of races on fairgrounds tracks and city to city, any
• 37:29
  place that had a race, he would compete in, in this Firestone Columbus car that
• 37:33
  he turned into a four cylinder racing car.
• 37:36
  And he did very well as a salesman and he did very well as a racer.
• 37:40
  Raced at every race within a hundred miles of Columbus with one
• 37:43
  of these cars that he developed.
• 37:45
  1911, he was a relief driver in the first Indianapolis 500.
• 37:49
  Drove 370 miles and his car finished 13th in the race.
• 37:54
  Again, with Lee Frayer, they shared the ride.
• 37:57
  Then in 1912, again, he drove his relief, but the company was nearly bankrupt.
• 38:02
  So he left the Columbus Buggy Company.
• 38:05
  At the time, he wanted to be a professional racer,
• 38:08
  so he went and did that.
• 38:10
  The only problem was he had been barred by the AAA because he had
• 38:14
  been racing in a lot of unsanctioned races and they didn't like that.
• 38:18
  The interesting thing was the contest board that barred him, he was the head
• 38:22
  of that contest board from 1927 to 1946.
• 38:26
  In late 1912, he went to Des Moines, Iowa, and began working for the World's Fair.
• 38:33
  Duesenberg Brothers, who had located there, is a 3 a day mechanic, and
• 38:38
  he was also their racing manager for the Mason Automobile Company.
• 38:43
  This is how they got their start involved in racing, but racing, Masons worked well
• 38:48
  for the Duesenbergs and for Rickenbacker until the Mason Company decided they
• 38:53
  were going to get out of racing.
• 38:54
  So what do they do?
• 38:55
  Duesenbergs decide we're going to start our own company.
• 38:58
  They did this in 1914.
• 39:00
  They made Eddie the head of their racing division.
• 39:03
  They had two cars in the first Indianapolis 500.
• 39:06
  They performed well.
• 39:07
  Eddie won a lot of races, including the 300 mile race at the Sioux City
• 39:13
  track, which was a two mile dirt track.
• 39:16
  And it was one of the biggest races of the 1914 season.
• 39:21
  He won 10, 000, which at the time was over 250, 000 in our money.
• 39:27
  And this was actually what saved the Duesenbergs from going bankrupt.
• 39:31
  After the 1914 season, he went to the Maxwell team.
• 39:35
  He won many races with that, including several board track races.
• 39:39
  And Maxwell was getting out of racing.
• 39:42
  So he bought the racing cars from Maxwell with the help of Carl Fisher and Fred
• 39:47
  Allison, the Prestolite company and named them the Prestolite specials.
• 39:52
  And with those cars, he won a lot of dirt races and he won three major
• 39:56
  board track races during 1916, as well as racing and dirt and road races.
• 40:02
  The board track races he won were at Sheepshead Bay at Des
• 40:05
  Moines and a 300 mile or at.
• 40:07
  Tacoma.
• 40:08
  This is where he was being honored.
• 40:10
  And that's the car that he won the Tacoma race in with a riding mechanic
• 40:15
  because that was the rules of the time.
• 40:17
  And then his last win was at 150 mile race at the Ascot Speedway in California,
• 40:23
  which at the time was a mile track.
• 40:24
  That was actually the end of Eddie Duesenberg's automobile racing career.
• 40:29
  He had 41 national championship races, seven victories.
• 40:33
  And he also in 1916 won 60, 000 as an automobile racer.
• 40:39
  Today, that's about a million and a half dollars.
• 40:41
  So he was very successful.
• 40:43
  He joined the air force after that first started as the driver for blackjack
• 40:49
  Pershing, then got into the air service, wanted to start an air division with
• 40:54
  former racing drivers, but they, for some reason, didn't want to do that.
• 40:58
  He became the Ace of Aces, 26 victories.
• 41:01
  That's one of the aircraft, the Scout, the SPAD that he used.
• 41:05
  And then later in the 1930s, he was awarded the Medal of Honor for
• 41:09
  his service during World War I.
• 41:11
  But here on this particular day, they're honoring Eddie Rickenbacker.
• 41:14
  Notice the other names.
• 41:15
  Louis Chevrolet, Dario Resta, Eddie Hearn, Cliff Durant.
• 41:19
  Ralph Mumford, a major sports personalities in automobile racing.
• 41:24
  Here's Harry Hartz and Harlan Fangler.
• 41:26
  Harlan Fangler, of course, for years was very involved in the Indianapolis 500.
• 41:30
  Harry Hartz was 1926 champion, an exceptional board track racer.
• 41:35
  This is a 1922 Dursenberg that raced in the 1921 French Grand Prix.
• 41:41
  That was the first French Grand Prix after World War I.
• 41:44
  And you see the number on the tail.
• 41:45
  The laws at the time required any vehicle on the roads in France to have a number.
• 41:51
  1924 Duesenberg was the first American supercharged race car, just to see
• 41:57
  how it's developed over the years.
• 41:58
  Talk about board track racers.
• 42:00
  These are two ads from the 1920s.
• 42:02
  And these people were equal to Jack Dempsey, equal to Babe
• 42:07
  Ruth, as far as being stars.
• 42:09
  Notice the picture in the center, Fred Wagner, he was the official
• 42:12
  starter for all the board track races.
• 42:15
  He was the official starter for all the AAA races, but he was as well known.
• 42:20
  as the people who were the racing and the racetracks where they race.
• 42:24
  Here is a late 1920s ad.
• 42:26
  Again, the Dusenbergs were interested in selling automobiles.
• 42:30
  They used racing to do that.
