Yards And Yarns

[beowulf]

thanks guys for your explanations. You are right, we don't need a car club now to be active in motorsport. You buy your bits on Trade Me. Information from the Internet and so on. I belong to 4 car clubs and enjoy their newsletters thoroughly. Being an ex editor of car club mags I appreciate the work and efort that goes into them. MSNZ enjoys my capitation levy.
I attend the local Vintage Car Club clubnights, the average age might be 350 but the turnout of members is fabulous. They are planning to extend their clubrooms so everybody can fit in.
Maybe we could get all the highlights from The Roaring Season, put them into a book and all go to Hawaii!

[beowulf]

Jeez Bob, you know how to keep us in suspense don"t you. Do you moonlight as a writer for the "Young and the Restless"? You are obviously still alive and kicking. It mightn't have much to do with Yards and Yarns but it is a great story.

[AMCO72]

We have already decided that there are 'no holds barred' on Yards and Yarns. We may loose our 5 star rating, but I suspect we will still get plenty of tyre kickers. Frankly Bob, I thought you were still earning a crust, so I don't know how you have time to sit down and write all this stuff.......long smoko's perhaps. All right for us old pensioners with nothing else to do. Your right about the 'legends' bit though. Todays lot are so damn squeaky clean. The few characters that are out there may not be the ones winning championship titles, but they are the ones that will be remembered, and could well appear on this forum in 20 years time!!!

[beowulf]

Bob you write well, keep the yarns coming, they certainly revive memories of a time that we probably see through rose coloured glasses.
I mentioned earlier that "my" car club was having problems. It reminded me of a time when we didn't have anything worthwhile in the bank. The solution was to run a gambling evening complete with Calcutta and bar. All highly illegal at the time. Being a mug I volounteered to organise it.
A country hall on the junction of several roads was booked. The theory being that if we were raided there were several escape routes.
One person sat just down the main road with a walkie talkie radio. His job was to radio in if the cops went past. What made us think that they would be in marked cars I don't know. Problem was he turned up with his new girlfriend. I don't know what he saw that night, but they had to get married several months later.
Some one on the committee knew a local bookmaker so I had a yarn with him. Basically I fronted it and he organised it. I had no idea what a Calcutta was, and still am not sure, apparently you buy a horse in a nominated race and if it wins you clean up all the other buyers prices. Less of course a cut to the organisers. We also had various card games, shove ha-penny, slater racing, snail racing, two up and various other dubious pursuits.
Selling alcohol was strictly forbidden at the time. It was still 6 o'clock closing. I bought the booze in small lots to avoid suspicion. Mostly beer but some whiskey. Apparently all the big gamblers drank whiskey and it loosened their wallets. NO wine I don't think it was available at all then.
Any way came the big night. We made a goodish profit, everybody enjoyed themselves, there were no fights, the booze ran out at the right time. And the club was solvent for a while. We never made any real money until we held a grass track race meeting. Thats another story.
I happened to bump into a member of the police force at a stock sale not long afterwards. his tip was next time we ran a gambling evening to tell the local police in case we got raided by some out of town cops. They would let us know in time to be gone by the time the raiding party arrived. Wouldn't happen now.

[Rod Grimwood]

