Nonie and I went to Merrittville Speedway to run on the dirt in the Mini Stock class. Here is Harry Cooper #38 driving a Mini and Larry Benjamin #16. They both ran very competitive.

    It didn’t take us long to want to race only at Cayuga or other paved tracks. Here we are on the back chute at Cayuga racing against #47 Doug Sutton and #5 Art Bird. These guys were good runners also.

    I struggled quite a bit in the Mini Stock class. We ran on less than a shoe string but wanted to be there every week. The people were great and we had fun. Seems that would be the formula for ever…in the feature I tried going in real hard into turn one. The car pushed so bad that I clipped a guard rail and flipped over. #50 is Don Dunham, Jim Dunham’s brother. We didn’t do a lot of damage and were able to tow the car home.

    I struggled quite a bit in the Mini Stock class. We ran on less than a shoe string but wanted to be there every week. The people were great and we had fun. Seems that would be the formula for ever…in the feature I tried going in real hard into turn one. The car pushed so bad that I clipped a guard rail and flipped over. #50 is Don Dunham, Jim Dunham’s brother. We didn’t do a lot of damage and were able to tow the car home.

    After the roll over we fixed what we could. I painted the fenders white. The next week we went to Cayuga and my car quit on the back straight in about the middle of the track. I got out and watched for a caution, but none came, I wanted to get my car off the track. I kept waving to the starter to stop the race in case my car got hit, cars were zooming by it every lap, but being 100 yards away and all the noise, he couldn’t hear me. Sure enough my car got nailed. The impact was hard enough to crack the engine and bend the sub frame. I was mad and hurt. We always got paid every night after the races and it was usually $5. I pleaded my case to Bob Slack that his starter could have saved my car if he had of stopped the race, now I couldn’t race anymore. Bob agreed Book should have stopped the race and asked me if $25 would cover the cost. I was making $1.50 per hour and so it was half a weeks pay. We gladly took the money (equal to a featrue win) and came back the next week with another car.

    My dad helped a lot to get this V.W. ready to go back racing. We basically stripped the interior and dad welded in the cage. He bent the bars by heating with a torch and using whatever we had to pry bend the uprights. He gusseted every corner. We used the original seat. I had a trailer at the time and we used it to get back adn forth from the races. The trailer only lasted half the season, it was so bad. One time Nonie and I were coming back from Cayuga and we stopped into the ice cream restaurant just east of Haggersville. When we were leaving the car came off the trailer and stayed in the parking lot. That was lucky for us that it didn’t come off on highway 6. After that we started using the safer method, the tow bar…safer??.what!!!

    Near the end of the season we stared going to Acton. Cayuga was closed and it was fun to race there. The back straight was up hill and the front chute was down hill. I won this heat race at Acton as we were pretty excited because we ran good here.

    We ran well at Acton. Actually we ran good or bad. After winning this heat, our 2nd in 2 weeks we were very confident. This was my first ever Dead Heat and have yet to do it agian. Notice the parking lights on my fenders. They were legal. Later in the Hobby’s I would run imitation headlights and they were not legal. Brian Hill stands between us and I was very happy after this tie victory. That would all go away by the feature…see next picture.

    Don Roth helped me quite a bit, he was German like my car, but was a very good mechanic and friend. Dad was at every race and had some work to do after this wreck. We came back the next week and rolled over again in the heat. It was the first time someone rolled over 2 races in a row. The feature and then the heat the following week. This would be it for 69′ and we had fun. Time to rebuild. Our garage however was closed from November until April…it was Nonie’s dad’s back yard.