The Eldora Voyage(s)

Finally have time to get another story about Doll Brother Racing on paper and on the internet.  My goal has been to keep the inserts in a chronological order but I am going to veer off the beaten path for this one.

I looked out early this morning to a cold, crisp, star lite morning and could not help but remember the many trips to Rossburg Ohio in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s.  We started traveling to Eldora usually in early March when Earl Baltes would do his best to get started as early in the month as possible.  All of the trips were with Bobby Boyles driving the car (#80) and usually doing quite well.  You must consider that the highway (Route 50) to Ohio was still on the old two lane road bed and then in Ohio you had to make the best of time on the highways going through all of the small towns to cross 99% of the State of Ohio.

On one particular Sunday morning Marshall was driving the 1946 Ford car hauler as we were on the I-270 bypass in Columbus.  I was riding on the right seat and it was sunrise; I remember watching the sun come up in the mirror when I saw an Ohio Highway Patrol car with it’s lights on coming up behind us.  Marshall pulled onto the side of the road and waited for the office to come to his window.  The officer walked around d the truck in an effort, I guess, to find something wrong so he could write a ticket.  After about 15 minutes he asked Marshall if the State of West Virginia permitted only one windshield wiper.  Marshall said, “sir when this truck was new they only had one wiper”, the office asked him what year the truck was; Marshall told him 1946, the office basically told us to get on down the highway.  I guess he felt that anyone that far away from home in a 1946 Ford cattle truck needed more luck than he could offer.

I believe that was 1971 and besides the old truck, which had been rebuilt from the ground up the previous winter, we had built a 1964 Chevelle with a fairly stock 396cu.in engine as well as a non-quick change rear end.  The car probably weighed close to 3,800# and looked pretty crude in comparison  to the cars that were there that day.  Bud had constructed exhaust pipes that were constructed out of 4” tube with big bells that came out right behind each door; made a huge noise when accelerated and usually put out a lot of fire when lifting in the corners.

The particular race was a 100 lap invitational and cars from all over the mid-west were there, some of the cars had been racing down south after speed weeks and had just got back up north in time for this race.

Now Bob Boyles was never accused of being afraid of going hard and he really liked Rosburg.  We started about mid pack but by the end of the day he finished second so not too bad of a showing for a totally under-funded operation running against some of the best DLM cars in mid-America.  I remember walking up to the payoff window with Bud and pretty much all of the owners/drivers were there getting paid; n ow you all know Bud and the rest of us never had uniforms so they didn’t know who he was when he asked to be paid.  When the guy in the payoff booth asked what place he finished Bud said “second” he got a lot of looks.  One of the drivers, I believe it was Gene Pedro, commented about the HUGE engine that had to be in the car Bud told him it was a 396 I thought it was going to get ugly but after a few minutes of various comments from several of the guys there Bud calmly told him that if you lay a $100.00 bill on the hood of the car he would  tear it down so they could see; there were no takers.  I never will forget that trip, the race or the conversation at the payoff window.