Motorsports Enthusiasts

Recalling Those Legends Of The Northeast
During March of this year I found a day to peruse a particular photo volume I assembled about 20 years ago. It contained 500 pictures, all in color, shot by noted New York race photographer John Grady. Cars and drivers from the 1960s and 1970s were shown at many of the dirt and asphalt tracks in the Northeast, where, of course, the Modifieds are the most popular type of racecar.

The open-wheelers were still mostly pre-war coupes and coaches, with a few Pinto, Falcon and Vega bodied machines beginning to appear as the forerunners to the new wave of modern Modified, which hit full stride by the mid-1970s. And the drivers shown were, and still are, the legends of Mod history in the Northeast.

Dirt track drivers included Will "The Tampa Terror" Cagle, Emil "Buzzie" Reutimann, "Jumping Jack" Johnson, Carl "Fuzzy" Van Horn, Lou "The Monk" Lazzaro, "The Old Man" Frankie Schneider, Al "Tas" Tasnady, and "Pistol Pete" Corey.

Among the pavement drivers were "The Rapid Roman" Richie Evans, "Charging Charlie" Jarzombek, Carl "Bugs" Stevens, "Cookie Monster" Jerry Cook, "Steady Eddie" Flemke, Don McTavish, Jim Shampine, and "Fearless Freddie" Desarro.

These were wonderful days of racing, as some cars are pictured on both dirt and paved tracks, as the teams relied on the drivers' versatility and the crews' mechanical acumen to convert the cars back and forth to suit the track surface, many times running both dirt and paved tracks in a single weekend.

As you can perceive from the list of drivers, many used nicknames, or received them from fans or writers for trade publications. Everyone enjoyed the names and we had fun with the amusing ones. Among them was"Flying Freddie" Foshay, who drove fast and hard, but flew through the air upside-down as often as he won races (and he won a lot of races); and the one-and-only Tony "Goober" Scheidel, who was a school bus mechanic by trade and had a beard that rivaled those worn by ZZ Top. He was very safety conscious and after a welding job on his racer, he would "goober" the finished weld with extra beads of steel. Tony was also a big fan of Gober Sosebee, a NASCAR pioneer with a similar name. Goober was a fixture on the Northeast dirt Modified circuit for years in his famous red No. 111 coupes.

The Passion Of A Racer
Race fans, drivers, crewmembers, car owners, promoters, etc., are all very passionate people. We feel many emotions and sometimes experience several in one night of racing. It can be a real roller-coaster ride when your favorite driver is leading a race and breaks down, crashes, or gets penalized.

The dictionary defines emotion as "a state of consciousness in which joy, sorrow, fear, or hate is experienced, accompanied by some physiological changes, including increased heartbeat, respiration, and shaking."

Racing is an extremely emotional sport and even borders on obsession for many. But no matter what our ties to motorsports, we must always control our actions and ensure our behavior is dictated by reason, not emotion.

We have all witnessed people who have "lost it" due to circumstances during an event, and most of us who have driven racecars are often tempted to "payback" another driver for something perceived as worthy of revenge. What is needed is a little restraint so that no one gets hurt. I have personally witnessed many fights, some involving weapons, and even race vehicles used as battering rams. Fans have climbed fences, car owners and pit crews have scaled starting stands, and paybacks have cost racers a lot of money. Many serious injuries have occurred because we have not tamed our emotions.