Bob your bit about tying things up, brings back a real funny thing I saw at Puke one day. As you mentioned about having a couple of hard case fellows following you, we new a couple as well. We were at Pukekohe for a national meeting and had parked our road cars and van (which had the food in it) up behind the main stand for the usual gathering and BBQ after. Well these blokes arrive and drive over to park up with our wagons and get a big rev from a certain official who will remain nameless. Well after a fairly heated lot of words the boy's drive way over to the top carpark and are not happy. Well during the day they sneak their car back over and park near ours. Now after the meeting we all gather for refreshments and one of them say's to his mate " That car there is that bloke who through us out" it is a little Toyota, Well unbeknown to us they get a big rope and tie it to the rear of a Rover V8 and hide all the rope under them. After a while along comes a bloke and jumps in his Rover and starts to go across the paddock when it comes up tight and starts wheelspinning, well the boys jump in and say "you are alright you are just stuck a bit give it heaps and we will push". This guy gives it the big one and with a bit of push is slowly off across grass with the other car skidding along behind, and the guy's all yelling at him "keep going, give it too it". Well as he gets to other side he must have looked in mirror or something and realises there is a car follwing him backwards, and stops gets out and undoes the rope, abuse's the boy's and takes off. Well we were over the other side of paddock watching this and had tears in our eyes and could hardly breath for laughter. So once all settles down, back to BBQ and chilly bin. About an hour later the official turns up for his car and stands there looking at it way over the other side of paddock at the end of a big line of skid marks and says to his son "did you skid it over there" and son just looks totally dumbfounded and say's "i haven't been near the car". At this stage I and a few others took off down around the side of grandsatand because i couldn't keep a straight face. The look on the officials face (well known to most of us at Puke in those days of long past) was unreal, he walked over to his car and could not work out how it got over the other side of paddock exept when he got there and he looked at the back of car it was covered/caked in grass and mud from the Rover. If the guy with the Rover reads this "your secret ID is safe" and the official involved "thank you very much for all you did for the racing at Puke and I never did get those rat bags name".

[Shano]

Where's all that stuff gone? The great casualty of the 21st century is.... the sense of humour. Do that now and you'd have police helicopters and a swat team callout.

[Rod Grimwood]

Talk of chair racing, years back when family were young and truck racing had just started, was away on family trip to snow and stopped into the Taupo track and clubrooms on the Friday evening on way back to Auckland to catch up with a few of the locals at the original clubrooms next to the old track. There was a good gathering and they made us feel real welcome when we poked our head in the door. The girls got together with the kids and the boy,s meet around the bar and traded stories. Well as the night progressed a person (top lad) who raced a truck put out a challenge to car boys for a chair race. Well there were 2 big arm chairs with wheels and the team had to be a child in the chair and a pusher (driver). They placed some cones at either end of club and then began. After first couple of curcuits my kids thought this was great and talked me into challenging the winner. Great idea with stomach full of amber. Well the truck boy played hard and gave us a good shunt going into the top turn and then it was on. After a lot of hitting and slipping over (not Pissed) we all went back to bar, when some person mentioned how about a team race around the track, and that was that. Can you imagine a load of fairly sideways (drunk) drivers with excited kids (passengers) and a crowd of very excited (wine) spectator ladies. After a meeting it was agreed to start at the beginning of the old esse's and finish at the start/finish line which was around onto main straight. 3 groups per team to push in relay. What a laugh, it was smooth bitumin but there were a few little holes, so after a load of tip ups and arse ups, the curcuit boys prevailed (just). Don't think those chairs did much more after this night. The good old days and there was not even a meeting this weekend just a normal gathering of club members and a couple of visiters who dropped into say hello and ended staying for a couple of nights.
I actually saw truck racing on TV the other weekend and the hard case is still doing it.

[Rod Grimwood]

Love it, theres a few different things that went on alright. I note Bob that you were the good sumaritum (helpful bloke) in most of these incidents, they are so lucky you are the quite one and they would have been lost without you to look after them. I know how hard it is to look after those other rat bags, not easy at all, I was always keeping an eye on some of the ones I know (knew).

[GD66]

we had the usual refreshment session in the Oxford

Jeez Bob, you may have just answered a long-standing query amongst a group of distant expats : is the Oxford the pub in Levin where you could sit in the beer garden and clearly hear the cars (F5000s in particular !) stand on it as they entered the front straight 'cos the exhausts were pointed due east, straight at the pub ?

