the BIG ONE
The Big One. No, this is not a story about Earl and his famous Eldora. This is my "big one".
Back in 1975 the Southeastern Ohio Super Sprints (SOSS) were running at the Skyline Speedway in Stewart, Ohio. It was a Sunday evening show and believe it or not things were going fairly good for the SOSS organization at the track. This SOSS club was made up of owners and drivers who had gone together to get the open wheelers back to an area track on a regular basis. That story will be coming here soon.
One of the "big" things the club had done was have a "live" radio broadcast from the track each Sunday. In this area that was probably "the" first time anything like that had been tried to help promote a race track.
The radio station which was carrying the live broadcast, was a 24 hour a day station, but around dark each evening the station tended to "fade" away in the farther away locations. And, this oldsprinters home base at this time was about 50 or so miles away from Skyline (by the way the crow flys).
The oldsprinters parents, who were big racing fans, were getting older and couldn't make it to the race track some of these Sundays evenings, so they listened to the races on the "live" radio broadcast on these occasions. Well, this one evening on June 29, 1975 they couldn't make it out to the track and as they listened to the live broadcast over WKYG radio, during one of the sprint car heat races a "big" crash between Bobby Oney in the Red Broyles #56 and Bob Carico driving my #2 car happened and would you believe it happened just as the radio broadcast faded away into the darkness. Well....needless to say...they were all excited. They couldn't hear what exactly had happened, they just heard enough to know old #2 was in trouble. They were afraid this was the "big one".
Both cars ended up over the guard rail, in spectactular fashion, in front of the crowd for all to see. No drivers injuries were reported, but a couple car owners almost sufferred heart attacks (or the "big one") right then and there. My "baby" had been hurt. It's frame rails had been broken in half. Oh no, what will I ever do. I had this empty feeling inside me. Could it be repaired? Or, would I have to bring out one of my many backup cars? No, not in this early day. An arsenal of cars I didn't have. This was the only one.
Well...you know...after a week over at the Pete Smith racing hospital, old #2 had everything pieced back together. I worked hard that week making all the pieces (that's the way you do it in this hospital) while Pete welded them on. In fact, old #2 was better than new. Pete Smith, who would be classified as one of those car owner "characters" I spoke of in another story, is a guy who's been in the racing business for more than a little while. In fact, Pete still maintains a sprint car today that races mostly at KC Raceway with an adventure to other tracks once in awhile. Ronnie Myers wheels Pete's sprint cars mostly nowdays. Pete's a real craftsman and I would call him an expert "tinkerler". You know what a "tinkerler" is, don't you?....he tinkers a lot.
And, the next week down at Atomic, the old #2 performed well and had a runner up finish in the feature. My baby was all fixed and well, thanks to Mr. Smith and his expert craftsmanship.
But.....to continue on with the rest of the story....needless to say upon my return back to the old homestead...on the night of the crash....there were 2 people waiting up to find out how the radio broadcast had ended. They informed me that these radio broadcasts shouldn't be allowed at any race track, it's just too frightening. That's when they started watching more TV on Sunday evenings.