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Tony, I started work at the glass plant in July 1979,I remember eating dinner in the fab break room some time in the fall of 79 and you were talking about racing. You didn' t know me so I just enjoyed listing. I was going through my old programs and found one from ' 73 and George won the feature and you and George's wife were on the front page, you looked a lot younger.

David while I was going through those programs I found the one from 74 where Benny Taylor won the first feature at the new track, driving Pat's car. There were over 13,000 people in the stands and Benny won over $1,200. Did you help with this car? Those were the best days of racing at Tulsa 1966 - 1983 the average attendance was over 8,000. The track should have never left the fairgrounds

Ray

The first night that I helped Norman and Mike, Norman asked me to go to the concession stand and get him something to snack on. Well I got some chips and a bag of peanuts, I was informed very quickly to get those peanuts away from his race car by Mike. That was the night I found out how superstitious that he was, nothing green, stay as far away from anything with the number 13 on it as he could.

Do any of you have any stories about drivers and their superstitions?

Ray

PS Mike is still winning at age 59

Some of my fondest memories are the Friday and Saturdays I spent hanging out in the Ofixco shop. I was just a 10 or 11 year old kid and I am sure I was just in the way but, they made me feel welcome. My dad was self employed so he would take of on Friday afternoons to take me over to the shop. I think I drove Steve craze with questions My dad told me to stay out off Steve's shop and not to bother him but, every chance I got I would sneak over there.

My stories only go back to the 80s as I am much younger than most of you guys. lol

I think it was 85 and Jerry was leading the points at okc and Tony was second It was a Friday morning and it was Jerry's turn to go get lunch so when he was gone they put Tony's car on the scales(4 feed scales) and I was look out as soon as I seen Jerry drive back up I gave the signal and they would slide the bar over on the scales so he would not see the setup on Tony's Car.

I remember the night Tony flipped over the fence in turn 1. I had brought a friend to the races with me I was a 11yr old be trying to be tough but, when Tony flipped out over the fence I set there and cried like a baby hoping he was OK.

I spent the night at Tony and Cathey's house a few times. They did not have any kids at the time. I had such a crush on Cathey she was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. I remember one day at the shop when she ask me if I wanted to go with her to get a ice-cream and I was in hog heaven I wonder if Tony new how I felt about his wife.

Tony the Tiger is still my favourite open wheel driver followed closely by Jerry Stone, Ron the Shoe, and Shane Carson

I remember how much I hated Greg Wooley as a kid. I don't know why I am sure he was a great guy. I think it was because his car was not orange and black.

Thats all I have for now I am still reading the post as I just come across it today so I am way behind I will catch up.

Perry Colby Jr.

Jim, How about those luvers (Spelled) on the lower side panel, have not seen those done on a car in a while, who still does those in OKC?

Going to try to enclose this other car I have with a lot of panels next year and might try to do some of the luvers on a few panels.

Standing at the car is Tony in red jacket, Terry "Woody" Woods adding fuel and Harold Harris with the cap on.

The older I get the faster I use to be

What happened to Harold Harris?, last time I seen him run was at Tulsa Speedway , going to say back in the early to mid 90's , had a really nice 2 Bar. car and did'nt he even try the 410 deal for a year or so?

JD,

I believe this was Tony's J&J car and Jack used to do alot of that kind of stuff, Mr Bill's first 2/3 J&J's had louvered side panels. If Jack didn't do it maybe BIG HOWARD over at STAINLESS PRODUCTS did it for them. Years ago Jerry Schwartz did louvers for the Old Man, they always give a car that extradetailed look.