• 42:32
  And here's an ad showing all the various ways that the Dusenberg was a
• 42:37
  outstanding vehicle for its chassis, its driveline, and its engine because
• 42:43
  that's what they were selling the people.
• 42:44
  How would you let your people know about it?
• 42:46
  Well, that left panel there shows the handouts that were
• 42:49
  given and it's the Atlantic city motor speedway, their first race.
• 42:53
  And there's a guarantee and the top left that says these races aren't fixed.
• 42:58
  This isn't hippodrome because in the early years of automobile racing, especially
• 43:03
  the international motor contest, this is, these would go around the tracks.
• 43:07
  And they would have races and they would promote this driver.
• 43:10
  Let's see if he can win here.
• 43:12
  And there's the battle between this driver at driver.
• 43:15
  Well, these were all races that were already picked and they were just seeing
• 43:19
  something on the racetrack, but they guaranteed you that these were races.
• 43:23
  That were true races, national and international speed king.
• 43:27
  And these were handouts.
• 43:28
  All the tracks had these particular things.
• 43:30
  Media was very interested in auto people racing.
• 43:33
  You can look through and see some of these things like this magazine.
• 43:36
  Look at the artwork on the front of the board track.
• 43:39
  there.
• 43:39
  This was something that attracted people's attention.
• 43:42
  The newsreels, you can go on the internet and see newsreels of board track racing
• 43:47
  because they were photographed, there were excitement, there were speed.
• 43:50
  Also, entertainment used board track racing.
• 43:53
  One of the early movies that Charlie Chaplin made was of an automobile race.
• 43:58
  Why?
• 43:59
  A lot of people there.
• 44:00
  It was in the daytime because that's how they filmed things.
• 44:04
  They didn't have studio work.
• 44:05
  They had to be out.
• 44:06
  where there was bright sun.
• 44:07
  So they used racing as something that people were interested in.
• 44:11
  The Roaring Twenties was a great time for automobile racing.
• 44:15
  Here's some modern mechanics and inventions.
• 44:18
  We probably know that as Mechanics Illustrated.
• 44:20
  This is the beginning of Mechanics Illustrated.
• 44:23
  This particular man, Ray Kuntz, was a automotive engineer and is identified
• 44:28
  as an authority on automobile racing.
• 44:31
  He's encouraging young men to become automobile racers.
• 44:35
  He's telling them how much money they can make, how easy it is to convert a
• 44:39
  model a or a model T into a racing car.
• 44:42
  He even in the article tells you some of the parts that you need, how much
• 44:46
  they cost, how easy it is to build, how many of us wanted to be racers when
• 44:51
  we were kids, how many of us had our parents say, yeah, Herbie, go ahead.
• 44:55
  I don't think too bad, but that's what it was in the twenties.
• 44:59
  Here's a pamphlet that Arthur Chevrolet offered for 2, or if you brought
• 45:04
  a Fondi head, you got it for free.
• 45:06
  It was an eight page pamphlet with no photographs in it, but it told you
• 45:11
  directly and entirely how to convert a Ford Model T into a winning race car,
• 45:17
  what you needed, how long it had to be.
• 45:20
  The first thing was to take the chassis at a hundred inch wheel base.
• 45:24
  The first thing he said was you make that 88 and it told
• 45:27
  that, and it was very popular.
• 45:29
  Here's another example of advertisement.
• 45:31
  You could buy like you can today.
• 45:33
  You can go to anyone by modified stock car for parts, put them
• 45:37
  together like a giant model kit.
• 45:38
  Here you could build a racing car.
• 45:41
  Out of a Ford that was good on dirt tracks, brick, or board tracks.
• 45:45
  750 for a complete frame.
• 45:48
  That would be about 10, 000 today.
• 45:51
  This will give you an idea of the cost of these things.
• 45:53
  And this, I'll tell you a little interesting story.
• 45:55
  I wanted to say how are we going to relate this to what's today.
• 45:58
  So, well, let's say 1925, that would be a good year because of a couple of things.
• 46:02
  Let me see what the average income was in 1925.
• 46:06
  So I typed in the computer, average income, 1925.
• 46:10
  14.
• 46:11
  40 was 3, 078.
• 46:14
  27.
• 46:16
  Good, now we're going to have to compare it to today.
• 46:18
  So I figured, let me try, see what average income 2018 figure gives the whole year.
• 46:24
  Boy, that was a chore.
• 46:26
  No matter what government site I went on, they talked about average
• 46:30
  income for people that were particular age, average income for people in
• 46:35
  the Northeast, average income for people in the particular state.
• 46:39
  I'm sure if I looked hard enough, it would have average income for people who are
• 46:43
  blonde, left handed, and wear green shoes.
• 46:46
  It was just that difficult.
• 46:48
  The average income today For all of us, somewhere between 50, 000
• 46:53
  and 52, 000, according to the U.
• 46:56
  S.
• 46:56
  Department of Labor.
• 46:57
  That was at the bottom.
• 46:58
  But look at the prices!
• 46:59
  Pound of bacon, 0.
• 47:01
  47.
• 47:01
  That would be 6.
• 47:02
  70 today.
• 47:04
  And you can see down the side.
• 47:05
  Postage stamp, 0.
• 47:06
  02.
• 47:07
  The only thing that's interesting about all of these As you
• 47:09
  see, a gallon of gas costs 2.
• 47:13
  88.
• 47:13
  In town, they're selling, what was it, 2.
• 47:15
  69.
• 47:16
  So we're doing better now than in 1925.
• 47:20
  But you see here, 1925, that was the first year for the front wheel drive Miller.
