A Very Lucky Young Man in the 1950's.....

This lucky young fellow had his picture taken with the fast and famous of the day.  Who is he?  These wonderful pictures of a young man by the name of Orrin Maki were taken in the mid 1950's at the Canadian Lakehead Exhibition race track in Fort William Ontario.
All my friends and I who frequented the famed CLE race track, which today would have encircled the Golf Dome at the fairgrounds would have given our right arms to have their photos taken beside these guys.

Here is Orrin standing next to the famed '32 Ford 5W Coupe #47 "Buds Thing", driven by Barry Kettering, and also standing next to Barry himself. 
These photos were taken in the mid 1950's

On the left Orrin is held in the air by Martin Autio.

On the right he is posing with Ross "Pappy" Fowler.

If you do a search on the top left corner of this blog page you can read about each of these drivers in more detail.
Be sure to click on all photos for enlargements!

On the left, we have Orrin with Wally Prokosh.  Wally drove many cars at the CLE but he is most known for his #54 Abitibi Car.

On the right Johnny Zatti puts his racing helmet on Orrin, bringing huge smiles to both their faces.

Here is Orrin with a very young looking Tom Dow, with a few jealous kids looking on.

On the right is Orrin on the left and an unknown young man on the right beside Tom Dow's beautiful '32 Ford 3-window coupe #2 stock car.

This is how the track looked in the mid 1950's and where Orrin had all those photos taken.  Today you would be staring directly at the Golf Dome.

A couple of shots of the track in relation to the surrounding area circa mid 1950's at Fair time.

Orrin would have been close to my age had he not passed away back in 2008.  His father Bill passed away at a young age as well back in 1980 but luckily these photos survived.  Orrin did have his hand at racing as I did, but the reason these photos were taken was because his father Bill Maki was on none other than Barry Kettering's pit crew at the time.
A big thank you to Russ Wanzuk for the use of the pictures of Orrin and the big boys.