Bob Markos Historical Scrapbook
Dirt Late Model racing's first five-figure payday
By Bob Markos
Special to DirtonDirt.com
Longtime racing historian and DirtonDirt.com contributor Bob Markos digs into the 1975’s Cavalcade of Champions World Championship of Stock Cars in Michigan, the first five-figure payday preceding the modern era of Dirt Late Model racing:
The year was 1975. … Gerald Ford was president and Americans were dealing with Watergate and the conclusion of the Vietnam War. The minimum wage for workers had blossomed to a robust $2.50 an hour. | Slideshow
At the cinema, “Jaws” made us leery of trips to the beach. Olivia Newton John ruled the pop music industry and couch potatoes followed the Waltons and Columbo on their television sets. In the sporting world, the Cincinnati Reds topped the Boston Red Sox in a thrilling seven-game World Series while the Pittsburgh Steelers began their NFL dynasty by taking Super Bowl IV.
In high-profile motorsports, Benny Parsons won the battle — the Daytona 500 — but Richard Petty won the war, capturing a record sixth NASCAR Winston Cup championship while still wheeling Chrysler products. In a NASCAR footnote, Jimmie Kenneth Johnson was born Sept. 17 in El Cajon, California. At Indianapolis, Bobby Unser drank the milk for a second time in winning the brickyard’s Indy 500.
On the dirt tracks, notable venues including Volunteer Speedway in Bulls Gap, Tenn., Quincy (Ill.) Raceway, Red Cedar Speedway in Menomonie, Wis., and Tyler County in Middlebourne, W.Va., swung open their gates for the first time. Birth announcements were proudly made for future racers such as Michigan’s Jeep Van Wormer, South Carolina’s Chris Madden and Georgia’s Shane Clanton. Ray Cook was a 4-year-old toddler and Kentucky’s Steve Francis a kindergartner. Future Hall of Famer Bill Frye began his racing escapades on motorcycles.
Special dirt racing events dotted the calendar, most with modest paydays compared to 21st century standards. The National 100 at East Alabama Motor Speedway was inaugurated by promoter Jimmy Thomas in ‘75 with Georgia legend Bud Lunsford taking a prosperous $2,600 back home for his achievement. Other big events on the slate for the dirt stock car crowd were Pennsboro (W.Va.) Speedway’s Hillbilly 100, the Hall of Fame 200 at Atomic Speedway near Knoxville, Tenn., the Motordrome 200 at Motordrome Speedway in Smithton, Pa., the Fall Jamboree at Knoxville (Iowa) Raceway and the National Clay Track 200 at Santa Fe Park near Chicago, yet few paid its victor more than just a couple of grand.
Ohio promotional wizard Earl Baltes was by far still topping the charts as the only showman to put his money where his mouth was. His masterpiece World 100 at the Eldora Speedway, now in its fifth year of existence, and rapidly growing in magnitude, was paying a lucrative $8,000 to the winner. It certainly showed on race day as hordes of fans along with 168 entrants from more than a dozen states migrated to Eldora Speedway for the first World 100.
On the local scene, Michigan continued on as a hotbed for dirt stock car racing. Clarke’s Motor Speedway between Grand Rapids and Lansing opened in May for its fifth year of operation. The half-mile clay oval built and maintained by owner Steve Clarke entertained customers Friday evenings, drawing competitors from across the Great Lakes area.
During the early part of 1975 problems arose, as rainouts and short car counts put a damper on fan enthusiasm. Clarke’s annual big draw, the Art Meade 101 in June, won by home-stater Jim Nagy, didn’t go well amid intermittent rain, a muddy surface and scoring debacles.
Steve Clarke’s interest as promoter began to wane and he found himself leasing his facility to a pair of industrious entrepreneurs, Ross Haverstick and Larry Rice, both hellbent on attracting big time dirt racing back to the Lake Odessa oval. The pair pooled their resources, initially struggling at the state’s newest dirt race facility in a lightly populated area but managing to overcome their adversities.
Come autumn, “Big Block” Bob Flinn, a future Michigan Motorsports Hall of Famer, grabbed top honors for nailing down Clarke’s season championship, but Haverstick and Rice had a much more significant proposal on how to finish the season with a bang. Little did anyone realize at the time, Dirt Late Model racing history was about to be made in mammoth proportions.
Haverstick, with backing from Champion Home Builders, a Michigan-based manufacturing company, began formulating a plan for an event at Clarke’s that would stun the motorsports world.
