Budman

How about ………… "BEFORE YOU TAKE ME HOME."

All of this is very interesting to some of you, I suppose. Personally, I couldn't really care less. We've talked on here before about "COOKIE CUTTER' tracks. Goodness knows for years the nascar rules have resulted in "COOKIE CUTTER" cars. Now it seems the corporate sponsor influences have resulted in even having "COOKIE CUTTER" drivers. Seems there are others besides me taking notice. Take a look at this. Its highlights from the recent race at Texas Motor Speedway. Look at the vid and stop it at 1 min. 52 seconds. That's all you need to see. Forget about what's happening on the track. Just look in the stands.

Got it. Read it. Good stuff H/T.

Ha, Ha, Ha, H/T, Yeah, me too. I was out at Speed-O-Rama in Austin back then every Friday night, unless of course I was out chasing girls. Even took a couple out there at times. But hey, it's all good. Anyone who had Farah Fawcett hanging out at their house couldn't be bad, even if she wasn't chasing you. Texasprd I finally got around to reading that article in your post. That was incredible for sure. I'd recommend for anyone interested in that era read that article. I guess that debunks the rumor of about Holman-Moody. Apparently their contract with Ford to build N-car 427s was just THAT. What I found most interesting after all they spent on all that R&D for those LeMans motors, simply reducing the compression ratio turned out to be the fix for durability they were looking for. Whoda thunk it? Huh.

You never know for sure what you can believe is true or just rumor, texasprd, but I remember back in the day reading somewhere that a company that prepared 427 Ford engines for NASCAR had a hand to some extent in preparing the engines for those cars. That company was named Holman-Moody. Their trade-mark was CP, which stood for "Competition Proven". Anyway, it's all fun and interesting, especially for someone like me who was around during that era. I look forward to seeing that movie.

Oh yeah H/T. '67 was the year I graduated from High School. I was all into all that stuff back then. In '66 they had one of those GT-40's on display in the SHOW ROOM at the local ford dealership in Austin. I remember going down to that dealership just to get a look at one of those things. Heck, they even let me sit in it. That was pretty cool for a teenager to get to do back then.

I keep seeing TV ads and promos for this new movie coming out soon. Saw one just this morning on TV. It reminded me of those great times in racing. Soooo, I got to looking around on YOUTUBE and came across this. It even has a couple of Texans in it you might recognize. If you plan on going to see the movie, maybe you best not look at this. On the other hand, if you do, you can say you first saw it here on LoneStarSpeedzone.

Not to worry H/T, I was just "RATTLIN' YOUR CAGE a little." Have a good day!

You mean like this? ----->

Howdy there Nick. Hope you are feeling much better by now. H/T, you doing fine, I trust. We just returned from the OTHER northern coast ……… Seattle. Been up there for about 10 days, visiting my son and daughter-in-law and seeing a few of the sights around there. Day before we left, Thursday, twas 55 in the morning and inched up to 70 by late afternoon. Light coat weather for us. Didn't even get a bug bite. Driving home from the Austin airport I did however, run over a rattlesnake just before we turned in to our driveway. That was a nice welcome home.

I'm sure I can speak for all on here. We genuinely hope you get to feeling much better real soon, Nick.

HI Rodney. Got your e-mail and read that article by Mr. Coffee (no, not the coffee maker, but rather the gentleman). Fascinating stuff for sure and I recognized just about all those names mentioned there. I attended my first race with my dad at Oak Hill Downs when I was 6 years old. That got me hooked on racing, still to this day. Yes, and I'm sure the author of that article is the same Mr. Coffee I am familiar with. You see, back in the early days of speed-o-rama, the stands were pretty well packed each and every Friday night and folks in the crowd tended to sit in more or less the same place each week. We would always sit on the top row just south of the press box. Mr. Coffee (that's all we ever knew him by) would sit every week four rows below us and about 15 seats south of us. His claim to fame there was every time the announcer mentioned Waldo Harper's name, Mr. Coffee would clasp his hands around his mouth in a megaphone fashion and shout out in either an authentic or contrived British accent, (we never knew for sure) the phrase "WELL, BULLY FOR WALDO!" We never tired of his antics at that and always had a good chuckle. Just another of the fond memories from that era.

