Lakehead Stock Car Club Tidbits from the Past!!

It's nice, mid winter to go back through the old stock car photos and ponder upon some of the crazy goings on that took place during the Lakehead Stock Car Club days, back at the old Canadian Lakehead Exhibition race track......this one caught my eye, talking about kids, and adults too cheap to spend two bits to come and sit in the grandstand and view the races how they were supposed to be viewed. Click on the clipping and the photos to enlarge them. Lets go back to 1954.

Here is the clipping and here is Jim Manduca in the ditch going into corner three. Now look close at the third picture cut out of the middle one...you can see these kids in the trees(you can hardly make them out) trying to get a glimpse of their favourite driver, and in this case lucky to be alive as Jim almost clobbered the tree and knocked the kids clean out!!! HEY...I think that's me in the middle!!

Here is the picture and the close up just above Barry Kettering's famed #47 of a threesome just waiting to be hit. Another thing spectators did was to park their trucks as close as they could to the board fence of the track and stand on the box or roof. They must have forgotten that some stock car jockeys would actually take out about 100 feet of fence on occasion.

Here is another one showing all the cheap skates on the other side of the fence and on the far right of the first picture, they are actually standing on the roof of the house across Northern Ave. I wouldn't take a chance falling off my house to save a quarter!!! Would you?

This one shows American driver Jerry Richert's car and sure enough, a ton of folks looking through an opening in the fence already created by an out of control stock jock....yet they still stand there.
Next...Stock Car Club in "HOLE"?

Here is a typical write up regarding our city council and the Lakehead Stock Car Club back in 1963 arguing about Sunday racing. Reading these two articles reminds me of some of the stuff in today's newspaper....you know....wasting time about petty stuff instead of getting something important done!! Its a good read and a good laugh.
Next - High Flyers!

The photographers who took these two photos were either incredible or just lucky to have shown flying tires in both photos. The first one is an unknown driver tossing his tire while negotiating the #1 turn, also known as the barn turn at the CLE track. These barns would be located just to the south side of the present day Golf Dome at the CLE. The second photo is of Murray Simmons, just ejecting his tire as well. See how high they travelled....it's a miracle that no one was ever struck by one that I remember. The other notable thing is that if you look close there are big holes in both wheels which tells me that the whole center of the wheel came out on both occasions. Finally take note in the Simmons photo of the Coliseum building that still stands today in relation to the track.
Finally - Puffs :-)

Here is a very cool clipping and group photo of the Powder Puff Racing Girls of the Lakehead Stock Car Club. This was one of the popular race events that took place back in the early 1950's. These photos were taken in 1953. The guys that loaned their cars to these girls were chewing down on their finger nails until the race was over, as they still needed their own cars to compete for the rest of the day. The last photo is how the pictures appeared in the 1953 LSCC program.
Thanks for looking.....hope you enjoyed this one... Dave
Click on all photos to enlarge!