Tabbed “The Greatest Show on Earth” the “World Dirt Championship Cavalcade of Champions,” the two-day affair to conclude September was highlighted by a 100-lapper paying an unheard of $10,000-to-win.
When advertisements were placed, word spread across the land like wildfire, catching the eye of every red-blooded dirt tracker in the nation. Anybody who was anybody in dirt stock cars made reservations for the Wolverine State date with a $20 entry fee to take a crack at earning a a cool $10,000. Not a bad proposition.
Entries poured in and the event took on a national flavor when one was received by veteran “Wild Bill” Cheesbourg of Tucson, Ariz., the 1974-75 Manzanita Speedway champion, who was planning the 2,000-mile trek to chase the pot of gold. Cheesbourg sent word along that he was bringing his undefeated big-blocked Ford Mustang and was “going to blow all them Michiganders into the weeds.”
Just that quick 1975 had turned into “a season of plenty” for the Dirt Late Model crowd. During September alone, a driver capturing the World 100 and Cavalcade had $18,000 in winning purses on the line.
At Eldora's World 100, relative unknown Joe Merryfield from Des Moines, Iowa, raced to victory, collecting $8,575 in his debut at the Earl Baltes-owned track. “Injun Joe” as he was called, in just his third year in Late Models, shocked the racing community by defeating the best mudslingers on the planet. But much of the World’s pitside chatter was aimed at Haverstick’s upcoming extravaganza as it continued to generate a ton of nationwide interest.
Putting on such an undertaking is a difficult proposition to say the least, and in just days leading up to the Cavalcade, things took a bizarre twist — almost calling an end to the milestone gathering before it ever had a chance to take to the track.
Representatives of the cooperation that owned Clarke’s Speedway, believing Haverstick’s payout would be too much of a financial risk, decided to place obstacles by breaking his lease and canceling the big production. Bound and determined to stop proceedings, they went so far as to send telegrams to entrants and the press alike saying the show had been cancelled.
Yet a motivated Haverstick refused to quit. In the 11th hour, he went to work securing permission from the Ionia County Fair Board to host his get-together. Thus the Cavalcade of Champions was moved, lock stock and barrel, one exit up Interstate 96, just 10 miles from its originally intended sight, to the big half-mile Ionia Fairgrounds.
The resilient showman, his wife Connie and his enthusiastic staff dashed from motel to motel informing early arrivals as to the change in arrangements and even stood in front of the Clarke’s Speedway gates giving directions to the event’s new destination.
Despite the hurdles, on the Saturday morning of Sept. 27, the day dawned for qualifying with a mother load of national talent, 90 racers strong, sitting pitside at the ancient Ionia Fairgrounds.
They came from all points. A crusade of tough Iowa dirtslingers crossed the Mississippi and rolled into Michigan with Hawkeye Downs and West Liberty Speedway champion Darrell Dake, Ken Walton in his trusty Howe Camaro, Dan Dickey, Emery Freitheim, Red Draille, Dick Schiltz, recent World 100 kingpin Joe Merryfield, and past World 100 winners Verlin Eaker and Ed Sanger.
Coming off a runner-up finish to Merryfield in the World, Sanger, regarded as Iowa’s premier Dirt Late Model car builder and driver, offered some interesting observations upon first glimpse of the century old fairgrounds course they were about to compete on.
“It was an old horse track,” Sanger said later, “and it had 2x4 wooden guardrail links for horses all around the inside of it. Well, we all pretty much agreed that we were gonna tear that down … and we sure the heck did!”
Others on hand to join the rich fray were Pennsylvania barnstormers Augie Sandman and Bob Wearing, who had recent captured his third consecutive Hillbilly 100; Wisconsin hotshoes Tom Steuding, the 1975 Wisconsin Late Model Series champion, past Seymour and Shawano Speedway track champ Roger Paul, along with USAC stocker M. J. McBride; Kentuckiana bad boys “Flying” Floyd Gilbert, Kentucky Dirt Track Champion “Smiling” Pat Patrick, past two-time Brownstown Speedway champ Jim Curry, Hoosier Tom Helfrich riding in with nineteen season victories, Southern Ohio Raceway champ Jim Patrick, and Bright, Ind.'s Bubby James.
The Chicagoland area was well-represented by past Kankakee Speedway king Tony “Shaggy” Izzo and perennial Rensselaer Fairgrounds champ Dick Potts of Morocco, Indiana.
