Ketzer Racing Team

[Master Oil Racing Team]

I never knew all that stuff about Steve. It's a great story. Your Mom is very pretty.

I've had the same problems with the pictures out of order Steve. I started paying attention to the numbers, and you can move them around where you want them before you click 'submit reply".

[Ketzer]

Thanks, Wayne. Yeah, my mom was pretty. They were quite a pair. She was very, very religious and devout, and he, not a jot. I'll attach another photo of her, Jane Ketzer.

In your post above to this thread, you have a few pictures showing our L-113 hydro, red and white, that we got used from someone. It came with the name "Cool Cat" and we kept it. Do you happen to recall who made the boat (I'm thinking Marchetti) and who owned it before us? I plan on putting it in the story later, but I've gone brain-dead.

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[Master Oil Racing Team]

It's a Marchetti Steve, but I don't know who was the previous owner. It has a Konig throttle. Ed Holstein out of Kansas had some red and white boats I think.

[Ketzer]

Thanks, Wayne. I knew you'd know! By the way, I'm not making any more posts toward this thread until I finish your "Baldy" story.

[Ketzer]

Lips: If it couldn’t be flown, ridden, driven, shot, caught or cooked, Dad wasn’t too interested, and that applied to the world of the spirit, as well. But Mom was very devout and in church with her three boys lined up beside her whenever the doors were open. In the fashion of Bubba Gump’s shrimp, you had, of course, Sunday School church and Sunday morning church, Sunday night church, and then Wednesday night church, special retreats church, testifying church trips, church related concerts to see the likes of Doris Akers, church revivals, and church camp. Dad was opposed to all but the last that provided him and Mom the opportunity to go on a road trip back to Hot Springs without three boys fighting and complaining on the back seat. So, while Charlie, Jerry and I were in the mountains at Big Bear sleeping in bunk houses and jumping on trampolines—well, I jumped on trampolines; they were probably kissing girls somewhere—he and Mom took off on the road trip to Hot Springs to visit relatives, and discovered, while there, that Montgomery Field lacked an aviation maintenance facility, a discovery destined to affect our future.

Just prior to that, though, Mom and Dad separated for a brief period, but long enough for the house on Western to go away. We were all soon reunited in a rental house in Hawaiian Gardens. While it probably broke Mom’s heart to lose the new house on Western for the rather dilapidated rental (as she walked through the house in heels, a heel punched through the wooden floor: at some stage in its history, the house had been eaten thin by termites), to us boys, it was a regular Garden of Eden. A one-room guest house sat in the jungle of a back yard amidst trees, thick bamboo and elephant ears. Charlie and Jerry pretty much had a house to themselves. Also in the backyard was a concrete pad for shuffleboard and the yard backed up against an ally with a short chain link fence over which Charlie, having taken to fighting as a teenager, jumped into safety when chased home by Mexicans, Hawaiian Gardens being equally divided between Gringos and Mexicans who sometimes didn’t see eye to eye. Your yard and house were safe havens back then, as with Quasimodo in Notre Dame: Sanctuary! Sanctuary!

A power line ran down the alley and was perfect for playing myself at “Homerun Derby”—now I’m Mantle, now Maris, now Mays, now Musial—using as balls a bulbous, hard fruit of some sort that fell from a tree. Across the street in front was a golf driving range where Jerry got a job gathering and washing golf balls, and down the street a couple blocks, a Little League baseball stadium where I played left field and short stop for “Bill’s Auto Parts,” that won our division and were treated to a trip to watch the newly minted Los Angles Angels play the also new Minnesota Twins. On another occasion, Jerry, with our church group, took me to see the Dodgers play the Milwaukee Braves at the Coliseum (Don Drysdale pitched and also hit a home run).

It all came to an end when Dad talked a flying buddy into moving to Hot Springs and starting an aviation maintenance and air taxi operation: Ketzer and Wendel Aircraft. The boats and airplane disappeared, and in their place sat a box truck on the driveway. The box truck, a 1949 Chevy two-ton, once belonged to a carpet cleaning business that promised, after cleaning, your carpets would be, “as clean as a kiss.” Consequently, the truck’s white paint, looking like some target of affection for giant women, was covered with red lips. Dad painted over the promise and the company name, but allowed the lips to stay, and in that truck we loaded our portion of the world, including Pretty Boy in a cage, and headed back to Arkansas, Jerry and Mom taking turns driving her Corvair Monza and following behind.