• 47:26
  And the front wheel drive Miller cost 15, 000 in 1925.
• 47:31
  That's 216, 000.
• 47:33
  A Ralph De Palma, 10, 000.
• 47:36
  That's 144, 000.
• 47:38
  These prices did not change from the first made until the time they were ended.
• 47:43
  They all stayed 15, 000 or 10, 000, which I thought was very interesting.
• 47:48
  And in 1925, if you wanted to buy a Model T, it only cost you 260.
• 47:53
  So you can see there was a wide difference in the cost like there is
• 47:58
  now of racing cars and a Miller engine.
• 48:00
  If you blew your engine.
• 48:01
  5, 000, which is 72, 000 in today.
• 48:05
  So that gives you a little idea of what the money values on these things are.
• 48:09
  Here is the Miller specifications.
• 48:12
  I would point out that the fuel tank came in the Miller 25 gallons, but for longer
• 48:17
  races, they would put in up to 40 gallons.
• 48:20
  There was even one racer and I forget who it was who had a round.
• 48:24
  Tank like a giant basketball.
• 48:25
  So all the fuel would get down.
• 48:27
  There wouldn't be anything laying around, but you see the workmanship.
• 48:31
  These are just beautiful cars.
• 48:32
  This is what got me interested in these cars.
• 48:35
  I saw Miller's, I saw pictures of Miller's and I just thought they were.
• 48:39
  Beautiful.
• 48:39
  Notice the engine size 1920 to 22 was 183 cubic inches or three liters.
• 48:47
  That was when the AAA contest board decided to change the engines
• 48:52
  because they were going to be the same as the international limit on
• 48:56
  engines due to the French Grand Prix.
• 48:59
  That's how three liter engine, and then they went down.
• 49:01
  And so like that, the bottom is a engine tag.
• 49:04
  It gives the firing order of the engine that.
• 49:07
  Harry Miller developed.
• 49:08
  All hand built, just beautiful racing cars.
• 49:11
  Notice the tire sizes, too.
• 49:12
  And here's Jimmy Murphy, who was an outstanding board track
• 49:16
  racer, king of the boards.
• 49:17
  He is the person who decided that it might be an idea to try a front wheel
• 49:22
  drive car, to pull the car through the corner, rather than push it through.
• 49:27
  He thought it would be, engineering wise, a better thing.
• 49:30
  And he had Harry Miller build one of these things.
• 49:33
  Unfortunately, Jimmy Murphy never got to drive that car.
• 49:36
  He was killed at Syracuse in an accident going for the lead.
• 49:39
  That was in 1924, so he never got to drive this car.
• 49:43
  But this car appeared for the first time in the 1925 Indianapolis 500 and
• 49:49
  finished second, driven by Dave Lewis.
• 49:51
  And they were very popular, very fast.
• 49:53
  The interesting thing about the Miller, as though it was a good
• 49:57
  idea with the front wheel drive, the Miller, A front wheel and rear wheel
• 50:01
  drive car won about the same amount.
• 50:04
  Front wheel drive car was only a car that raced at
• 50:06
  Indianapolis and the board tracks.
• 50:08
  It did not race on the dirt tracks at all.
• 50:11
  The nine, ten years of board track racing, they used regular street tires.
• 50:15
  Whatever was on the car was what they used, and of course they caused problems.
• 50:19
  Gum dipping was a procedure to keep the heat away from the
• 50:22
  tire, but they were street tires.
• 50:24
  And as wide as your hand, they weren't very big at all.
• 50:27
  And they were inflated to 50 pounds.
• 50:30
  This was a hard, hard tire.
• 50:32
  Then in the 20s, they started making dedicated racing tires because they
• 50:37
  understood the problems they were having.
• 50:39
  At Indianapolis 500, you'd maybe go 10 or 15 laps in these
• 50:43
  tires and have to change them.
• 50:44
  So that's why they had the dedicated racing tires.
• 50:47
  And they started to balance tires.
• 50:49
  Sid Huggdahl was the first racer who balanced tires to
• 50:52
  get better wear out of them.
• 50:53
  This, again, was in the 1920s.
• 50:55
  In 1925, Firestone introduced, for the highway, the balloon tire.
• 51:01
  Better traction, better handling.
• 51:03
  It was cooler.
• 51:04
  Did all the things it wanted to do, and they developed from that.
• 51:07
  The Firestone Gum Dip Balloon Racing Tire was introduced in 1925.
• 51:12
  It won with Peter DiPaolo.
• 51:14
  Bigger cross section.
• 51:16
  Contact patch was bigger.
• 51:18
  On dirt tracks and at Indianapolis, 35 pounds on board tracks, 65 to 75, the
• 51:24
  high speeds and the high G forces in the turns, they needed something to stabilize
• 51:30
  the cars a little bit better, get a little more speed out of the wire wheels.
• 51:33
  And so board tracks, they ran with a toe in of 1 8th to 3 inch because the
• 51:38
  high speeds would open the wheels up.
• 51:41
  On the lower size tracks, on the dirt tracks, they would run with
• 51:45
  a tow out because the speeds would push the tires in, so that was just
• 51:49
  a little bit of difference there.
• 51:51
  Also, the reason I used the Oldfield tire was, Barney Oldfield, when
• 51:55
  he retired from racing, became the firestone manager of racing.
• 51:59
  And the 1920, Indianapolis 500s, you may see in Historical ads are credited
• 52:07
  to being won by Firestone, which is true because Firestone made the
• 52:12
  Oldfield Tire and the cars that Tommy Milton, Gaston Chevrolet, and Jimmy
• 52:17
  Murphy rode in those Indianapolis 500 wins are all Oldfield Tires.