To add a Southern taste, a pair of Georgians, Leon Brindle, the top dog at Cleveland (Tenn.) Speedway, and Dahlonega native Doug Kenimer, the Hartwell (Ga.) Speedway champ, were on hand hoping to grab their share of the cash. Kenimer, a headliner throughout the Southeast, made the return trip back north to try and make amends for his World 100 frustration a week earlier, when a broken tie rod while leading poisoned a sealed appointment he had with wealth and stardom.
A landslide of Michigan dirt track warriors littered the pits all there to defend the home turf. Among them were Clarke’s top man Bob Flinn, Paul Weisner, Sam Faur, Bob Kingen, Jay and Dale Woolworth, old vet “Rotten” Ralphie Baker, Auto City Speedway champion Willie Rose and six-time Butler, Michigan Speedway titleist Don Taylor in his famous “Pink Panther” Ford.
Saturday’s qualifying saw 88 cars trip the clocks with Iowans ruling the roost with five of the top 10 times led by Sanger’s pole-winning run of 26.47 seconds.
At the conclusion of time trials, four heats hit the track with Wolverines Sam Faur and Jay Woolworth both scrambling through their respective fields to take a pair and the “King of the Southwest” Bill Cheesbourg along with 25-year Lockland, Ohio veteran Floyd Gilbert landing in victory lane in the other two. Following heat action it was back to their lodgings to get a good night’s sleep with dreams of the biggest payday in the sport’s history dancing through competitor’s minds.
Come Sunday, Bob Wearing was a double victor in preliminaries, grabbing trophies in a dash and 35-lap semifeature aboard Dunk Pakozdi Camaro, a car with 29 victories that season. A consolation run, which would wet the crowd’s appetite for the upcoming finale, banked former Crystal (Mich.) Raceway champion Jack Caswell a few extra bucks.
A talented crop of thirty competitors representing seven states made the call for the big dough with Sanger on the point, not in his typical yellow-numbered No. 95 but manning a red-colored, Sanger-constructed Camaro campaigned that year by fellow Hawkeye State runner Gary Crawford.
“I built Gary a really nice and modern small block Camaro with an all-aluminum interior earlier in the year,” Sanger told. “I knew it was fast and Gary did real well with it, so I told him that I was gonna take it to the World 100 come September. So we ended up switching cars; that way Gary could still run back at home. Well, I made the right call because I got second to Joe at Eldora and put it on the pole here and Gary won the big Futurity race back at home that weekend at Webster City in my car.”
Cheese State star Tom Steuding, with 21 victories that seasons in his Patz Equipment 1973 Camaro, lined up second alongside “Fast Eddie.”
When the green flag dropped, the field thundered into the first turn with mud master Sanger roaring out front in his small block Chevrolet trailed by Steuding, Ken Walton, Floyd Gilbert and Joe Merryfield in hot pursuit. It quickly became a game of high stakes bingo with everyone chasing the big prize.
On the second lap, Walton, who was showing strength and had moved into the runner-up spot, disappointedly coasted to a stop as his Dwayne and Cle Schneider-owned big block 468 Chevrolet developed ignition issues, drawing a caution.
On the restart, Sanger continued leading, holding the point until lap 18 when Steuding motored past. A few laps later Gilbert, in his famed Duncan’s Machinery Chevelle, also slipped under Sanger, who was incurring brake difficulties, and closed the gap to challenge leader Steuding.
“The track was big and flat as a pancake and as your usual afternoon race it became treacherously slick,” Sanger said. “Well, my left-front brake caliper began locking up on me, causing handling problems. We were all hugging that inside barrier, and as a matter of fact, with my brake issues, I took out a couple sections of that inside fence just trying to hang on.”
On lap 23, the Southern interloper Doug Kenimer, who started seventh and had a hankering for dry-slick surfaces, began to flex his muscles in his home-built lightweight Camaro, dropping the struggling Sanger another spot to fourth.
“It was wet and tacky to start and I was back a ways,” Kenimer said later, “but I remember clear as day as I came down the backstretch I saw a little puff of dust come up and I said to myself, 'Oh yeah!' After that I started picking 'em off one or two a lap.”
The fleet Georgian began pressuring the second-running Gilbert, then blasted by to take up chase of the leading Steuding.
On lap 28 Kenimer and Gilbert rode by Steuding, who would almost immediately drop from the action with mechanical ills, ending the Altoona, Wis., truck driver’s impressive run. A battle royale developed at the front between Kenimer and Gilbert and continued on until lap 75 when Gilbert's R. L. Duncan big-blocked entry headed for the pits with a broken fuel pump.
