Raceway Park - Neat Photo

[ancrdave]

I'm sure Tom S. will like this one....
Bud Koehler at Raceway Park in Blue Island (Chicago) IL in 1964... Full-size 1964 Mercury and check out that bumper! Tight quarter mile meant you needed one of these to do your passing...
I was going through a set of 1952 Illustrated Speedway News we have at the Archives and ran across a story from 7/16/52 when Raceway Park held its first-ever race for a new Strictly Stock Showroom class (eventually became Late Models)... 12,000 people showed up and according to the article "several thousand were turned away." This is at a quarter-mile racetrack! The total purse for the day was $5,531 - remember this is 1952 (several months before I was born)... Koehler won the race and got $1,272, easily enough money for a down payment on a house back then...
Raceway Park ran FOUR nights a week - Stock Cars on Wednesday, Saturday & Sunday and Midgets on Friday... Oh to have been a race fan and living in that area back then...

Some other interesting Florida stuff from 1952:

There were articles with results of Negro-only stock car races in Tampa... It was interesting that the name of the track and it's location were never given in the article, just the results... Anybody old enough from that area remember this?

Jack Choquette won his first career race at Palm Beach Speedway in late June... grandpa of Jeff...

There are results from Tri-City Sportsman Park in St. Petersburg... Anybody remember where this was located... Just about 10 years before Sunshine opened.

This board has been REALLY DULL lately... just trying to spice it up a bit with some good 'ol days history...

[egspeedway]

Neat photo and neat historical trivia. I agree the board has been dead, hopefully people are on vacation. I suspect with regards to historical facts and photos we may be facing to many generation X users. Generation X lives in the here and now with little concern for history or the contribution of their predecessors. Once again thanks for sharing your treasure trove with us.

[Groundpounder]

I grew up around Raceway Park. Bud was the top dog then in the 60's and was a good midget driver as well. It was really a tight quarter...maybe a 5th mile. Many famous guys had raced there in their time, but it was a real push and shove, rough and tumble track.

[ancrdave]

Some names from there: Don Oldenberg, Stash Kullman, Bob Pronger, Bill Van Allen, Bill Cornwall, Jerry Kemperman, Ray Young, James Bond, Ted Janecyk, Legs Whitcomb... see if you remember any more...

[Groundpounder]

Those are the big ones from then...Danny Kladis had raced there with the midgets. I think this was the track that he allegedly drove a lap blindfolded!
Bob Pronger was quite a colorful character. He I remember he drove wearing a white shirt and a tie. That being said he was quite the driver. If I recall, he came down to the old Daytona beach course and qualified about second. There was some question about his engine legality and it promptly blew up on the asphalt straightaway about lap 2 of the race...
In later years, he later met a mysterious, untimely demise.

[tom77hmstd]

Good Stuff Dave! I watched this car win many a feature back in the day and a couple championships too. Use to ride to raceway in Larry Middleton Sr.'s flat towed race car. Note the amount of people in the stands. My old photos of Hialeah have packed grand stands just like that. I have pictures of Stash #4u Kemperman #6, Pronger in the #1,and lots of Koehler in his Merc and Bill Koenig,s Chevelle.