• 52:22
  And if you look closely at the pictures in the winner's circle, you can see it
• 52:26
  says Oldfield Tires on their race car.
• 52:28
  So the first.
• 52:30
  Three years of Firestone's wins in that long series were on Oldfield Tire.
• 52:35
  Here's an interesting track.
• 52:36
  This is the one in Miami, Florida.
• 52:39
  Mile and a quarter, Fulford Miami Speedway.
• 52:41
  Carl G.
• 52:42
  Fisher was developing Miami.
• 52:44
  He also had a board track down there.
• 52:46
  His general manager was Ray Haroon.
• 52:48
  And the track ran one race.
• 52:50
  Won by Peter DiPaolo in the Duesenberg.
• 52:53
  Harry Hartz and the Miller.
• 52:55
  Not long after this race on February 22nd, the great hurricane
• 52:59
  in September of 1926 came through.
• 53:03
  And that's a picture of the racetrack after the hurricane came through.
• 53:06
  Absolutely destroyed it.
• 53:08
  There was nothing that was left of it.
• 53:10
  All that wood was used to rebuild the Miami area.
• 53:14
  Board track events.
• 53:15
  Here we talked about some of this varied length.
• 53:18
  races, things like that, things to get people to come to the races.
• 53:22
  There was one 500 mile race.
• 53:24
  The lineups were cars that were developed by the manufacturers.
• 53:28
  1920, 1931.
• 53:30
  This is when it became more of a dedicated racing series.
• 53:34
  All of the national championship were on board tracks.
• 53:37
  There were still other kinds of racing, but they were mostly millers.
• 53:41
  and Duesenbergs and the Fronty Fords and the Frontenacs were 1920 to
• 53:46
  1924 because those engines did not ever have a supercharger on them.
• 53:51
  The other interesting thing about the 20s to 1931, mostly during this time,
• 53:56
  numbers were assigned to cars based on the decision of the contest board or
• 54:01
  how the car was entered into the race.
• 54:03
  1924, that was the first year they assigned numbers based on how you did.
• 54:08
  The year before.
• 54:09
  So if you see a 1925 picture with number one, that car was the
• 54:14
  winner of the championship in 1924.
• 54:17
  Here's an official program showing Barney Oilfield and Louis Chevrolet special race.
• 54:22
  There's the Los Angeles Speedway, that was the Beverly Hills Speedway, but that
• 54:26
  was also known as Los Angeles Speedway.
• 54:29
  The reason I put this on here, 1928 State fair, this was the year that board
• 54:34
  track racing was really on the way down.
• 54:36
  So the AAA contest board decided that dirt be brought into the old, as
• 54:42
  far as national championship races.
• 54:44
  That's how this became the first national championship dirt race in
• 54:48
  a long time at the state fairground.
• 54:50
  Stock car races were special things.
• 54:53
  They see the number one and the two, they are actually cars that could have
• 54:56
  been driven to the track because stock car racing was just what it said.
• 55:01
  Stock car racing.
• 55:02
  Notice the spare tire, the windshields.
• 55:05
  The headlights, that's what they raced.
• 55:07
  They were specialty races.
• 55:09
  Also, motorcycles ran on the board tracks, and I say those people
• 55:12
  just did things differently.
• 55:14
  A lot of accidents and so, but they used them.
• 55:16
  The bottom picture is what is considered by historians as the first real stock
• 55:21
  car, in the fact of a racing stock car.
• 55:24
  In 1933, the AAA sanctioned its first road race, which was the
• 55:29
  Elgin Road Race in Illinois.
• 55:31
  And Fred Frame, one with this car.
• 55:34
  Notice there are no fenders, no windshield, no spare tire.
• 55:37
  There was a little bit of work that could be done.
• 55:40
  So this is what they consider the first stock car built.
• 55:43
  And this car is currently owned by Dana Mecham of the Mecham Auto Auctions.
• 55:48
  Louie Meyer.
• 55:49
  In 1985, I had the opportunity to write a story about him and spoke to him for
• 55:54
  over an hour about automobile racing.
• 55:56
  Wonderful man.
• 55:57
  Everyone I've talked to who's known him.
• 55:59
  And I've talked to several people, said he was a gentleman,
• 56:02
  and that's how he treated me.
• 56:03
  He won three board track races.
• 56:05
  He started as a mechanic and then to a driver, then became a
• 56:09
  Indianapolis 500 winner and champion.
• 56:11
  He had the Meyer Drake engines for a while, then he
• 56:14
  had the Ford racing engines.
• 56:15
  And this is his 1928 Miller that won the Talked to him about a lot of things,
• 56:22
  and when he said he wanted to be a board track driver, Pop Wagner said to him,
• 56:26
  Okay, you get out on the track, but if you pass anybody, I'm going to flag you in.
• 56:30
  There was no other way to learn how to drive, so you had to
• 56:33
  drive around the back to learn.
• 56:35
  And he became very adept at it.
• 56:37
  And I asked him, well, who are some good board track drivers?
• 56:39
  And you say, Hartz, Leon DeRay.
• 56:42
  A lot of them, he said, but Frank Lockhart, he said, was just very good.
• 56:46
  And Frank Lockhart was maybe one of the best race drivers and engineering
• 56:51
  people that we have ever dealt with.
• 56:53
  This car was the car that Frank Lockhart set a world record
• 56:57
  and that stood for 30 years.
• 56:58
  Fred Wagner, he was the starter for all the board track races.
