29 replies to this topic

[tonyp]

Alan ran for Camen so I am sure he had access to everything Joel did, he just liked to wind arms and build motors.

[Tex]

A while back, while hunting up some old slot car pictures, I also came across these ribbons. I found around 40 or so; these 4 are representative of the lot. The one picture shows 4 ribbons in chronological order from left to right. The 2nd ribbon from the left has the oldest date on it, April of 1969. The ribbon on the far left pre-dates it, however, due to the track it is from... Bellaire Family Hobby Center; they only had "Wildcat" races when over at their location in Bellaire proper, and I know that had to be maybe '66 when I couldn't have started going to Houston Model Car Speedways(generically referred to as "Buffalo Speedway", the street it was on) until late '68 at the earliest. The 3rd from the left is from Broadway Hobbies when Lloyd Drewes was running the place. The last one on the right is dated 1971; Tom Ugron had an Orange American out in Pasadena.

The other picture just shows the back of that oldest-dated ribbon. I just realized that the date on the back is April 15th, my late brother's birthday.

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[Ron Hershman]

It's always cool to find "old treasures" like that.

[John Stezelecki]

The Houston Speedway ribbon, was that raceway the the Purple Mile was raced on?

[Tex]

No. The ribbon on the far left, from "Bellaire Family Hobby Center", represents that track. When in it's initial location in Bellaire(totally surrounded by Houston), it was setup as one of those "turnkey" American Raceway franchise-type places. I'm pretty sure I was there a number of times in '66/'67. They had multiple American tracks setup in a fully-carpeted facility. Snack area with tables and chairs. Very neat and clean facility. I can remember the Purple, Red, Orange and Yellow tracks... not sure if they had a 5th track. I wasn't racing competitively yet, running the manufactured stuff at the time... Cox, Dynamic, etc. The track would hold "Wildcat Races" about every hour, announcing it over the PA about 5 minutes before it was to take place. If you wanted to race in it and weren't currently on that track(or time about to expire!), you had to run over to the counter and try to buy time on that track so you could be there to race. When I was there, Lee and Dottie Davidson were running the place; I may have read that Lee and Dottie weren't the original owners. Later, they moved out of that facility and into a much smaller place in what I guess was an early strip center(but large!) called Windsor Plaza. Next door to a pool hall. Oh yeah! I was 15-yrs. old, Summer of '68 probably; hangin' out all day/night at the slot track and pool hall. Good times. It was at this location I began racing competitively and possibly began my first scratchbuilding. Within a year, I was racing there, Broadway Hobbies and Foster's/"Buffalo Speedway" and definitely scratchbuilding. The Purple Mile was initially put in storage when they moved to Windsor Plaza. They eventually decided to put it up and I took part in the over-nighter that got it out of storage and setup.