Critical Mass - Blind Man's Bluff = SPLIT THREAD

[bluffman]

Re: Critical Mass - Blind Man's Bluff = SPLIT THREAD

After leaving the track, I went to the Holiday Inn near the track where I had a room, and cleaned up to go to the restaurant for dinner. I was alone, and the only table available would seat four, but the hostess put me there anyway, even though the place was very crowded. After I had finished my dinner, I sat there for quite a while, thinking about how to get Brayton up to speed, and writing some things on a notepad. The hostess came over and asked me if I could please leave the table and go into the bar because there were several people waiting for a table. The bar was jam packed, so I just wandered around, killing time, because I didn’t want to go to my room since it was pretty early, and I wanted to park somewhere and have a beer. I soon discovered why the place was packed. Not only were there a lot of racers there, they also had a live band playing, so there were a lot of “locals” who had came for music and dancing. I looked around for quite a while, then spotted a table for four with only one person sitting there. It was a lady about my age, and I wheeled over, and asked if I could sit there and have a beer. She informed me that she was holding the table for some friends, but I could sit there until they arrived. I ordered a beer, and I felt kind of uncomfortable, so I asked her for her name, and she said it was Sandy, then I told her my name. She asked if I was one of those damned racers that were jamming the place, leaving no room for the local people to enjoy the band and dance. I laughed, and said that yes I was one of those people. She was not a race fan at all, and said that she had never been to any kind of race, then asked me what all of that was about anyway. I jokingly told her that we were like a traveling circus or carnival that traveled around the country putting on shows. She detected my humor, and lightened up some, then the conversation was not so strained. She said that she hadn’t meant to be rude, but she was upset about just going through an ugly divorce. We began chatting about things, I asked her where she was from, and she said that she was born in Indiana, but her family had moved to California many years ago. I told her that I was from Indiana also, and that led to one thing and another. She asked me if I was married and had children, and I told her that yes I was married and had four children, but my wife and I were separated, and not getting along. Shortly, her friends showed up, a lady and two men. She told me that I didn’t have to leave the table, they would make room for me. As the band played on, Sandy got up and danced a couple of times, but after each dance she would sit down and talk to me, and ignore the guy she had danced with. I asked her if she would like to go to the track the next day to see what all of the excitement was about, and if so I could get her a pass. I explained how to go to the pit gate and have me paged if she was interested. It was getting late, and I excused myself, thanking her for letting me join her at the table. I went to my room, and went to bed to get some sleep, wondering if she would show up at the track.

I got to the speedway early in the morning to look the car over, and try to figure out what to do to get Lee up to speed. The track didn’t open for practice until ten o’clock, so I had some time to kill, Brayton came, and we talked things over, and decided he would take the car out as is, and try to get an idea what it or he was doing wrong. About that time I got a page to go to the pit gate, and I thought, now what? I headed for the gate not knowing what to expect, but when I got there, I spotted Sandy standing there. I was surprised, I didn’t really think she would take me up on my offer. I picked up a pass for her that would give her access to the garage area, the grandstands, or anywhere else she might want to go. I took her into the garage area to show her where we were parked, so that she could find me if she wanted to know anything. She went strolling off, and I went back to work on the car, getting the oil heater in and doing all the other little things that needed attention. I figured that at some point she would get bored and leave, and I would never see her again.

Larry

[BillFrancis]

Re: Critical Mass - Blind Man's Bluff = SPLIT THREAD

Larry,

This is one of the best threads ever. The first thing I do each morning is startup the computer, get online and pull up your story. Great read. Thanks for sharing.
Bill

[bluffman]

Re: Critical Mass - Blind Man's Bluff = SPLIT THREAD

The track was opening for practice, so we were pushing the race car towards the pit opening, when this gal, Sandy came walking up to us, and asked me where we were going. I explained that we were going to go out for practice. There was a walk- way above the entrance to the pits, and I told her that she could see better from up there, and it was less dangerous than in the pits, because all of the race teams would be scrambling to get their cars out for the session, so it was going to be very busy out there. We were about to send Brayton out for a few laps, and I glanced up towards the walk- way to see if she was there watching. Yep, she sure was, and gave me a wave, letting me know she was keeping an eye on us. Lee went out for a few laps, but he wasn’t running any better, still not up to speed. He came into the pits, so that I could make some changes, but I was about out of ideas, except for maybe a driver change. This was all reminiscent of our experience at Michigan, when we had put Dick Simon in the car. I am going to try to post a newspaper clipping that captures this moment in time. It is 35 years old, but I hope it is legible.