• 57:03
  He was the official starter for AAA for over 20 years.
• 57:07
  And he started out to be a runner.
• 57:10
  And then he started flagging, getting involved with that.
• 57:13
  Interesting that he holds the checkered flag.
• 57:15
  He's the first person to ever be photographed with a checkered flag
• 57:20
  is in the 1906 Vanderbilt cup races.
• 57:23
  He also not only was.
• 57:26
  He was the man who checked the track for security and safety.
• 57:29
  He was the man who got all the money before the races started.
• 57:33
  He was the man who assigned positions.
• 57:35
  He was the man who would call fouls because they had no communication.
• 57:39
  Something happened on the track, he was it.
• 57:42
  He was the man at the end of the race who would tell you where you're
• 57:45
  going to pick up your train to take your trip to the next race.
• 57:49
  He would get housing for the people.
• 57:51
  And in his spare time, he wrote a nationally syndicated
• 57:54
  column on automobile racing.
• 57:55
  But the most interesting thing about all his involvement with automobile racing,
• 57:59
  he didn't know how to drive an automobile.
• 58:01
  Here are the signals that he would wave.
• 58:03
  True 1929, this was about standard.
• 58:06
  Here's the official thing from the AAA handbook.
• 58:09
  Red, that meant the course was clear.
• 58:11
  That's how they started the race.
• 58:13
  Yellow.
• 58:14
  The course was blocked.
• 58:15
  You slow green.
• 58:16
  You are entering your last lap white stop for consulting and
• 58:20
  the pits and the checkered flag.
• 58:21
  You are finished.
• 58:22
  They changed it in 1930, the triple a contest board, because they
• 58:27
  wanted to be a little more current.
• 58:30
  That's when the traffic signal said red stop, yellow caution, green go.
• 58:34
  So they changed those signals.
• 58:36
  Although notice, the white still meant stop, and the black was added, which
• 58:41
  means you were entering your last lap.
• 58:43
  That was in 1930.
• 58:45
  That again was changed in 1937, for the white meaning you're entering
• 58:50
  your last lap, and the black flag meant that you were stopped.
• 58:54
  And since, that's been basically the American racing flag.
• 58:57
  Here's a map that shows where the tracks were during their lifetime.
• 59:01
  And it was interesting that Louis Meyer told me he and his wife would travel
• 59:06
  from Los Angeles, where he lived, to Indianapolis, because that was the
• 59:09
  center location for all the racing.
• 59:11
  But he only covered about a hundred paved miles during that entire trip.
• 59:15
  Everything else was gravel or something worse.
• 59:18
  He'd stay at a farmer's house for a dollar and a half, get paid.
• 59:21
  Big breakfast and they'd send you on your way.
• 59:23
  Racing, you would stay at a buddy's house if you were at a racetrack and so.
• 59:27
  All the cars were shipped by rail.
• 59:29
  Atlantic City was interesting because they had two rail lines into Atlantic
• 59:33
  City because during World War I, the location of the Atlantic City
• 59:36
  track was a ammunition loading plant.
• 59:39
  Here's how cars got to the racetrack.
• 59:41
  This is a 1917 Hudson.
• 59:43
  This was a dark blue car, by the way.
• 59:46
  And this also made it possible for races to be announced at major locations.
• 59:52
  They came on railroad cars.
• 59:53
  When they got to the station, leave them out so the people
• 59:56
  would know there's a race in town.
• 59:58
  The bottom is Umbrella Mike Boyle, who was a Indianapolis car owner.
• 1:00:02
  He was the head of the Chicago Electrical Union.
• 1:00:05
  And they used the, uh, Diamond T truck to get it from the
• 1:00:08
  railroad station to the track.
• 1:00:10
  Mike Boyle was an interesting guy.
• 1:00:12
  They called him Umbrella Mike because he always walked around with an umbrella.
• 1:00:15
  Mike would go in a bar and he'd talk to people and they'd come by and they'd drop
• 1:00:20
  a little something into the umbrella.
• 1:00:21
  And Mike had connections.
• 1:00:23
  In Chicago, in 1920s.
• 1:00:26
  If you needed something done, you saw Mike.
• 1:00:28
  This is William Shattuck, who was a pulmonary physician, an actual
• 1:00:32
  MD, who became a race driver because he enjoyed working with the
• 1:00:36
  people when he was a physician at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
• 1:00:40
  And he bought a car and he raced in 35 events.
• 1:00:42
  Never won one.
• 1:00:43
  But he was competitive.
• 1:00:44
  He was a relief driver at Indianapolis.
• 1:00:46
  He just had some fun doing it.
• 1:00:48
  Probably heard a lot of you.
• 1:00:49
  I'm sure of Leon Duray, whose actual name was George Stewart.
• 1:00:53
  But when he was racing with the international motor contest association,
• 1:00:57
  he wanted to be the dashing Frenchman.
• 1:00:59
  So he would dress in black and his hair combed back.
• 1:01:02
  And this worked fine until the French attache in New Orleans wanted
• 1:01:07
  to meet the great French driver.
• 1:01:10
  And Leon didn't speak any French, but he was very fast and he was early working
• 1:01:16
  with alcohol fuels because the engines were supercharged and needed the power.
• 1:01:20
  And also he eventually became a car owner at Indianapolis.
• 1:01:24
  But he also went in 1929 with that front wheel drive car.
• 1:01:28
  Sent many records in Europe and also raced in the Italian Grand Prix in Monza.
• 1:01:33
  Here, uh, just briefly is the Atlantic City proposal to build the track.