With Gilbert out of the running, Kenimer’s Ernie Elliott-machined short-block 377 continued to swallow up clay real estate at a rapid pace with Northern Kentucky Speedway champion Pat Patrick and Ovid, Mich., asphalt speedster Jim Aldrich now second and third, looking to reel in the speedy leader. But Patrick broke a tie rod, creating a tangle with Aldrich on the the long backstretch.
Joe Merryfield, riding along fourth, took evasive action to avoid the melee by diving through an opening on the inside guardrail and then returning to the track to find himself in the runner-up spot.
On the restart, Kenimer had things pretty much his own way as he cranked up the Dahlonega Equipment and Supply Company-sponsored No. 42 and cruised home the final 17 circuits. As the laps ticked down a worn out sway bar on the 3,400-pound Jim Wilson-owned, ex-Lefty Robinson USAC Chevelle kept Merryfield from challenging for the win.
At the conclusion of the rich century grind, Kenimer crossed the stripe ahead of World conqueror Merryfield, followed by Davenport and Denison (Iowa) Speedway’s season champion Sanger, Cresco (Iowa) Speedway champ Emery Fretheim in an Ed Sanger racer, and Jackson, Mich.'s Bill Younkins rounding out the top five. Sixth through 10th went to Packwood, Iowa’s Dan Dickey in another Sanger machine; Saginaw, Mich.'s Dale Woolworth, Cedar Rapids, Iowa’s Darrell Dake, who on the Friday before bagged the National Dirt Track Championship back home at Davenport; three-time and reigning Tri-State Speedway champ Tom Helfrich; and Iowa’s Dick Schiltz in yet another car from the Sanger stable.
"There was a lot of loose dirt laying on top to start, and I was afraid I was gonna fill my radiator with it," said a triumphant Kenimer, who adapted very quickly to the old horse track. "But after we ran a few laps it had blown off and got down to the hard clay.”
Years later the Georgia great remembered that he'd "never run a track that big before. The straightaways were like long funnels and I thought to myself, 'My God, how fast am I running?' ”
The victor, who had rung up more than 70 feature victories in 1974 and '75, seasoned the northerners hindquarters to the tune of $10,000.
“It was just my wife and me up there,” Kenimer said, “and they gave me a cashier’s check. Well, I told them I didn’t have enough money to get home on, so the promoter’s banker took my wife to the bank, opened it, and cashed the check for us.”
The second-place prize of $5,000, when added to their World winnings, banked more than $13,000 for two weekends of work for the team of Merryfield, Wilson, Denny Murray and Bill Way, who had suffered through a rather dismal 1975 season back home.
“To tell you the truth, it was a great car and we actually ran well” Merryfield later said. “But we just broke a lot. I guess things just kinda came together for us at the right time.”
The man who presented all the entertainment, Ross Haverstick, relayed that the uncalled for cancellation of his lease at Clarke’s, which, according to him, did not expire until Oct. 1, cost him a noticeable decrease in the size of anticipated crowd and entries.
With the obvious lack of attendance on top of such a hearty purse, the afternoon’s performers began to believe Haverstick had bitten off more than he could chew and smelled blood in the water, so naturally things began to pop afterward at the pay shack.
“Well, at first he wanted to give us personal checks,” recalled third-place finishing Ed Sanger, “and we knew he had took a hit, so we weren’t going to accept pay that way. So we were milling around there thinking, what are we gonna do? Well, we were kinda starting to get loud and a little rowdy and the woman who was writing the checks called the cops.
"So the sheriff comes, and we were then thinking are we gonna go to jail or go home? Well the banker was also there and I asked him, are these checks good? And he nodded. So I turned to the sheriff and said, you seen him, you’re our witness — and we got our money. But we had to stay overnight in Michigan and we were the first ones at the bank in the morning!”
Under the circumstances it’s such a pity that a production of such historical significance was witnessed by so very few. The sport’s contestants would wait another two years before being offered another five-digit payout, a race Kenimer won again at the seventh World 100.
It marked an extraordinary period in stock car racing as drivers pushed the edge of their home-built creations while trying to earn a living doing what they loved.
Kenimer would race successfully until retiring in the early 1990s after circling dirt ovals for more than 36 years, and like so many others that competed that day in Ionia, Mich., would become one of the sport's immortals as an inductee into the National Dirt Late Model Hall of Fame.
