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Welcome to my web site, here you be able to see great Midgets from the past. I also will be adding a lot more information.
This site will turn into a place that will be used for all things Vintage Midgets, WEB sites, advertizing, "how to" for restoring that car of yours, so check back often.
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Back-Yard Racing.... Where It All Began...
This WEB site is dedicated to the Gentlemen and Ladies whom for over the past 50 years have spent their lives racing from what I call the Back-Yard, not the Brick-Yard, although many people from that era went onto that famous place. We are talking west coast open wheel midget racing, We are talking lead foot racing. Thinking back and seeing this kind of racing, it scares the hell out of most racers today, no roll cage, no seat belts at the start, came a little later, wheels that were thinner than my moms spaghetti. They used to race around here seven nights a week. This is the early days of BCRA, Bay Cities Racing Association, see favorites. Midget Racing on a budget that could hardly buy dinner for two today. Some say its proportional by today's standards, I say, no way, you can't find midget parts in the wrecking yards today, no one takes a piece of aluminum and hammers out and rolls a body shell to be used on the midgets of today. Don't get me wrong, after almost forty five years of watching midget racing, its just as exciting now, its still good'ol grass roots back-yard racing. The dedication to this form of racing by many today has not swayed, many have tried to race, the cost today just being too great to compete but they still support this crazy form of racing. It has, for many, been the very foundation of their family's. They came from the body shops, machine shops, auto repair shops, auto parts dealers, auto dealerships, from trucking business, farms and shipyards, today as they did in the past, many starting their businesses in the 40's and 50's or earlier. I see the faces of many from my childhood still standing on that fence in the pits or in the stands, many nowadays rolling out that midget that raced so many years ago and are now called vintage. I have one of those vintage racers in my garage, the number 16 car in the picture. Its a 1965 Edmunds that raced around the midwest for many years, won the Belleville Vintage Nationals twice in the 90's. The other midget, car #4, is owned by my brother and with a history that gos back 30 years, just around the corner it seems. My Dad was such a gentlemen and this is his story along with many others who had had move onto greater fame. This story starts back in the great racing decade of the 40's. This at the time was called Post War racing years when so many veterans were returning from the hell of World War II. My father never went to war inasmuch that he never left this country to go "Over There", but instead, due to a already large family went to war at the shipyards of Todd's in Oakland California. Here is where he not only learned to build liberty ships for Henry Kaiser but learned a craft that would last him the rest of his life and pass onto his three sons. He was not an educated man, self-educated lets say, worthy of a college degree today, he did not finish high school but had to quit early to help support his brothers and sisters numbering seven without a father... One main goal for his mother was to send his older brother to college and this is what he helped do. My uncle never forgot that and they spent the rest of lives helping one another. My father was a proud man, very stubborn in his view of the world around him and what he wanted for his wife and kids, single-minded when it came to making the best out of life no mater what came his way. I cannot tell this story fully without including my oldest brother because he is the oldest of us kids and grew up racing with Dad. He holds the legacy fully in his heart and hands. I am one of those sons, the youngest of seven children and the youngest of three sons. This is where back-yard racing came from all across America!
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