[bluffman]

Re: Critical Mass - Blind Man's Bluff = SPLIT THREAD

The clipping shows that Lee had removed his helmet, and was about to climb out of the car. I had heard an engine roar, and turned to see if it was someone coming in or going out, the car about to go by was Bentley Warren heading out for some practice. The fellow standing there was one of the crew, I think his name was Jim, and he was as confused as I was as to what to do. It is fortunate that Ron Witt, photographer got that shot, because in a very short time that #61 car was not going to look like that any more.

Brayton didn’t want to do a driver change, so he went to talk to a driver friend for some advice. The changes this guy suggested was pretty risky as far as I was concerned, too aggressive for Lee, I felt. I didn’t get involved with making this set- up change, I just sit back and let them do it, after all it was Brayton’s car, and his ass on the line. Lee went back out, and his laps weren’t any faster, but he hit the wall harder than he would have with the previous set- up. He crashed ol’ #61 real good, but luckily he wasn’t hurt. I was some kind of mad, and I headed for the garage area. Sandy came there, then me asked what had happened, and I told her I would explain it later, let’s get the hell out of here. We went to my motel room, and I packed up my stuff, and she asked what I was going to do. I said, “We’re going to your place!” I presumed that she had a “place”, although this had not come up in any of our conversations. I hardly knew this lady, and I am inviting myself to go home with her, it didn’t enter my mind that she might not agree with this. She looked a little bit stunned at my suggestion, but responded, “O.K! Off we went, to “Sandy’s place”. I would have never dreamed that this would turn out to be the best thing that ever happened to me.

Larry

[dxlyj]

Re: Critical Mass - Blind Man's Bluff = SPLIT THREAD

.. I am going to try to post a newspaper clipping that captures this moment in time. It is 35 years old, but I hope it is legible.

Larry, I'd love to see the profile in that newspaper clipping headlined "And He Does Belong!"
Dave

[GeeBeeZ1931]

Re: Critical Mass - Blind Man's Bluff = SPLIT THREAD

Larry, I'd love to see the profile in that newspaper clipping headlined "And He Does Belong!"
Dave

Yeah! A great big AMEN to that!
Bill K

[bluffman]

Re: Critical Mass - Blind Man's Bluff = SPLIT THREAD

I will try to post that profile, maybe it will work. Larry

[bluffman]

Re: Critical Mass - Blind Man's Bluff = SPLIT THREAD

That seemed to work, at least on my computer. I had to click on it twice to blow it up enough to read. I have a lot of these,and I will try to fit them into upcoming posts. Some are way too big for my scanner, half and full page newspaper stuff, but maybe I can scan them in sections, and post them that way. I tried to scan clippings before, that didn't work, but it looks like I figured out how to do it. The key was to scan them in "grayscale", I think, and send to "paint" and resize them. This got me a little off pace, but I'm glad you requested that profile, it made me think a bit, and learn how to do it. I it is late, and I'm tired, but I will get back to me and Sandy's adventures tomorrow. Your comments inspire me to continue on. Thanks!

Larry

[gp70442]

Re: Critical Mass - Blind Man's Bluff = SPLIT THREAD

Excellent stuff Larry. Please continue.

GP

[bluffman]

Re: Critical Mass - Blind Man's Bluff = SPLIT THREAD

Sandy and I locked ourselves in her apartment for three days, away from the outside world. She didn’t answer her phone, or any knocks on the door. I was “burned out” and she was not happy with the way her divorce proceeding had gone. The both of us just felt like we needed some “quiet time”. Her TV had stopped working, so I took it apart and tinkered with it and got it working, and she had a record player, providing for some entertainment. We had long talks about our situations, and that helped the two of us to kind of “get over the hump”. We just needed to forget the past, and move on. I told her that I had to go to the track and tie up some loose ends, she also felt that she should go to her mother’s house and let her know that she was alright. I left to tend to my thing, and she did the same.

My deal was taken care of very easily, but Sandy’s was a bit more complicated. When she arrived at her mother’s house, both of her sisters were there also, and they all wanted to know where in hell she had been. They were very angry, questioning her, and she noticed a newspaper laying on the kitchen table, and started laughing. Of course the remark was made, “what in hell are you laughing about”, at which time Sandy pointed to the newspaper that just happened to be turned to the page that had the photo, and profile of me and Brayton’s car. She pointed to the photo, and said, “that’s where I have been!” They all asked , “what do you mean?” Sandy simply told them that she had been with me. This really stirred up her mom and sisters, they wanted to know what this was all about. Sandy informed them that she would bring me there the following day for dinner, and then they would understand.

