Jimmies First Time. Back in the early and mid 1970's "ole Jimmie" (who's also known as the OLDSPRINTER) being the young wild dude he was, owned a race car or two. Sprint cars were the car of choice. I always loved those sprint cars the best. Never did race one of them things, never wanted to! I warmed up a few, but the expenses for underwear went out of site...so had to cut that out. I just had a real "love affair" with sprint cars.
Jimmie and some friends (the Casto boys) went up to Morgantown, WV to check out a sprint car that was "for sale". The car, as I look back now, was a piece that would be valuable property if it were still here today. Unfortunately, it's no longer "alive". Gone to that big scrap yard in the sky! I believe it had won at Williamsgrove, Pa. in it's early life, in fact it had won an early "National" at the Grove with a guy named Henry Jacoby driving it. The car, which I had seen race a few years earlier locally was a great looking car and belonged to Freddie Johnson. Freddie(what a special guy Freddie Johnson was) had been a top area racer for years, but, had crashed this car at the Morgantown, WV track a couple years before and as a result of his injuries received in that crash had "retired" from racing. He had now decided to sell the car. Well, once I saw the car, that had been completely rebuilt, and even though it was now several years old, I had to have it. I was now playing the role of a sprint car owner. What a feeling! Now, what do I do now?
I spent the winter "converting" the car to my specs. (like I knew what I was doing). I did learn a lot that winter about taking one apart and putting it back together again. I also learned how cold it can get in an unheated one stall barn in the winter time. But, I stuck with the project and finished up in late May or early June what I had started.
The** first night I ever took a car to the track to race (Atomic Speedway in Alma, Ohio) was a night I'll never forget.
**I had taken the car to Ohio Valley Speedway in Parkersburg, WV a track running a "stock car" program in those days, a week or so earlier to see if it would even run..I had friend Cotton Sayre jump in and run a few laps during a break in the action, to see what it would do. The fuel system was plugged up, so I worked all of the next week on that problem.
I worked a lot of hours at my job, more than I liked to work and didn't have a lot of spare time in those days. I wanted to go racing! So, I got a friend from school named Mike Young (he raced sprints at our local tracks and Atomic from time to time with his own cars for a few years) to come down on Saturday morning and he worked all day on the car getting it ready.
We got it loaded and ready to go. Mike would head home and get himself ready while I would head to the track with the "beast". Nearly always it was a one man trip to the track for me. It seemed like a hundred miles (it was) to Atomic over some not so modern pre-interstate roads. Some of those nights coming home at 3 and 4 am it got pretty lonely out there!
I got to the track and met up with Mike, unloaded and did all the things we had to do. To be honest, I can't remember how we did that night. I remember we still had "fuel problems". Lot's of people jumped in to help. We made it through the night in one piece.
But.....the night turned tragic for all Atomic racers and fans. You see, the date was July 28, 1973. Atomic fans lost one of their favorite racers that night between the 1st and 2nd turns of the speedway when Sam Erwin lost his life when his sprint car flipped.
Over the several years to follow of towing a race car back and forth to Atomic that first night was one of my longest one hundred mile trips back home from Atomic, that is of course with the exception of the night I ran out of gas on the way home (gas shortage days) and that's a whole different story. But, that was Jimmies "first time".