txtom

A little further on Nick's reply, many years back, one Carl Steven Berghman was stationed in San Antonio and assumed a false name so the Military would not find out he was racing the local track(s). You know him in racing history as “Bugsy Stevens” of Notheast Modified fame.

That was the only MRE car to make it to this area, and was the last Car Leroy Brooks drive.

If you need help with scanning let me know, I am doing a lot of that right now.

Thanks Bart, I have a profound interest in anything that relates to this track, due to the involvement my father and grand father had with it. If you look at page 3 of the 1948 program, you will see that the race was presented by a group called Racing International of Texas. The president, Allen Guiberson, was a well noted Dallas/Chicago business man that developed lots of oil field tooling. He also designed and sold diesel radial engines for Army tanks. In the very early 40's, Guiberson had one of his 1020 radials installed on a Stinson Reliant, and my Grandfather was the pilot for the program. The diesel program was suspended during WWII, and dropped when it became apparent that jet engines were the future. Guiberson was also a sports car enthusiast who entered a few races in the World Sportscar Championships with various drivers that included Phil Hill, Carroll Shelby, Ernie Triplett and Richie Ginther. He also had an interest in Indianapolis racing. My Grandfather's Association with Guiberson set the stone for my families involvement to this day. The vice president of the sanctioning group was a man named E. Fred Lockwood, and I don't have any real history of him. The Secretary/Treasurer, E. Babe Stapp, was a driver with a checkered history as a driver, but he also was the technical advisor for the movie "To Please a Lady" with Clark Gable and Barbara Stanwyck, which was partially filmed at Arlington Downs. My Mother has a picture of my Grandparents and the Stapps having dinner somewhere in the late 40's. Babe Stapp's son Stephen is the noted Indy/sprint builder and mechanic. Notable also is the Chief Starter for the race, Les Butler of Dallas. He needs no introduction to anyone even remotely familiar with Dallas racing history.. I will pull out a few things about all this in the next couple weeks,

Arlington Downs raceway was located in Arlington, Texas. This facility started life as a horse racing track located on property owned by W.T. Waggoner, the same person responsible for the huge North Texas Waggoner ranch. It opened for business in November 1929. It featured a 6,000 seat grandstand. The first auto race was a 100 mile AAA Championship race held on November 2, 1947, and won by Ted Horn with Paul Russo, Emil Andres, Eddie Zalucki and Milt Fankhouser rounding out the top 5. In the coming weeks I will have a couple more for this track, as well as a couple other collections of some historical significance. Here are programs from 3 events from 1948 to 1950. https://public.fotki.com/txtom/racing-programs/arlington-downs-raceway/

Josh, from all the years I have gone there, get your cash before you leave home. There are places to get cash but none that I would stop at. This is not a bashing of anything with the track; rather the hood that surrounds it.

That driver that finished 2nd was George Eaton in a McLaren. He was the only other driver to finish on the lead lap. Eaton was a mostly SCCA racer with some starts in other series.

Hello Ed, There are still a few around who would like to see any history of the area tracks. Any stories, pictures, news articles, etc. There does not seem to much out there about Pan American # 1 anymore; and very early Pan Am# 2 is getting hard to find also. Speaking for several others, I would relish seeing any other pictures you may have from that era. If you need help scanning pics or news articles, i can help with that also. Thanks, Tom

What was left of the Hood collection was given to given to the Ware Family upon Teds' passing. It was a hodgepodge of different pics, negatives, proof sheets, etc. Several years back, all of it was scanned, but the person scanning loaded up a scanner bed and copied them that way. That resulted in the scans having anywhere from 1 to 10 individual pics in them. Some of the years are just proof sheets which will be difficult to expand to a decent size. There are 5900+ scans in the collection. I have disk copies of the scans, and I am working on organizing them as I find time. A few years and some assorted pics are already on my FOTKI site. Another year ((1968 pics) will be added in the very near future once I finish it. When I say finish, I am separating the scans into individual pics, then correcting the contrast or color. The originals are stored away from the public. Here is a link to the 1967 pics. It starts out with pics from an ARCA race. I will be going back to id as many pics as possible. https://public.fotki.com/txtom/auto-racing/pan-american-speedway/pan-american-1967/ Hers is a link to some early 60's coupes. https://public.fotki.com/txtom/auto-racing/pan-american-speedway/early-60s-coupes/ Glad to see you back here Buddy. how have you been?

Would be great to see more from Mr Bowles. Very interesting stuff to help clear up and fill some holes in the history.

Lets all wish Nick a very Happy Birthday! Do it quick, before he forgets that this is his special day!

So who the hell is this Brad Bush and has he really ever done anything?

Surely y’all met at a chariot race somewhere........

Yessir, the M2K Motorsports car out of Fulshear Texas. They are in their own world at that event. A highly modified GT40. But they deserve it; they are incredibly nice guys that work hard at that event. They tune several cars st that event And will help anyone that needs it.

I believe Preston Peltier has Rowdy #1 and Donnie has #2.