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With all the excitement going on I forgot to Thank or blame J.D. Porter first of all for starting this thread "Whatever happened to", and Brian Satterwhite, Jim Messemer, and David Grace for turning it into one heck of a get together. With all of the hard earned talent in that room, I felt like I was 12 years old all over again. I kept waiting for someone from Ogden Concessions to tell me to get back to work, Popcorn....Peanuts....

Then after the ol man (Steve Foster) flipped from turn 4 to turn 1 at Enid, from then on it was Ice Cold Coke....get your Coca Cola here. I wasn't allowed to sell peanuts anymore.

I was at the very least humbled when I was asked to join in the photo with all of the great Modified drivers I grew up watching. Even though I did get to race with some of them, or I should say get lapped by them.

It was a great event, and I hope we can all do it again soon.

Allen

Few people realize Uncle A has an awesome resume with lettering race cars in the past. He's only told me a little of what he's done. He's also got a lot of stories on DE Suggs, and the list goes on.

Bobby Craft has some interesting stories too. I'd like to hear about his days on the road with Kinser.

JD has been there at a lot of races, took a lot of pics, met a lot of people over the years it's hard to imagine.

Mike from Lawton just shows you a smidgen of what he has from home!

I always respect the quiet wisdom of Charley Ford.

The power of the life experience there is overwhelming, this small brain only has a little room to take it all in.

EVEN MY NON-RACING FAN GIRLFRIEND WAS GLAD SHE CAME OUT!

The audience IS the show. Meeting all of you and getting to be a part of it is really cool for me. I have met a few famous people that would draw a good size crowd,--but not one of them could keep me away from a deal like this. As a kid I once said I'd work for free for people like you, after 41 years I feel like I finally got HIRED! The on-the-job training is a lot of fun for me. The best times of my life were at Lawton Speedway on Saturday night, this is the closest I am able to get back to those days. That's a good benefit plan.

---------------

JD, You got in a mood last fall and hit a home run.

Hey , just got to wondering one day , I echo everything you all said about Sat. night, just was pretty neat deal and hope we can do it again with more participation, plan on spreading the word to guys this summer when i run into racers at racetracks , like Russell Shoulders and Emmitt Hahn and Ray Crawford and guys from Lawton when I am down there on a Sat. night for a show like Joe Moore Jr. and Bill Cates which i have seen at the track in the past years.

Hey Thanks to David , Jim and Brian and Uncle A and The Stewarts and all the others for making this thread continue and most of all Warren Vincent for giving us this forum.

Mike M. to answer your question on an earlier thread , there were only 2 pages I thought but I will check and see and if there is another and if so I will run it off and get it to you sometime soon.

Is Mike "Mike Pogue" and if so, did he move from Tulsa to Lawton?

David Smith Jr.
www.oklahomatidbits.com

Mike is Mike Monatoboy from Lawton. He's the main historian we have to go by. He's also done a couple of models too. Down to earth, honest, and one of the nicest, on the square people you've ever met.

Just a few models,

David Smith you missed a good time last Sat. night , told Chris about it Monday and you and Chris should try to make the next one.

Mike M. I did look at the program and my mistake on copying it , heck I left 2 pages out of the Wayne Cox story , I will run them off and get them to you next time I am down to see my dad, was good seeing you yesterday.

Brian , you get any storm damage from yesterday?

Brian,

Thank you for the kind words, I hope all is well in your neck of the woods after the tornados hit. Let all of us know how you are.

Mike

JD,

It was great to meet your Dad yesterday, what a small world, now that we know both our Dads' are in the Veteran's Center. Thanks for looking at the Wayne Cox article, I just thought there was more to it like I told you where one page left off and the other page started. Looking forward to the next get together, I think it will be even bigger like our Wichita Falls reunion is growing.

Mike

Yes, I'm fine. Lone Grove took a beating last night though. It's draining sorting through all the rumors just to get the facts. Found out my friends down there are okay, so that's good. Tornadoes(I think there were 2) came through and missed all the people I knew........barely

Coyotes sure have been stirred up though, I've heard them a lot since it all happened.

Anybody hurt in OkC?

No one that I knew up in NW OKC and Edmond, just hope this is not a preview of the coming spring.

Mike I have ALL the pages now for the story , will get them to you soon.

David, I really enjoy your stories, do you have any more about Mike or Shane?

Ray

Ray & All,

Just now returned from Charolette NC, been gone since Tuesday morning, drove over to P/U a truck that I bought from the Goodyear Warehouse. Ray I have tons of stories I'll get some more up soon. Talked to Shane on the way home and he was on his way to Cow Town to watch Midgets run tonight, he has been in Corpus Christy with Scotty Adams as Scotty had to get a new van as his van burned to the ground along with his dad's motor home and 2/3's of there house a couple weeks ago. Shane had a good time at the get together and will bring some more stuff next time. It's amazing to me how much stuff everybody has, I'm hoping Gary Flatt can come next time, he would love those pic's of his Grand Pa & his dad.