• 1:01:37
  You can see how much they were expecting to make.
• 1:01:40
  Cost, the lumber, they actually used over 5 million board feet of wood.
• 1:01:45
  This was about a 6 million dollar job in today's money.
• 1:01:49
  And the people who ran this, they were investors of wealth, rich
• 1:01:53
  sportsmen, business tycoons and so.
• 1:01:55
  Here's the Atlantic City track.
• 1:01:57
  This is opening day.
• 1:01:58
  Far picture on the left is 1926.
• 1:02:01
  This is a rather recent overhead picture of the track.
• 1:02:04
  Because this was an ammunition dump and all the chemicals and stuff, they used
• 1:02:09
  it when the property was no longer used.
• 1:02:12
  The state of New Jersey allowed it to just grow up.
• 1:02:14
  It's now a wildlife area.
• 1:02:16
  Terry and I were there a couple of years ago.
• 1:02:18
  It's one of the few former sites that has nothing on it.
• 1:02:22
  There is not even a marker to indicate the history of that track, which had
• 1:02:27
  the ammunition dump or the racetrack.
• 1:02:29
  But, that's the way things are.
• 1:02:31
  Here's Harry Hartz, who won the first race, non stop, 300 miles.
• 1:02:35
  He won 12, 000 then, that'd be 171, 000 today.
• 1:02:40
  Just amazing.
• 1:02:41
  This is the official report.
• 1:02:43
  Notice they have when the tires were changed, right rear.
• 1:02:47
  Left rear.
• 1:02:47
  Things like that.
• 1:02:48
  This record that Harry Hart set in that first victory of
• 1:02:51
  his lasted for over 30 years.
• 1:02:53
  He went 135 miles an hour for his 300 mile race.
• 1:02:58
  No one in America ran a faster race until Sam Hanks won the
• 1:03:02
  Indianapolis 500 in 1957.
• 1:03:05
  Harry was the National Champion in 1926.
• 1:03:07
  He was in a bad crash, spent two years in a hospital, walked around
• 1:03:11
  the rest of his life with a cane, but he was very involved in the
• 1:03:15
  Speedway and the Technical Committee.
• 1:03:18
  1927, Frank Lockhart set a world record that also stood for over 30 years.
• 1:03:22
  It went 147 miles an hour around 729 miles an hour around Atlantic City track.
• 1:03:28
  This is a picture of him setting that speed record.
• 1:03:31
  This is a qualifying record that was not broken for over 30 years.
• 1:03:36
  Leon DeRay in a front wheel drive Miller at the Packard test track
• 1:03:40
  went in 1928, 148 miles an hour, but that wasn't a qualifying record.
• 1:03:45
  So it was, you know, apples and oranges.
• 1:03:47
  Notice he has a air intake in front of the cow.
• 1:03:50
  This is the engine he did it with.
• 1:03:52
  This was an invention that he made with the.
• 1:03:54
  A couple other engineers.
• 1:03:55
  This was the Intercooler.
• 1:03:57
  When the air came into the supercharger while it was being supercharged, the
• 1:04:02
  air fuel mixture was over 300 degrees.
• 1:04:05
  Going through this intercooler before it got into the engine, lowered
• 1:04:09
  the temperature by 200 degrees.
• 1:04:11
  It went from 300 to 100.
• 1:04:13
  This made all the difference.
• 1:04:14
  He said this was an oil cooler so people wouldn't know what it was.
• 1:04:18
  Leon DeRay was the next one to make one.
• 1:04:20
  Used it on the front wheel drive Miller, but the U shape, it was a five piece unit.
• 1:04:25
  They used gasoline and benzoyl to help power it a little bit more,
• 1:04:28
  because the compression was so great on these engines anymore, they
• 1:04:31
  needed more than they could get.
• 1:04:33
  The first 100 octane fuel wasn't until 1934, when Jimmy Doolittle
• 1:04:38
  with Shell Oil Company made the first aviation fuel with that.
• 1:04:41
  level.
• 1:04:42
  Here again is the report of that race.
• 1:04:44
  The yellow I outline this tells about the speed record that he sent at the bottom.
• 1:04:49
  It shows his speed 147.
• 1:04:51
  729.
• 1:04:53
  Cliff Woodbury was second fastest that day.
• 1:04:55
  He was almost four miles an hour slower.
• 1:04:58
  Here's the tires that they used.
• 1:05:00
  Notice the pressures were very high.
• 1:05:02
  The sizes.
• 1:05:03
  Each race they identified the tire being used by serial number.
• 1:05:07
  This was part of the official records and they show what happened and
• 1:05:10
  how people went out of the race or something broke, someone ran out
• 1:05:14
  of gas, non stop, things like that.
• 1:05:17
  Atlantic City Speedway was also known as Speedway, New Jersey.
• 1:05:21
  That was in the official records.
• 1:05:22
  They wanted to do that and promote it because although it was listed
• 1:05:26
  as Hamilton, it was actually in a township and they wanted to make
• 1:05:30
  something else like Indianapolis, which is actually in Speedway, Indiana.
• 1:05:34
  And sometimes it was called Amatol because of the ammunition plant.
• 1:05:38
  Here when Lockhart set that record, the speed at Indianapolis
• 1:05:42
  was 113 miles an hour.
• 1:05:44
  Tony Bentenhausen was the man who broke Lockhart's qualifying record, 176.
• 1:05:50
  830 at Monza when they had the Race of Two Worlds.
• 1:05:54
  Then George Amick broke what was then the American record at Daytona.
• 1:05:58
  He unfortunately was killed in that special 100 lap race.