Here is an action pic from Austin Speed-O-Rama from 1963 or possibly '64. It appears to me this may have been the first turn of a Trophy Dash, among the top four season points holders at the time. Those were all out, hammer down, 6 lap races to start out the evening of racing. These cars were the asphalt super-modifieds of their time. As you can see, there was no one prototype for those cars. All were of different designs. That made it all the more interesting. The 43 car sports a 343 Chrysler Hemi with three 2 bbl. carbs. The 2 car sports a 327 chevy with two 4 bbl. carbs. The Drivers were as follows: #43 driven by Johnnie Doyle, #3 driven by Ed Starr, #2 driven by Bill White, #11 high in the background driven by Buddy Jerkins. Those guys always put on a hell of a show week in and week out on Friday nights in Austin. It was no nonsense racing, fast, hard and very clean. Incidents as the one shown here were infrequent. There were just too many OPEN WHEELS flying around that little quarter mile track where contact could be disastrous. Those races were tremendously popular at the time. They usually raced before a packed house. ENJOY -----

TOM, THANKS AGAIN FOR THAT POSTER. I'M GOING TO SCAN ANOTHER OLD PIC FROM '63. ITS A GREAT ACTION SHOT. YOU'VE SEEN IT BEFORE, JUST NOT IN ABOUT 10 YEARS OR MORE. IT WAS THE FIRST PIC I EVER POSTED ON HERE. I'LL TRY TO GET IT ON HERE LATER THIS EVENING.

Hey Rodney ……….. Got your pm. Just haven't got back to ya yet.

Where's Waldo? HERE HE IS ! I'm guessing about '64, turns 1/2 at Speed-O-Rama

Here Ya go Rodney/Russ ………….. A Pic of that Poster. This is a recent reproduction of an old original poster found stuck up on a wall in an old shop in San Antonio. TxTom could give you the details on it. TxTom handed me this poster one night in the pits at THR several years ago. What good are these things if we can't share them with those interested in such stuff ! I hope the sizing works out. If not, perhaps Nick can help.

Hey thanks guys. First time listener here, thanks to your posting. WOW, all those names mentioned just brought back a ton of great memories to me. I hope this thread can keep going on and on. There has to be a lot of stuff out there that could be posted on here. Right now, as I sit at my PC in my study, on the far wall is a poster (the only racing poster I own) from 1962, promoting a midget race at Austin Speed-O-Rama, featuring A.J.Foyt, Jr. I'd like to take a look at the FM Coffee article you mentioned. I think I know who that guy is. Please PM me where I can find it. I'd like to take a look at it. Thanks.

…………. and I was probably there.

Thanks again guys for posting. I want to back track to my previous posting. When I asked my dad about firing the BAR in combat I was just a kid, probably 10 or 12 years old. I've always remembered his response. Only later when I was an adult did I come to understand what he was REALLY telling me. That being …. "You don't EVER want to know what it's like to fire one of those things at another human being."

HI HT. Thanks for posting. The one vet I honor most, of course is my dad, who served with the Army 7th Infantry Division during the Okinawa campaign in WWII. He would never talk much about his combat experiences. I think he witnessed too many horrible things in battle to even want to recall them. I would just pick up little bits and pieces of his time there, over our many years together.. One of the things he told me is kind of interesting. At some point, he was told to turn in his M-1. He was told "you're a pretty big guy, we're going to issue you a BAR. I once asked him about shooting that thing in combat. He paused a few seconds, then told me " Naw, I mostly just scared 'um with it." Here's a fun video. Take a look and turn up your sound REAL LOUD !

Here is a pic of Jud three years later -----> 1958

Wasn't the photographer at Pan Am and Speed-o-rama named Hood? What an incredible collection that must be. Where is it now? Probably deteriorating in boxes in some obscure warehouse somewhere in S.A. What a tragedy. Items in that collection shot over the many years could mean so much to so many people on here or some other on-line site. What a shame. Does anyone on here know in who's possession the collection now rests?

I can't tell for sure from the pic, but that may be Don Fowler standing by the #12 car in the pic above. There was a track named Austin Speedway located northeast of the intersection of Ben White Blvd (then Allred Lane) and South Lamar in Austin. I think it only operated a couple of years in the late '50s. Also, don't forget about Oak Hill Downs, a 1/4 mile dirt oval, that operated where else? ……….. Oak Hill just southwest of Austin in the 1950's. I'm going to post a clipping below from the Austin paper in 1955. The clipping indicates they were racing midgets. That is not accurate. They were all racing stock cars that night. The clipping repeatedly mentions Roy King of New Jersey. That driver was actually Jud Larson driving under that assumed name. He was racing OUTLAW that night, because he was signed on as a driver in AAA, which prohibited their drivers from participating in non-sanctioned events. The most interesting part of this for me personally is that Jud had stopped by our house earlier that evening, before towing out to the track. My dad reset the ignition timing for him on the #44 '38 Chevy, owned by Tubby Stewart that Jud drove that night. Oakhillclip5501.0001 [640x480].bmp