Bryan I've got a better idea on your wheel I think Ronnie Black is still alive, I know Roger is let's have them audigraph that wheel as they were part of that team and I think Janelle ought to sign it also as she wrote the checks!!!! When we get together next time hopefully they can go or I'll see if I can't make arrangements for them to sign it.

Warren I saw more wrecked trucks on the east side of the Mississippi, whats up they need driving lessons????

To All who read here looking at pic's of John's models doesn't do them justice, you really need to see them in person!! I've only seen a few pic's of Mike's and sometime would love to see them in person I'm sure the pic's don't do his justice either. It is amazing how detailed they look, there used to be another guy here in OKC that built models that were very good, he did one of the #01 Jelly car that I had, and he did some of the #20 car that Gary and I won the championship with in OKC. Unfortunately I don't remember his name. Does anybody remember his name??

To All,

In February of '85 we took the Rich car to Florida to run the USAC/NCRA race, we left OKC a few days early as we were going to spend a day or 2 going to Busch Gardens, we had that brown chevy dually and Doc's trailer, myself,Shorty & Sandy left out going to Dallas then out the 20 to Shrevport then south to the 10. Well the weather was bad and when we got into Dallas it was bad icy so we took the 45 on down to 10 then across, somewhere along there Shorty came up with 1 of his famous short cuts, it was late at night Shorty was driving and we came up to some little town and I said how's the gas he say's were fine enough to make it to Lafeyette, well guess what 10 miles out of Lafeyette we ran out of gas, there really wasn't a shoulder just some sloped off grass into a foggy swamp, we siphoned a few gallons of gas out of the generator tank to get us into town but when we tried to start the truck up it wouldn't crank (BACK IN THOSE DAYS IT WAS A COMMON PROBLEM) Shorty tells me to get out and beat on the starter and I tell him no because the gators have probably crawled under the truck, well he wasn't amused by that so he tells Fly to get under there and beat on it well Fly tells him no because he wasn't getting under there with the gators either, so we sit there for 1/2 an hour till it cooled off and started, later on I was driving and went through the Pensacola tunnel and just as we came out on the east side the motor died, it would crank but no fire, I pulled the cap off and changed the module and it restarted so off we were again, about 2 hrs later on another one of Shorty's short cuts a old man pulled on to the hwy right in front of us and when I swerved to miss him the trailer ran over a drainage curb knocking the left axles (2) out from under the trailer, I don't know why we didn't crash but we left shit off the trailer up and down the hwy!! Fly walked back down the road and found the shackle plates but the u-bolts were ruined, we took 1/2 all thread and bent it around the axle to get it into the next town, when we arrived at the town we found a little parts store and they had 1 set of u-bolts and could get another set in a few hours so we started repairing what we could, as we were outside I noticed we might be the only white people in this town, a sheriff showed up and asked us what we thought we were doing and pretty nicely said don't be sitting here after dark so we fixed the 1 axle got the other bolts and drove down the road until we found a spot to put the other set of bolts on. When we got into Tampa we got our motel and drove over to the garden and Shorty got us in by saying we were delivering a Hippo from Garrett Farm's, went to the races at East Bay then to the Fairgrounds for the Champ car race, we Qualified decent and made it into the A-FEA and had moved up to 12th when the driveshaft broke ending our day. Back in those days Shorty and Fly looked alot alike they both had the kinky fro's and scruffy look, in the parking lot Mark Alderson was working on his car and Fly walked up wearing a coat that had Shorty's name on it, Mark asked Shane what do you think I should do about bars Fly jumped right in and shortly he and Mark had changed all the bars a couple of shocks and readjusted some other things, when Shorty walked up in person and that look on Mark's face was worth a 1000 words, he was lost the look was oh my god there is 2 of them!!!!! Even though we got off to a slow start in '85 it picked up after this race and we had a great year, and I enjoyed the challenge's that alot of you guys threw at us it made for fun times!!!!

David, It could have had a lot to do with those 50+ mph straight line winds and tornadiac winds that hit from Indiana down to Alabama and moved east. It was the same line that hit Oklahoma. I was coming up from the Knoxville TN area to Lebanon IN and it me at Lexington, KY. There was 3 trucks blown over in a ten mile section by Lexington. I pulled over at exit 69 on I-64 just north of Lexington and went to bed. It was rock and roll time that night. I believe that was Wednesday. The straight line winds I was in were clocked at 75 to 85 max.

But yes there are quite a few that need lesson or at least some refresher courses in manners on the road.