On our '83 Rich car we had louvered panels on the sides of the motor and driver compartment, dolled her all up and went to the Starbird Show there were alot of cars there as Hill had arranged for a huge display area, anyway there were some Tulsa cars and a bunch of city cars, old Stone's car still had dirt on it and he won that show, there were at least 3 other cars there that were alot sharper and displayed better but we didn't have the Grable connection. I'll never forget The Old Man going up to get his 3rd place trophy he was pissed ol Starbird was passing them out and as he reached out to shake The Old Man's hand and said thanks Pat snatched that trophy out of Starbirds hand and said thanks for what WE JUST GOT F___!!! and tossed the trophy in the trash can as he walked off stage. That #60 Scotty Walker V-6 modified should have won or Shouse's #27 Corvette Center Champ Car.

Bringing up this show reminded me of another incedent that happened there, we had our car painted by a piticular guy who must have been on crack, when Indian Tom and I went to pick it up it was the nastest yellow I had ever seen, worse then baby poop!! anyway we loaded it up and took it back to the shop and The Old Man had a fit, we were down to the wire for the show and time was running out so Pat called Stan to come and look at it. Stan came by an just fell out laughing saying hope you didn't pay for this which I had!! Anyway he took it and I don't know how he saved it but he did and he had Rick Knight do the brush work and lettering. We go to the show and on set-up day as we're setting up the first painter comes by and start's to blow a gasket, it was funny The Old Man and I were standing in front of the car talking to Stone the painter starts flipping his lips and I noticed Pat hang his thumbs in his pockets and his eye brows started to turn up like devils horns which he always did right before he knocked the shit out of you. Anyway Pat tells Stone move back and old Jerry just keeps on talking not realizing what is going on, he tells him Stone I said MOVE BACK!! Stone had this funny look on his face and says" move back for what" The Old Man responded I'm fixing to kick his ass!! At which time I jumped between them and told the painter, man you just need to leave or there's going to be trouble, well he kept on jawing and finally I told him we're done talking you need to leave at which time he called me a sorry SOB at which time I back handed the piss out of him, well his buddy who is a local engine builder jumped on my back and started choking me, I finally managed to get him off my back and got him on the ground and whacked him a couple of times, I turned around and Flop Myer's ( God rest his sole) was leaning over saying David Pats hurting the other guy and sure nuff when I looked over Pat had the guy in a head lock and was buzz sawing him with left upper cuts, man I hopped right up and told Pat your hurting him he looks up and says so and wind milled him about 3 more times and then just dumped him on the ground. I never did like doing those Starbird shows everybody got so jacked up on doing them, just about as bad as the knoxville nationals!!!!!

 

David , greaa story, I always thought the car shows were rigged. It seemed that the one that was the best hardly ever won. Keep the stories coming.

Ray

Bkcr,

Your right Benny did win that race, I remember it well as we ran a Big Jaloney and a Goodyear rain tire on th LR. The track wasn't in very good shape and Benny ran in the middle to bottom grooves, it was one of the few A-FEA. won on that old big track on low profile tires because after that you had to have MARSH HUMPERS or FIRESTONE DRAG 500's the bigger the better, it is amazing to me now when I look back how much we abused those little 302's. We put those 107/110" Drag 500's on and expected them to pull a low gear, if I remember right and I might be able to find out from John McDade we ran like a 5.0 or 5.12 with the low profile tires there and buzzed the you know what out of it. The DRAG 500's grew enough that you ran a lot lower gear and with there growth it made like a high gear set-up. I remember that we had a 2" OT rear axle and you could see it flex up and down as the car came off of turn 4 going down the straights. Your right about the attendence it amazed me at how many people were there the first few years. Had a love hate relationship with that place, it was a VERY FAST JOINT and raceing was alot of fun there BUT we hurt and lost alot of good competitor's there. I so very much wish we had the safety equipment we have know back then, it would have helped save some injure's and loss of life. That big old track was just ahead of it's time and alot of fans and racers from todays world don't understand how tough the driver's back then were, no power steering LR's on RF's no seats that held you in place gosh how many of you out there remember the driver's racing 50 LAPS and there helmets would be hanging out of the car on the right side, man those guys where my hero's every last one of them, you would have a hard time today finding driver's with that much desire and devotion.