Sandy arrived back at the apartment before I did, and when I got there and went in I heard a song playing. It was, Roberta Flack’s, “The first time I ever saw your face.” She had timed it to start playing when I came through the door. She came over to me, and put her hands on my shoulders, and looked me right in the eyes, smiling, not saying a word until the song finished. The first thing she said to me was, “we are going to my mother’s house for dinner tomorrow.” Needless to say, I was taken aback by this, but I simply replied, “O.K.”

The next afternoon, we arrived at her mother’s house about 4:30, and I noticed that there were several cars parked in the driveway, and by the curb out front. This kind of got my attention, I began hoping that all of those vehicles weren’t there because of me. After I got out of the car and into my wheelchair, I noticed that there were three steps up to the front porch, and wondered how I was going to handle this. A husky man come out of the house, and introduced himself as Denny, the husband of Sandy’s sister Miriam, then said “I’ll pull you up the steps.” Then Sandy’s other sister Sharon came out and introduced herself, giving me “the evil eye.” We went inside, and met Mom, and then Woody, the step- father. The place was packed, husbands, kids, and I don’t know who all. The word had got out, and everybody in the family was there! Questions were coming from everywhere, some for me, and some for Sandy. It calmed down shortly, and I learned that this family were the “hugging” type, something that I was not used to. I guess they approved of me, because all the women gave me a hug, and the guys shook my hand. It became obvious to me that Sandy had, without my knowledge, contacted all of these people, and gave them a briefing. There were a lot of questions about auto racing, and how did I like the foreign countries that I had been to, and on and on. As dinner, and the evening went on, I felt very comfortable with these people. I was actually enjoying myself. At one point “Mom”, said, “you aren’t going to take my daughter off somewhere are you? I thought for a second or so, then responded, “maybe“. I could tell that she didn’t like that, but at the time I was not sure anyway. That possibility had not come up.

About two weeks later, I told Sandy that I needed to go back to Indiana to take care of some business. She got a real sad look on her face, and I could tell that she didn’t want me to leave. She tried to hold back the tears, but I noticed one trickle down her cheek, so I put my arms around her, and said, “Why don’t you go with me?” Then the tears really flowed, and she said, “I was afraid that you wouldn’t ask me to go.” She went over and put that Roberta Flack song on again, and we made arrangements for her sisters to keep an eye on her place, we loaded up, and headed for Indy. We had only known each other for a few weeks, but deep down we both knew that we were meant to be together. The following years would prove that to be the case.

This may be a bit mushy, but as my story goes on, you will understand the importance of my writing this, it is a big part of my getting to where “Blind Mans Bluff “was a possibility.

Larry

[bluffman]

Re: Critical Mass - Blind Man's Bluff = SPLIT THREAD

Sandy’s apartment was in Upland, just a short ways from the Ontario Speedway, and we jumped on the I-10 freeway to I-15 north to Barstow, where we get on I-40 eastbound. We were on our way, although I had made this trip many times, it was a first for Sandy. I always did this trip “with my head down, and ears back”, hammer down, not paying much attention to the scenery, and only stopping for gas, except for a lay-over in Tulsa at Flo”s Diner for a quick bite to eat. This was a leisurely trip though, so that Sandy could see all the sights along the way. She was a good traveling companion, and was really enjoying the trip. We decided to stay overnite in Tulsa, and pulled into a motel. I went up to the desk to get a room, and although I had never stopped here, the lady looked at me, and said, “You’re Larry Burton, aren’t you?”, much to Sandy’s surprise. I had done some ads for Valvoline, Wynns Friction Proofing, Gulf Oil, and others as well as a couple of commercials that were aired on TV. Gas stations all over the place had posters stuck in their windows with my picture on them, promoting these products and on one trip I handed out a couple of hundred Mickey Thompson T- shirts and stuff along the way. We got our room for the night, and the next morning we hit the road again. Somewhere in Missouri, Sandy spotted a sign along the road that said some kind of dinnerware was made in the town coming up, and she wanted to go there and check out their showroom. She spotted one of those “do it yourself” laundry places, and suggested that we wash our clothes while we were there. We only had the clothes that we had worn to Tulsa, and changed before we left the motel, but I figured that if that’s what she wanted, I would go along with it. She put the clothes in the washer, then we went to check out this place that made dishes or something. I didn’t see what the attraction was, but Sandy was thrilled over something, and bought a couple of dishes. We went back to this laundry place and put the clothes in the dryer, and were setting there having a coke and potato chips waiting for the things to dry. I was getting a little twitchy, not used to stopping like this when heading for Indy. There were six women there doing their laundry, and Sandy noticed that they were looking at us and sort of whispering. She asked me if I knew those women, and I looked over at them, and told her I had no idea who they were, I had never been in this town. Shortly, one of them got her courage up, and came over and said, “excuse me, but are you Larry Burton, the race car mechanic?” I thought Sandy was going to faint or something. She asked me if it was always like this, and I told her, no not always. It turned out that two of these lady’s husbands worked in gas stations, and had took some of those posters home with them for souvenirs. They asked if I would sign something for them so that they could show it to their husbands. I did this for them, and our clothes were dry, so we loaded up and got back on the road to Indy. A few miles down the road, Sandy said, “Lets not stop anywhere else, until we get to Indianapolis.” I told her that she might as well get used to this, because where we were going there was going to be a lot more people that knew me, and before long there are going to be many people that would know her also.