Warren Vincent
Cans 4 Kansas Heroes

Hey David, found this picture on the internet:

John Stewart

Retro Racing Custom Model Cars
405.922.6163
[email protected]
Oklahoma City, OK

Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Retro-
Racing-Custom-Model-Cars/235624429834292#!/pages/Retro-
Racing-Custom-Model-Cars/23562442983429

David, did you help with the Suchy car in 1981? I went to the Muskogee NCRA race in March 1981 and was walking around the pits and looking the car over. Dale Reed was driving it that night, the car was the only one there with coilovers on the front and back. I don't remember how Dale did that night. Herbie won in the Nance car. Mike ran third in the number 1. That was on Friday night, the next night at Tulsa was rained out. It was ran on a cold Sunday night. Mike broke in the heat in the 1, the 10 car was there for a backup. He started at the back of the "B" and won it. I think A rocker arm broke and was replaced between the features. Jerry Stone started on the pole for the A with Terry Doss next to him in Stone's Backup car. Mike started at the back and won the A going away in the 10. Later in the season at a regular Saturday program Mike was driving the Suchy car. I looked it over and it had been changed to 4 bar car. Why was this done and who did it? Mike won his heat, I don't remember the trophy dash and the QC gears stripped in the Feature. Where you there that night?

Ray

Bkcr,

In '81 Jack Rich built the Old Man a real nice 4-coil car, we had been playing around alittle with coils already on the #01 that Pressley drove, anyway we had drove out to PX to get the car and came home and John McDade from the '72-'73-'74 Suchy Teams took it home and assembled it, it is the prettest car that I think the Old Man ever had Pearl White with Ruby Maroon trim and lots of chrome!! The car was fast but very tricky on set-up's it was on a very fine line, about a third of the way through the year Dale parted company with Pat. I was commited to the #10 but The Old Man did supply us with alot of help. We started the year with 2 engines but had issues with the Boyd motor right off the bat, so we ran Bub Kearneys motor until we got the Boyd motor fixed, which it broke after only 2 races. MP didn't really like the power of Bub's motor so I went begging for help which led to the fuel story I've posted in here earlier. The Tulsa race your refering to was with Bub's motor, MP's primary NCRA ride was the Och #1 and we ran the #10 some at OKC but mainly at Tulsa and it was B/U for NCRA. Och's car blew up in the heat so we pulled the #10 out and started scratch in the B-FEA which MP won, it broke an Intake rocker with about 2 laps to go in the B so we had to scramble around alittle to fix it before the A-FEA. MP started last row of the A-FEA. and took the lead on about the 7th-8th lap and pretty well just went on leading the rest of the way, MP was running right on the top at the end not more then a couple feet off the wall. We started out that '81 season keeping the #10 car at B&T Chassis we did alot of chassis development while there, about July we moved over to the Old Mans Shop as Reed had departed and Pat didn't have a full time driver, we had B&T put torsion on the rear about this time MP drove it a couple of times if we were down in the 10, unfortunately MP was seriously hurt at Knoxville Nats right after winning the '81 Hutch Nats. so that shut us down on the #10 so I worked full time on the Old Mans car we eventually had torsion put on the front and John Ewell drove it a few times, we just never did get that car to work good torsion or coils!!! We ordered a new Rich 4-bar for '82, the #10 became a USAC champ car that MP ran in '82.

David , What is your take on why Coil Overs never really made a good showing in Champ Dirt, Sprint style cars, Midget and Late Model guy use them today, Sammy tried them a lot back in the early 90's with TMC and said they needed more R & D and he did not have the time to deal with them on the WoO trail, I always thought that it was the leverage deal of the exact corner of the Big Openwheel Cars that made Coil Overs so tough to make work , No transfer type weight like with torsion bar style.

Guess it is like anything else , the more you run it the better results you get with it.

JD,

The biggest thing that was our problem was lack of knowhow,when I rebuilt Pressley's Walker car the first time the only thing differant was I took the cross spring off and just put coil-overs on it, just beefed up the stock shock mounts. We really didn't have an idea on shock #'s but we played with it and had it pretty nice by the end off the year. We took it to Pat's a couple of times and he scaled it for us it really wasn't much differant then a spring. Over the winter we changed the car alot the front end was totally differant as were some major changes on the chassis, unfortunately I drilled all those Damn bolts out and the first night out he busted his ass which totaled the car. The Rich car was really nice as long as it was smooth and you could drive it in a straight line, it diffently was a high speed unit, it didn't like to be pitched hard and hated the holes, The Old Man and Johnny fought it for the first 1/3 of the year but it beat them down. We tried some of the stuff that we used on Tony's car but that didn't help either, Dale got flustrated and quit and rightfully so, we were over at Tulsa on the big track and it was fast but Reed hit a rut off turn 2 and did a 360 so fast it scared the shit out of him he pretty well told Pat after that he couldn't drive it. We took it to B&T and they put torsion on the rear and MP drove it a couple of times it diffentely was better, then Paul Ott drove it at Lawton a couple of times and did fair, he almost won a 50 lapper on 4th of July but ran off the end of the track on a restart with 7 laps to go leading, took it back to B&T and they put torsion on the front which really didn't help it much. I would love to have it back as a sprint car today we just have more shock knowledge and more knowledge on how to mount the pick up points. The spring base is just so much shorter then a STD torsion car that you have to be on your toes. Larry and Marcus do pretty well with coils and I really believe that if Travis had not past away Larry would be really tough to beat, Travis had a good understanding of what to do on set-ups, I miss Travis you could bounce idea's off him and get a good point of view, I know Larry misses him alot. Fred Tucker wound up with that old Rich car and ran it for a couple of years.