I can remember the first driver who I worked with that said he couldn't drive because of the speed and this was 10/12 years after the time we're talking about above, I respected him for telling me but I was appalled I had never had a driver especially somebody who desired to be a driver and he was good come across with that and that was at OKC WHICH WAS VERY FAST but not like that BIG TULSA TRACK!!!!

Adjusted for inflation, that $1,200 today is just under $5,000!

It would be cool to know the admission price, the pit pass price and total attendance in the pits and stands to know the intake and compare it to todays $.

JD:

When I bought the Hillenburg Walker 55 that Ray Crawford drove, they had louvers on all the aluminum pieces including the hood side panels, the bottom panels and they made a cover for the top of the cage that fit between the roll bars and it had louvers. I have always liked louvers especially on street rods and I had some done on my 55 Chevy hood by Dan Mikey in Choctaw area. There are a few people around that do them, but Dan is the best. Dan is maintenance superintendent @ the OU Health Science Center. He has lot's of street rods personally and really takes pride in his work. You might ask Rick Knight or Steve Cook (the custom rod builder) how to contact him. Steve's shop is behind Classic Ford/Chevy and now Bishop Racing on the I-35 south frontage road. He is about 2 blocks due west of them.

GRC35

In the late '60s and early '70s you could buy an advance general adm. ticket to the races at any "Git and Go" store until noon on race day (remember the Git and Go trophy dashes), I think that they were $1.25 you would save .25-.50 over the gate admission. The pit passes in '74-'79 were $2.00 to $4.00. Norman would always pay for mine so I am not to sure about this price. You had to join the "Oil Capitol Racing Ass." and they would punch your membership card each week, it was $10.00 to join the OCRA.

David we would take the 107" drag tire and fill it very full and let it sit in the sun to stretch, I don't know if this made us any faster or not, but everybody else was doing the same. I never did know how many rpms the 240" Ford six cyl. was turning with the big drag tire but they were screaming. The 6 cylinders had a lot narrower power band than the V-8s so they had to change the gears more often. We would start with a 6.14 then go higher as the track dried. I changed the gears on Mike's 71 car 7 times one night. The track dried real bad one Saturday and Mike wanted to run a 5.45 and we didn't have that set he went down and borrowed it from George Armstrong and he won the feature and I had to take it out and give back to George and man was it hot. Mike ran a 12.5 inch drag tire on the left front and did not seem to have any trouble, but was glad that Norman put power steering in the next year. I never did know how long the track was but I heard 5/8 to 6/10 if not longer, there was not any other track like it, a big circle the you didn't have to lift if your car was working good, but with an 18" concrete wall on the outside. Larry Coleman told me that the first time that he raced at the big track that he was going down the back chute faster than he had ever gone and he was sure he was sitting a track record and one car passed him on the outside, one on the inside and one bumped in the back. It was the best facility in the region wide and fast, but very dangerous.

Luther did you ever see the big Tulsa track?

Ray

Bkcr,

One thing that was great about that place is it was so big you could run 4-5 wide even through the corners, on most nights you could just go off and run your own race and not worry about everybody else. One night when MP won there in the #10 he passed 5 cars on the outside scraping the wall with the RR tire and bumper in turns 3&4 I mean went into 3 running 5th and came off of 4 leading and everybody was hauling ass, Ray was running on the bottom and finished 2nd but I guarenty you MP drove a couple miles futher winning it.

On a differant note one time at Little Rock I had a similar gear story, we were running our SS/BB motor and had ran a 7.28 in the heat winning it, the track was drying out so we thought we would go a little lower to help get off the corner and use the motor for more braking going in the corner. Well the 7.28 was as low as we had with us so I started shoping around well most people thought we were idiots as most were running 7.05/7.15, finally found a 7.52 that Ernest Jennings had and he loaned it to us so we put it in and took the lead on the 2nd lap and just drove off and hid, the only ones we didn't lap were Bob & MP and they were a 1/2 lap behind!! We turned that motor 8700 RPM and when I pulled the gears out they were smoking hot, I took them over to Ernest and he said son of a gun you guys did run that gear.

