We started the 1963 racing season in March at Green Valley Raceway, in Fort Worth. Bill had his first DNF in the Sprite. He had a broken rotor cap that sidelined him. Shucks!
It wasn’t a weekend without excitement, however. Our friends, Ronnie and Roberta Rone were at the race, also. Roberta and I would watch the races from the stands for awhile and then go down to the hair pin turn, which was the last turn, and watch from there.
We took Mother’s car and drove about a half mile to find a good spot. There were about four dips, probably for drainage, and I drove very carefully down and back up each one.
We were watching one of Ronnie’s races when we saw a cloud of dust where his car should be. The yellow flag went out and an ambulance went onto the track. Needless to say, Roberta was stressed big time! We jumped back in the car and took off for the pits. Later, neither of us could remember any of the dips. We must have been airborne.
We got back to the pits just as the ambulance arrived. Ronnie had flipped his car and put his arm up to keep the ground from hurting his race car. Dah! Not a good idea. We took him to a hospital where they set his broken arm.
He was still in a world of hurt the next day, so Roberta and I drove the Dodge, towing the Sprite, back to Lubbock. Ronnie lay in the back and moaned and groaned all the way. Bill drove their car and towed their wrecked race car back. Ronnie was about 6’5” and wouldn’t fit in the back of their car. That’s why we used the Dodge as a make shift medical vehicle on the way home.
What a weekend!
Bill’s sixth race was back at Fort Sumner, New Mexico. Because of the remoteness of the track and the fact that many of the drivers were single guys, Carolyn and I decided to poll the group to see how many of them would buy lunch from us. We took all the makings for ham and cheese sandwiches, condiments, chips, homemade cookies, and a large cooler of sodas.
Our work station was the trunk of the Dodge. I can’t remember how many lunches we served that day, or how much we charged, but we made enough money to pay for the trip, and feed the four of us.
Bill and I had purchased a slicer (kind of like an “As Seen on TV” thing). We used the slicer for the tomatoes. Peewee, who always had a comment, said we sliced the tomatoes so thin you could read a newspaper through them. In spite of that, he came back for seconds.
By the way, somewhere along the way, we got rid of the slicer. Over the years, we have both wished we still had it. It was a great little gadget and I think we paid a dollar for it.
Denise McCluggage raced at Fort Sumner, also, that weekend. She had raced at big tracks like Sebring, but she drove at small places, too. She also wrote article on racing for newspapers and magazines. I can’t remember much about her except that she had a white helmet with dots on it. Peewee, in his usual fashion, called her Dirty Knees instead of Denise.
The race was fun that weekend. Bill was a very good driver and won both his Saturday and Sunday races. He liked to experiment to see which lane on the track was the fastest. In the process, he siked Zan out. Zan thought he was as good a driver as Bill, but he wasn’t. On every lap, Bill would be ahead on the last corner, but would let Zan pass him at the finish line. When it was time for the last lap, I would signal Bill from the sideline and he would race across the finish line with Zan in second place, never knowing how Bill had set him up.
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