That was the end of this segment, but since then, I read Wayne’s “Baldy” and came across a possible schism in the Baldwin family due to the Kennedy/Nixon presidential election. There was a similar schism in mine, but it was a bit more pronounced. Dad supported Kennedy, but wasn’t vocal about it, always believing you shouldn’t spill the beans regarding politics. Mom and her church-going boys, all Protestants, believed, should the election fall to the Catholic Kennedy, we would surely be put to death. My grade school was holding a mock election, and I was appointed campaign chairman for the Nixon side, not that I was any great shakes, but merely owing to the fact that everyone else was for Kennedy, because, for one, the students were mostly Catholic, and, for two, there was a rumor that should Nixon be elected there would be six days of school. What? Six days of school! Neither Democrat nor Republican was for that to the extent 99% were in the Kennedy camp. I didn’t believe the rumor, but didn’t know how to dispel it. Mom had a solution: “Stevie, why don’t you just write to them and ask?” So I did. I wrote to the Nixon campaign headquarters in Southern California. Not only did I get a reply stating the rumor was false, but they sent a bunch of campaign paraphernalia, in addition to what I asked for, all of which I took with me as I marched from class to class, read and showed the letter, and passed out free stuff. The Nixon staff apparently got a kick out of my letter and wrote about it in a news release to the L.A. Times, and the Times printed the story. Well, that’s where things went bad, because Dad’s co-workers at Douglas saw the article and razzed him unmercifully. Everywhere he went, my don’t-spill-the-beans dad got, “O, ho! We know how you’re going to vote, Ketzer!” No amount of “You don’t know how the hell I’m going to vote!” would convince them he wasn’t for Nixon. Kennedy still won the election at my school, but it was very close, a percentage point or two.

Under Kennedy, we spent the Cuban missile crisis in Long Beach, and then loaded up and headed back to the land of my birth, God’s country, that I had heard so much about. We would have seasons and snow. Why, there were trees all over the woods with nuts called hickory nuts that fell on the ground and were just there for the taking. There were persimmon and wild plumb trees and something called poke salad that grew everywhere. And for me there would be no more pulling tar off telephone poles and chewing it, because a tree grew in Arkansas, called a Sweet Gum tree, and you could walk right up to it and pull off gum.
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[Ketzer]

Note: I've caught up, so this will be a partial repeat.

The Neal: Over the years, Wendel having returned to California with his family after little more than a year, Dad built up the business, sold it, and went to work for the new owner, Dan Futrell, which allowed him to get back to the serious business of concentrating on his toys: motorcycles, airplanes and boats that he worked on in the hangar when things were slow, and often when things weren’t slow. When Ketzer & Wendel split, Wendel took the Cessna T-50 “Bamboo Bomber” they (we) rebuilt and used for air taxi in exchange for his half of the business. At twelve, I spent many hours working on the T-50. Using a jackknife and without damaging the wood, I plucked hundreds of rusted staples from that beast where fabric had been attached in a frenzy during WWII, the Bamboo Bomber having been used as a twin engine trainer for the Army Air Corps (the last word in this sentence pronounced “core” not “corpse”).

In four years, we moved four times, each time to a better house, including one “Green Acres” experiment out toward Peary where we plowed the field with a horse—by then, everyone else was using tractors. Dad bought, rebuilt and sold several airplanes, including a Bonanza, a Navion, a Mooney, an Aeronca Chief, and a Cessna 195. (Mom by the Navion; my buddy Conover by the 195, and me, in my white aircraft mechanic coveralls by the Aeronca.)

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On Lake Hamilton, Dad bought a lakeside resort, named Bass Haven, complete with a two bedroom house up on the hill, eight cabins down by the shore, a covered four stall boat dock, swimming dock, and a large gazebo with an attached recreation room. Bass Haven, built pre-WWII, was a maintenance nightmare, the well forever lost its prime, plumbing in the cottages clogged up, electrical problems blew fuses, and we had the standard upkeep of cleaning, painting, mowing, and hauling trash—not to mention renting rooms and bookkeeping—all of which we did ourselves. By that time, Charles and Jerry had both married and flew the nest, so the resort was a handful for Mom and Dad, even with me being the trash man, lawn boy, head painter, and spending hours ramming a snake down someone else’s toilet. I spent my high school years at Bass Haven, and although it provided an array of opportunities for teenage fun, all I saw was work and escaped it as often as possible.