Ray,...If the "Big" track was on 21st street, yes I ran there twice. I mentioned it with the 1st car I had. The flat head Ford. The picture is on the message board with my other cars. It was in June, 1961. The car had a ford transmission with a Pontiac rear end. We normally ran in 2nd gear with a 28 tooth gear. The final ratio was 6.51 to 1 for a qtr mile. We ran 105 inch house trailer tires on the rear with to 28 tooth 2nd gear at Tulsa that night. Thinking back we should probably ran high gear with smaller tires. We did time in 3rd & ran 3rd in the dash behind Jack Belk & Bud Hatch in the dash & was running 3rd in the main when the top radiator hase came off. The engine was wound pretty tight. There was a local driver killed that night on the back stretch in a roll over.

I ran there in Oct 1967 in the Watson 4 bar (7th car I built) and timed 3rd behind Jerry Richart & Jay Woodside and ran the main the same position. It was an IMCA sprint race. I thought the Watson car was on the same site but it did not come through..Is that the same site where the "Chili Bowl is run. I went to the Chili Bowl in 2001. ..Luther

Luther the big track opened northeast of that track in 1974. It was the nicest facility in our region, 60- 80 feet wide and long, over 1/2 mile probably at least 5/8 of a mile. It had no real straights just a big circle and fast, very fast. The supers ran there from 1974-1983. It was too dangerous the insurance people made the promoter put the cars on the inside track that had been stretched to a little 3/8 track The fans were to far to see the cars. That was the start of the downfall of racing in Tulsa.The fair board did not give the promoter a very good deal, rumour had that he had to give them 40% of the gate and they keep all the concession rights. Some of the fairgrounds residents were not very good neighbours and complained about the noise and started a lawsuit against the track and the fair-board. The races were there when they moved there but they messed up a good thing. We went to having the largest average attendance at any weekly track in the nation to not having any races at all. I have been wanting to complain about these people for years and I finally did it. They run horses on that track now, I guess they aren't to loud.

Ray

Every big track needs at least one car race a year IMO.

Remington Park makes me drool when I think about USAC, and I'm going by there.

Ray,...I never saw that big track. I did go to a WoO race out north of Tulsa in 1990 or 91. I did go to Vallew Engineering in downtown Tulsa to have the moly tubing bent for cars #5, 6, 7, 8 & 9 because I could not find anyone in KC that could bend it without flatning the bends. Valley Engineering was in the back part of a store front garage in downtown Tulsa. I probably have the address & phone number in a pocket size address book I carried all during my racing days. I still have it in a box of old pictures. ......Is the Chili Bowl held on the came site as the first track? I would bet it is.......Luther

Luther, The Chili bowl is held at the Fairgrouds/Expo Square in the Ipe/Ouik Trip Building. The original race track was just east of that building and is now a parking lot. The last season that the races was held there was 1973. The new track opened in 1974 and the last season there was 1984 on the little track. The promoter moved the races out North in 1985 and I don't remember the las season that it was open. The two Fairgrounds tracks averaged over 8,000 in attendance with the new track sometimes having 12,000 to 14,000 in attendance.When the races moved North a could crowd was 4,000. The fair-board sure screwed up when they kicked the races out.

Ray

Fair board would have been better suited if the would have started the races at 7pm insteat a 730pm. Would have gotten them in before the curfew took affect at 1020pm. I remember several nights when there was no seat to be had in those massive stands.

Crawford, Hahn battles were the norm. Stone, Leep and Bobby Walker were some of the greats that ran every weekend up there.

For the record. I was a Crawford fan.

Mcole

mlcole