E-leben-d-eleben

 I had very little to do with my  Dad (The OM) until about 1962. 

He had always been a somewhat menacing figure in the background enforcing the family discipline.  My Mom would say, if we kids were being particularly awkward, you just wait until your father gets home!  That usually did the trick.  I often helped him on the milk round, but I looked upon it as simply a chore, maybe the OM thought it was “team-building”?  Once he hurt his back so badly that I had to more or less do the milk round as all he could do was drive the truck and make notes in his log book.  

That unfortunate tendency for bad backs has descended the generations.  I’ve got it and so has my number two son.

He was, in truth, not much of a businessman.  He would let people have milk who had little prospect of being able to pay for it.  Maybe he was a secret philanthropist, but I suspect not.  People who owed him money might “skip town” or just disappear, or they might do a deal - a kind of modern barter system.  On one such deal he acquired a go-cart.

He brought it home in the back of the milk truck and got me to help unload it.

I had developed an appreciation of motor racing. As a teenager I liked to go to the stock car racing. My buddy Bobby Lawless’ dad owned the local Phillips 66 service station and Bobby raced quarter midgets.  I used to hang out with him and I learned a lot about general automotive things from watching and helping him.

(Quarter midget racing is a form of automobile racing. The cars are approximately one-quarter (1/4) the size of a full-size midget car. The adult-size midget being raced during the start of quarter midget racing used an oval track of one-fifth of a mile in length. The child's quarter midget track is one quarter that length, or 1/20 mile (264 feet).

An adult-size midget in the 1940s and 1980s could reach 120 miles per hour, while the single-cylinder 7-cubic-inch quarter midget engine could make available a speed of 30 miles per hour in a rookie class (called novices), or one-quarter the speed of the adult car. Most of the competitive classes run speeds near 45 miles per hour. Current upper-class quarter midgets can exceed 45 miles per hour, but remain safe due to the limited size of the track.  Quarter midget race cars have four-wheel suspension, unlike go-karts.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go-kart

Go-karts were in their infancy in the sixties.  But, the idea of racing one was definitely an idea I could get on-board with.  And, for once, the OM seemed almost inhumanly positive in his enthusiasm for the project.  Once unloaded from the milk truck and with me in the driver’s seat we gave it a shove down Berry Lane, which had a conveniently steep hill. It fired up and I was well and truly hooked! And, more importantly, so was the OM.

His sudden zeal was not entirely without its difficulties.  It soon became apparent that in order to race a lot of information and knowledge had to be obtained, sometimes from sources not altogether legit. 

(Remember there was no internet or Google in those days)

Some research led the OM to understand that the go-cart he had taken in lieu of payment was not really up to scratch for racing.  The engines needed to be upgraded, so he purchased two Mcculloch two-stroke engines almost brand new. These little two-stokers were originally designed to power chainsaws but cubic inch for cubic inch they packed a punch and could rev forever. He stored them in the garage in full view  and somebody stole them.  OM was not very happy.  He was convinced some disreputable friends of my sister, Ruthanne, were the perpetrators.  In any event, he was sure with a little effort he could find the engines, and somehow he did.  

A guy named Bob Osterberger advertised two engines for sale and I went with OM to see if they were our engines.  They were and Bob admitted that he bought them from some kid.  Turns out he was a nice guy and he and the OM became buddies.  

This is significant.  As a rule,The OM did not have buddies.  We sometimes played golf with his boss at Meyer’s Dairy.  Pat Clune was his name.  A guy named John Crockett, who worked at Myers Dairy, (I am not making this up - heck his first name may even have been Davy!)  took us hunting for squirrels down in South Missouri a few times. He knew the neighbours and would be pleasant to them, but that was it.  He wouldn’t invite them in for a cup of coffee, that’s for sure.  Sometimes this puzzled me.  In the end, I decided that his lack of close friends was probably the result of growing up during the depression; he graduated from Blue Island High School in 1933. And he took after his dad, my grandpa, and a less out-going and un-personable soul, you would be hard pressed to find this side of Timbuktu.

Most of the racing in those days was on dirt tracks way out in the boonies.  There were tracks at Odessa, Mo, Higginsville, Mo and Excelsior Springs, Mo.  These I remember well.

They are not next door to Independence, so me and the OM would race around the milk round, rush home, sling the cart into the car and rush to the track.

The OM soon discovered that whilst he had the interest in racing he had not much talent.  He was too big (heavy) and seldom finished in the money. In the early days we had two West Bend engines and only one cart, so he would fire up both and race, then remove the chain from one and I would race with the single engine.  I won a lot of races.  Om had crash helmet and his number was E-leben-d-eleben (11 d' 11). My helmet was red with 17 on it.

I won a lot more races, after he had a special cart made for me:  he improved its performance by investing in a Power Products engine that was highly sought after and highly tuneable. Some guy on South Kiger made the cart and it weighed almost nothing.  A skinny kid didn’t add much weight either.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1qXmp989vM

The formula for a race was simple.  There were heats and depending on how you finished you earned a spot on the start line for the final. Except for practice times deciding the grid order, it’s not that much different in F1 today.

I started on the pole almost every time.  The starts were rolling starts so when the flag dropped I was almost always first to the first corner.  There was no real way to catch me. Races were 10 - or 15 laps and because I was so far in front the only danger I encountered was going so fast that I caught up with the back markers.  Even this was not too much of a problem as the engine’s air intake was rear facing so that you did not get dirt or stones or heaven knows what in the engine.  

For fuel we used:

Alcohols like methyl alcohol (methanol) and ethyl alcohol (ethanol) are often used in race fuels. Sometimes they are a small part of the fuel and sometimes they are a primary component of the fuel. Methanol is commonly used “straight” – that's why it's called racing alcohol by many.

There was also something called Moon gas, which, as I remember, was  a really high octane mixture with some additives.  Engines were mostly modified by increasing the compression (bolt on a new aluminium head to increase the compression and increase the bang and upgrade the carburetor to provide more fuel ((https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dell%27Orto)) and away you go like a bath out of hell).

Or sometimes we used : nitrous oxide (often referred to as just "nitrous") allows the engine to burn more fuel by providing more oxygen during combustion. The increase in oxygen allows for an increase in the injection of fuel, allowing the engine to produce more engine power.

I dreamed of kart racing in my sleep and can now still recall the smell of the screaming engines and the oily cans so we could add just enough to make a 2 stroke run quite lean and very fast.  The trick was on the warm-up lap you leaned back and adjusted the carburettor jet on the fly, so when the flag went down the little 50 cc engines were turning at about 13 000 rpm sending the lightweight cart (with me on board) hurtling to the first corner at about 60 m.p.h.  

Now this may not seem very fast, but when you are sitting only two inches from the ground, it’s akin to flying!

Most of the tracks were small ovals so that getting first to the first corner meant that nobody was going to catch me.

Only later did we get asphalt tracks in Odessa and Excelsior Springs.  They were laid out more like a grand prix circuit with straightaways, where you might reach 90 m.p.h. and sharp hairpin corners to negotiate.  

The winner usually had a choice of taking money (only say $5 or $10) or a trophy.  I mostly took the money. Still I did collect enough trophies to make a reasonable display.  They were displayed proudly on a home-made bookcase on S. Lynn in Independence when we lived there in the 70’s

When I moved to England, I stored them in my buddies basement, but after he moved to a new house they kind of disappeared.

I sure wish I had kept one or two to take to Europe with me.