• 1:06:01
  It was the only Indianapolis car race at Daytona.
• 1:06:04
  And then the first time that someone went faster than Frank Lockhart at
• 1:06:08
  Indianapolis was when Jim Hurtabees.
• 1:06:11
  Went 149 miles an hour in 1960.
• 1:06:14
  The last board track winner was Shorty Catlin, and that was at Altoona.
• 1:06:18
  Altoona was the longest living board track.
• 1:06:20
  It was there for longer than any other.
• 1:06:23
  Woodbridge was one of the small half mile tracks.
• 1:06:26
  The last winner was Burt Carnance.
• 1:06:28
  That's the site of the Woodbridge High School football stadium.
• 1:06:31
  So that was one of the ones that lasted through.
• 1:06:33
  And here are your top board track winners, Murphy, Milton, you
• 1:06:36
  see all names that you remember.
• 1:06:39
  Thought I'd highlight Tommy Milton for a minute because of his 50 board
• 1:06:42
  track wins, land speed records, Indianapolis, all the things he did.
• 1:06:47
  He was 100 percent blind in his right eye and had limited vision in his left.
• 1:06:52
  And there he is in the Miller.
• 1:06:53
  Here, Gaston Chevrolet when he was killed.
• 1:06:55
  This was a major, major event.
• 1:06:57
  This was a dangerous sport.
• 1:06:58
  There's no question about it.
• 1:07:00
  They're going so fast and what they're going in.
• 1:07:02
  And how they're doing.
• 1:07:03
  Eddie O'Donnell and he crashed.
• 1:07:05
  One of the mechanics was thrown out of the racetrack.
• 1:07:08
  The color panel shows this.
• 1:07:10
  And the reason this color panel was drawn was because Gaston Chevrolet actually
• 1:07:15
  believed he called his brother Louis and told him I, I'm going to die here.
• 1:07:19
  And Lewis said, no, you've been successful at that track.
• 1:07:22
  You're going to retire, race one more race.
• 1:07:24
  You're going to be the national champion.
• 1:07:26
  That was it.
• 1:07:26
  Here is the national story that went out about this.
• 1:07:29
  It's very graphic, very graphic, but that was 1920s writing.
• 1:07:34
  Here is a picture of Eddie Rickenbacker.
• 1:07:37
  Notice the football helmet.
• 1:07:38
  That's a picture taken in 1914.
• 1:07:41
  He was maybe the first to wear head protection other than the
• 1:07:44
  flight helmets that they wore because they had nothing else.
• 1:07:47
  Helmet, goggles, and gloves.
• 1:07:49
  That was all the protection they had.
• 1:07:50
  Here, unfortunately, a list of the people who were killed in board track racing.
• 1:07:54
  It was a different time.
• 1:07:55
  These were different people.
• 1:07:56
  Factors that influenced the board track.
• 1:07:58
  The automobile industry, as we talked about it, was developing
• 1:08:01
  the car, the high speed.
• 1:08:03
  Major business people, Firestone family invested in board tracks.
• 1:08:07
  The Ford family invested in board tracks.
• 1:08:09
  Thomas Edison invested in a board track.
• 1:08:12
  So did Louis B.
• 1:08:13
  Mayer because the Culver City track is built right up against
• 1:08:17
  the back lot of the MGM studio.
• 1:08:19
  Automobile race in a major sport communities wanted to have it
• 1:08:23
  increased the value of the community and get people to help the economy.
• 1:08:27
  And these people were major racers.
• 1:08:29
  What caused the demise?
• 1:08:31
  It cost a lot to maintain something that wasn't protected by anything for the
• 1:08:35
  weather, plus the recertification that may cost a hundred thousand dollars to
• 1:08:39
  put new wood down when they needed it.
• 1:08:41
  Lack of competition.
• 1:08:42
  Louis Meyer told me the fastest car always won because it was just speed.
• 1:08:46
  There was no way for a slower car to, uh, get around a faster
• 1:08:50
  car, weather damage, dwindling attendance, because people Oh, okay.
• 1:08:55
  Yeah, we saw that.
• 1:08:56
  It's not continuing to be.
• 1:08:58
  And then, of course, the Great Depression.
• 1:08:59
  Here's a postcard of the Charlotte Speedway.
• 1:09:01
  Interestingly, they had two or three stock car races there that
• 1:09:05
  didn't draw any attention at all.
• 1:09:07
  Now you go to Charlotte, that's all they have.
• 1:09:10
  After the board tracks, there was nothing till the Nutley Velodrome and some other
• 1:09:14
  places raced midgets on these tracks.
• 1:09:16
  You couldn't get a championship car on that.
• 1:09:18
  They were too small.
• 1:09:19
  Seventh of a mile, you have four or five championship cars on there.
• 1:09:22
  They'd be nose to tail.
• 1:09:24
  But the velodrome ran for a couple of years, very successful.
• 1:09:28
  But also they had three fatalities.
• 1:09:30
  The New York newspapers just were out against this kind of thing.
• 1:09:33
  That's Tommy Heinrich.
• 1:09:34
  It's leading this group of people.
• 1:09:36
  You figure seventh mile track.
• 1:09:37
  They're going around seven, eight seconds, 70 miles an hour.
• 1:09:40
  That's really doing something.
• 1:09:41
  And that's Henry Banks who became a director of competition in Chicago.
• 1:09:46
  They built a board track for one use.
• 1:09:48
  Cost 25, 000 then, almost a half a million today.
• 1:09:52
  This was for the world championship at 90, 000 people see this race.