When we got to Indy, I drove to my brother Joe’s place to spend the night. He, and his wife Vivian lived quite a way out of town, in the country. Their house was about fifty yards or so from the road, and had a dirt driveway, no gravel or anything, just dirt. During the rainy season this got real muddy, and we all called the place “El Rancho Quagmire”. Joe liked that name, but I’m not sure Vivian did.

More about this on my next post. I think I have a photo or two to add.

Larry

[wyhdah]

Re: Critical Mass - Blind Man's Bluff = SPLIT THREAD

Your comments inspire me to continue on. Thanks!

Larry

Larry if you ever have any question about how much we are enjoying reading your story just have a look at the View count for the thread. Great stuff for us gear heads.

[Double ugly]

Re: Critical Mass - Blind Man's Bluff = SPLIT THREAD

56,495 views. WOW.
John

[bluffman]

Re: Critical Mass - Blind Man's Bluff = SPLIT THREAD

I’ll get back to Joe and “El Rancho Quagmire”, later, I’ve been looking for some photos that I need to do that story justice. I think I know where they are now, but I can’t get to them tonight. I found out that there was a sprint car race in a couple of days at Winchester, Indiana, and decided that I should take Sandy there. She would get a look at some real racing, and if this didn’t scare her off, she would be able to deal with any other type of racing that we might be involved in.

Winchester was a ½ mile high banked paved track, and was touted to be “the worlds fastest half mile speedway”. Many a driver left and went back home when they got their first look at this place, some of them “West coast hot dogs”. The track was very intimidating, the banking was awesome, and if you crashed and went over the wall, it was a long way down. I had first went there in either 1949, or 50, when my father raced there, and had been there many times since. He had won some races there in the “Roaring Roadsters”, which were the forerunners of the present sprint cars. I had been there in 1972, when my old buddy Sammy Sessions was running second in points for the USAC Sprint Car Championship. I had a chat with Sammy and his mechanic, Dave McPheareson, and Dave said that they needed a little more horsepower from their Chevy, could I could I help them? I had known Dave since my days at Grant King’s when his car owner had bought a King sprint car. I knew one quick way to get them some power, and I drew him a quick sketch of the exhaust thing the old motorcycle mechanic had told me about years ago, that I had used on the Can- Am car, and the Grant King Dirt car. I don’t know if that got them over the hump or not, but Sammy won the Championship that year. Dave is the only person, to this day, that I told how to do this, although I used this myself in later years.

When Sandy and I got to the track, I took her into the infield, over to turn three, it was the best place to watch the cars from. You could see them blasting off of the banking in turn two, roaring down the backstretch, and into turn three, then through the bumps that had been there forever, and off of turn four. Soon after I had picked the spot where I wanted Sandy to watch the action from, the track was opened for warm- ups. As the cars came by, she said something like, “ they sure go fast, don’t they?” I chuckled at this remark, and told her, “you haven’t seen anything yet!” They were only warming up at that point, then the flagman waved the green flag for “hot laps”. When the cars came by next time they were really flying, engines screaming, Sandy jumped back from the fence, scared half out of her wits. There were probably 15 to 20 cars out for that session, running in groups, passing, two abreast at times, and drifting sideways through the bumps now and then. From our vantage point, as the cars went into the banking you could almost look down into the cockpits. Even though I had been there many times over the years, it still gave me “goose bumps” watching these drivers fly around Winchester. By the time qualifying, heat races, and the main event was over, Sandy was a wreck. She had never been to a car race before, so this was a whole new experience for her. I forget how far it was from there to Indianapolis, but she was very quiet during the trip back.

Adding two photos of my dad, around 1950, both at Winchester. Note, no roll bars, shoulder harness, etc.

Larry

[MUSNTCHIT]

Re: Critical Mass - Blind Man's Bluff = SPLIT THREAD

Hey - You didn't point out you and brother Dale in the picture of the #81 car...