[Rod Grimwood]

After the nice big storm yesterday with over 2000 lightning strikes in an hour, and unbelievable rain and wind my home computor has gone to sleep, hopefully the nice man can revive it tomorrow, so this is from work. Goody oh Goody, he was a legend, I will wait until my computor is up and running and share a couple of little things that happened during/after Heatway along with other trips and functions.

[bry3500]

I' have been playing in a band here in Melbourne for a few years with a well known guitarist of Maori extraction.
He has kept me amused with stories of his exploits of him and his mates growing up in Oakune in the mid 1960s.
We were in the band room waiting for showtime last week and discussion somehow turned to us, as little tackers, going to the Ohakea races and what a highlight of the year it was and also of going to the Stratford Stock Car races on a Saturday night , which is what my yarn is about.
It seems he and his mates travelled in 2 cars. A Mark 1 Zephyr ( he swears he had 2 cousins in Auckland named Mark 1 and Mark 2) and the idea was to get 5 of them into the Mark 1 so that you couldn't see through the cars windows from behind because of the Afro's.
The other was a Ford 10 "Flaggon Wagon".
One Saturday before they set off to Stratford the boys decided the Ford 10 could carry more beer if they turned it into a ute so they borrowed dads axe and removed the roof ( and structural integrity) from behind the drivers head back.
What happened next you can imagine..
Traveling down the Parapara the Ford hit a large pot hole and folded up like a jackknife..glass and beer everywhere ....
lucky no one was killed , although the 2 of them in the car ended up requiring attention from the friendly Staff at the Wanganui hospital...

[Oldfart]

Good story, but seems a bit strange if it was a Ford 10 cos the body had pretty much nothing to do with the integrity, they had a separate chassis often used for Ford 10 specials with a pretty rudimentary body, there is one in my shed!
The second photo from Ohakea has a car now owned by new member GeeBeeNZ #45.

[bry3500]

Good story, but seems a bit strange if it was a Ford 10 cos the body had pretty much nothing to do with the integrity, they had a separate chassis often used for Ford 10 specials with a pretty rudimentary body, there is one in my shed!
The second photo from Ohakea has a car now owned by new member GeeBeeNZ #45.

I made a phone call... Got the story wrong,,,the car was a Standard 10, not a Ford - apparently had a Semi chassis..the doors were wired on with #8 fencing wire..
be interesting to identify as many of those cars as possible on the Ohakea grid.. I can see the crop duster, Ron Frosts Cooper 500 must be in there, Interesting array of V8 specials in the bottom pic....Allan Freman Lago Talbot? Fordy Farland Singer-Buick?

[105angria]

Bob I agree no wowersers, dogooders, people looking after our wellbeing we chose to take our own risks damned insurance companys

[GeebeeNZ]

Love that Ohakea Photo. We had the two Bucklers from the back row at the Roycroft meeting at Hampton Downs Easter 2011. Ran the numbers 45 and 46 on them just for old times sake. I think its the first time the two have been back on the same grid for over 50 years.

[GeebeeNZ]

[bry3500]

Awesome Geebee..

[Oldfart]

Matamata... my dad was the Town Clerk who signed off on the documentation to allow them, after a consultative process, with his son and sons' best friend!
I came across the reports on these from local newspapers while clearing up after my mothers' decease over the last few weeks. Happy times. I remember a certain Cooper aircooled car with a perfect round dent in the front where it had run up the back of another. Also a VERY frosty morning and a wonderfully evocative Motorman picture.
Another memory was a D type Jag being parked in our basement garage for the day as the owner could not find a park on the street which he was happy with!

[David McKinney]

The D-type didn't compete at either Matamata meeting, but could well have been driven there with spectators from Bob Homewood's district, where it lived at the time

[Oldfart]

The D-type didn't compete at either Matamata meeting, but could well have been driven there with spectators from Bob Homewood's district, where it lived at the time

David, I did not imply that it raced, it was parked in our shed all day! I reckon it was the "well known to urban legend" one which on occasion was seen doing the shopping in Papakura. Lived in Bombay didn't it?