• 1:09:57
  And it was for one race.
• 1:09:58
  This was at the polo grounds.
• 1:10:00
  This was a high bank board track.
• 1:10:02
  It was supposed to be run for several weeks, but every time they had a
• 1:10:06
  race, it rained except for two times.
• 1:10:08
  And what they used to make this board track was a portable board track.
• 1:10:12
  This was an article in 1948, Popular Mechanics, about this board track.
• 1:10:17
  Someone got the idea.
• 1:10:18
  We can have automobile racing all over the country, wherever you want it.
• 1:10:22
  Pop it down, have your race.
• 1:10:23
  The promoter was a millionaire sportsman.
• 1:10:26
  They had people who were involved, National Midget.
• 1:10:28
  The designers, Leon and Lionel Levy, were architects who developed horse racing
• 1:10:34
  tracks, boxing arenas in baseball and football stadiums, things like that.
• 1:10:39
  All of this with a steel underpinning, it was like putting a big model kit together.
• 1:10:45
  You transported it from place to place.
• 1:10:47
  Cost 150, 000 then just for this.
• 1:10:50
  Million and a half today.
• 1:10:52
  But the transportation and the labor was extra.
• 1:10:55
  They ran it a couple times in the polo grounds, then it was
• 1:10:58
  shipped out to the Rose Bowl.
• 1:10:59
  Rose Bowl and Los Angeles had board track midget racing.
• 1:11:03
  Problem was the tracks were too narrow.
• 1:11:06
  No activity, no action, because they had had dirt midget
• 1:11:09
  racing at these two venues.
• 1:11:11
  They tried this to think it would be better.
• 1:11:13
  It wasn't.
• 1:11:14
  That was sort of the end of board track racing.
• 1:11:16
  And I'll end with this.
• 1:11:17
  Here are two interesting books.
• 1:11:19
  Both are still available.
• 1:11:21
  Although they're not new books, they're used books or something like that.
• 1:11:25
  Although the Wall Smacker, which is Peter DiPaolo's autobiography,
• 1:11:29
  you can get in an e book, tells all about the board track era.
• 1:11:32
  That Guts and Glory that Dick Wallin produced in 1990, I
• 1:11:36
  wrote two chapters in that book.
• 1:11:38
  I would have written it differently today than I did then.
• 1:11:41
  Because of the internet, you can find out so much more information than
• 1:11:44
  going to the libraries like I did.
• 1:11:46
  Plus, there are other books.
• 1:11:47
  Griff Borgeson has the book about the golden era of auto racing in the 1920s.
• 1:11:54
  And Mark Dees excellent book on the Millers.
• 1:11:57
  These give you some insight into board track racing.
• 1:11:59
  Ladies and gentlemen, I, I hope I've piqued your interest anyway.
• 1:12:03
  And, uh, I'm just proud to be able to address this group.
• 1:12:06
  And board track racing is something that, uh, Happened a long time ago,
• 1:12:09
  but it's a major part of American history and I hope you enjoyed it.
• 1:12:13
  Thank you.
• 1:12:18
  This episode is brought to you in part by the International
• 1:12:20
  Motor Racing Research Center.
• 1:12:22
  Its charter is to collect, share, and preserve the history
• 1:12:25
  of motors, sports spanning continents, eras, and race series.
• 1:12:28
  The Center's collection embodies the speed, drama and camaraderie
• 1:12:32
  of amateur and professional motor racing throughout the world.
• 1:12:35
  The Center welcomes serious researchers and casual fans alike to share stories of
• 1:12:39
  race drivers, race series, and race cars captured on their shelves and walls and
• 1:12:44
  brought to life through a regular calendar of public lectures and special events.
• 1:12:48
  To learn more about the Center, visit www.
• 1:12:51
  racingarchives.
• 1:12:52
  org.
• 1:12:53
  This episode is also brought to you by the Society of Automotive Historians.
• 1:12:57
  They encourage research into any aspect of automotive history.
• 1:13:00
  The SAH actively supports the compilation and preservation of papers.
• 1:13:05
  Organizational records, print ephemera and images to safeguard, as well as to broaden
• 1:13:09
  and deepen the understanding of motorized, wheeled land transportation through
• 1:13:13
  the modern age and into the future.
• 1:13:15
  For more information about the SAH, visit www.
• 1:13:19
  autohistory.
• 1:13:20
  org.
• 1:13:25
  We hope you enjoyed another awesome episode of Brake Fix Podcast brought
• 1:13:29
  to you by Grand Touring Motorsports.
• 1:13:31
  If you'd like to be a guest on the show or get involved, be sure
• 1:13:34
  to follow us on all social media platforms at GrandTouringMotorsports.
• 1:13:38
  And if you'd like to learn more about the content of this episode,
• 1:13:42
  be sure to check out the follow on article at GTMotorsports.
• 1:13:45
  org.
• 1:13:47
  We remain a commercial free and no annual fees organization through
• 1:13:51
  our sponsors, but also through the generous support of our fans,
• 1:13:54
  families, and friends through Patreon.
• 1:13:57
  For as little as 2.
• 1:13:59
  50 a month, you can get access to more behind the scenes action, additional Pit
• 1:14:03
  Stop minisodes, and other VIP goodies.
• 1:14:06
  As well as keeping our team of creators fed on their strict diet of fig
• 1:14:11
  Newtons, gummy bears, and monster.
• 1:14:13
  So consider signing up for Patreon today at www.
• 1:14:17
  patreon.
• 1:14:17
  com forward slash GT motorsports, and remember without you, none
• 1:14:22
  of this would be possible.