Dis is My Ride!!!

To burntorange70, 74Dart318, swedefish, fishbreath and the rest of you, thanks for the kind words. I loved ramcharger's story. He told it like we were all sitting in a room together as friends. I hope more of you will tell of your experiences, even if you have to down a 6-pack to get into the mood!
Racing is all about the personalities as much as the cars. We have held guys like Ronnie Sox as "gods" but Ronnie never saw himself like that. Jake knew he was good but never bragged or put anyone down. His way of dealing with success at the races was smiling and saying, "everything went as it should, according to plan and we didn't break or crash. Now let's get ready for the next one." Buddy was the manager and the very backbone of the Sox & Martin operation. There would never have been a S&M operation at all without him. He was the consumated business man. He did all the phone calls and the race schedules which, alone, were enough to do. Buddy also managed the shop where they worked on the team cars and built hemi cars for customers. Buddy ordered all the parts and maintained inventory. He managed the money to keep the business healthy and to minimize taxes and he managed the payroll. He was the laison with Chrysler in the R&D and all that went with the Mopar sponsorship. Each member of that team was an expert in their area and they didn't fight with each other. Buddy had more worries always than Ronnie or Jake or Dave Christie.
I never really got to know Buddy. Yeah, he kind of treated me like a cold turd in a swimming pool that day but I never held it against him. He just didn't like the idea of Ronnie going out and driving other peoples cars when they were there to win a race and take home some serious money. They made LOTS of money match racing - it really was their bread and butter.
I had a little excursion into motorcycles too. My S/G Corvette was being built at a place in St. Petersburg, FL called Competition Products. It was owned by Danny Childs, a mechanical genius. He had a smart and talented young man working for him named Mike Moench. A guy named Dick Wade was having a similar S/G Vette built and he was the General Manager of Terminal Van Lines. The owner of Terminal was a man named Mike Gray and he took an interest in what we were doing. He got the drag racing bug but he wanted something very different....he wanted to build the world's fastest TF motorcycle based on a Kawasaki engine. Mike had found a fearless guy to ride it named Bo O'Brochta. I got to do some work building the fuel bike. It was really a trick piece of engineering. Danny machined the one-off billet gear case as well as all the gear. He turned the cylinder head around and mounted the blower and Hilborn injector facing the front. The zoomies exited out the back under the seat. Danny also made the adapter hub that mounted an automotive Centerline wheel and the huge slick. I owned an ad agency at the time and several related businesses and I handled the national advertising for Terminal Van Lines. Mike hired me to put a sponsorship package together and I did. I was also commissioned to put together engineering drawing using transparent film positives in a series of overlays.The first showed the bare chassis and wheels, the next overlay put in the engine and drivetrain. Another overlay added more details, etc. When the last overlay was down, it pictured the entire bike. The rest is history! That Terminal Van Lines TF Kawasaki held the national record and won everything in site. It made TF motorcycle racing what it is today and gave impetus to teams like Vance & Hines and others to make it the category it is today. This motorcycle is in the Don Garlits museum today. As soon as you leave the gift shop and enter the museum area, it is at the immediate left in a real nice display.
Mike Gray was a golfing buddy with Evel Knevel. At the end of the day when we could leave work, we would would all head to Danny's shop and check out the progress on our toys. Sometimes Mike would come in with Evel and we would BS and drink Michelobs well into the night. Evel was really a great guy and fun to be around. He was just one of the guys, very down to earth. For a guy that had no right to be alive or even walking, he got around really well too. I was too busy with my business interests to go to many of the big races with the guys. I went to Sunshine and Bradenton for the testing runs and the Gatornationals. When my Corvette was finished, all my focus was on that. The only other event I had with motorcycles was on my brother John's 1000 Kawasaki. When he hit that throttle and wheelie, I almost slid off the back of it - I held on with fingers in his belt loops and he had no idea that I was hanging out there like a flag! Never armour all a back seat on a motorcycle!!!!
Pat