Back into boating, Dad bought each of his boys a pleasure boat. From the last time this section was posted, I’ll add that we, like most boat racers we knew, hung in the middle of the middle-class. What Dad got, he got by wheeling and dealing, trading, but mostly through his own labor, or trading labor—he painted Tommy Goslee’s hydro, and thereafter whenever we needed something printed, we went to Goslee’s Print Shop; ditto with Bill Henderson, who was a sign painter and did all the lettering on our racing trailers and helmets. He took something worthwhile that needed repair, overhaul, new paint, and new upholstery, and made it new again, which was the case with the pleasure boats, and of course I, being his number one go to for paint stripping, sanding, fiberglass work, engine disassembly and cleaning, was always involved. He would cruise by to inspect my work and then took over at the end, to reassemble or paint, laying out the lines in quarter inch tape at which he was such an artist having put so many paint jobs on airplanes. And it was the case with the airplanes he owned. His V-Tail Bonanza, for instance, he got out of annual, beyond TBO, and in need of the dreaded wing spar kit, all of which he did himself, and again, I was right there with him; although sometimes my task amounted to no more than running out to get doughnuts.

Jerry and Charles took their boats, and mine, a little runabout with a 25 horse Johnson outboard, floated in the boat dock. I took it out frequently to race around the bay, putting it into the sharpest turns it would tolerate, making it jump and roar through turns, just like our old movies of Joy Toy. When high school friends—Conover, Hyde, Watkins and Crumpton—came over, we took turns tearing around the bay. Without me knowing, Dad watched me play and the wheels started turning. He did some side work for Dan Futrell, and in exchange, instead of money, Futrell gave him an old hydroplane he raced, quite successfully, in the late 50’s, a Neal hydroplane with a 40 cubic inch Mercury outboard without a stitch of cowling, running straight pipes, a quicksilver lower unit, and the smallest propeller I’d ever seen. We drove to Nashville, Arkansas, to get it. The rounded front of the boat was covered in tattered fabric, painted black and grey, with the boat racing number, Lo-113, in larger numerals on either side of the bow. The smell of the boat was unique, like the smell of airplanes or a mechanic’s shop, but a smell I would recognize over the years. I looked in the hydroplane with its hand, squeeze throttle on the left side, a long pad, losing its stuffing on the floor, and asked, “Well, where do you put your legs?” and was told, “You don’t sit in it; you drive on your knees, crawl up over the steering wheel to get it up on plane, then on the straights, move back as far as you can go to get the front and sponsons out of the water, but if the front gets too light and squirrely, move up a little…back off the throttle when you approach a turn, scoot up and lean into the turn, always to the left, as far as you can—that’ll keep your right hand sponson from digging in and flipping you—then when you start coming out of the turn, get on that throttle and start moving up again.” Dad and I couldn’t wait to try it.

In the hanger back in Hot Springs, we ripped off the old fabric, cleaned out oily dirt and sand, stripped off the old varnish, refinished the wood top and bottom that came out beautifully grained, installed new Ceconite aircraft fabric (that was a trick Dad later taught boat racers, as most were still using cotton fabric that sounded like a bass drum when tapped, unlike the Ceconite’s snare), painted the bow a canary yellow and dutifully painted on the racing numbers, Lo-113, a piece of cake for Dad, who laid out and painted N-numbers on airplanes. Dad and Uncle Ed disassembled and rebuilt the engine at Futrell Aircraft; during the process, we sent the stacks, two conjoined pipes for four cylinders, out to be chromed and I painted the tower housing Ford blue and engine aircraft Continental engine gold. With the Merc mounted on the Neal, but still in the hangar, the time came to see if it would “Pop.” We mixed gas, 50:1, hooked it up, primed it, and Futrell gave some very worthwhile advice on pulling the rope—the rope wasn’t attached to the engine, but had to be hand wrapped around the engine pulley on the crankshaft, at most one loop. Futrell said, “Now, Stevie, pull dat rope hard as you can…you don’t, motor gonna kick back, gonna pull dat handle right out your hand, through your fingers, gonna hurt like hell, maybe break a finger, and no tellin’ where dat rope gonna end up.”

I tried it with the switch off, and holy cow, what compression! Uncle Ed had to lean against the boat to keep me from pulling it off the stand, while Dad manned the throttle and switch on the other side. I’d propped airplanes, but I felt tied to that monster; it was either going to be me or it. Dad gave orders to do the deed. I put a loop around the flywheel. He flipped the switch and calmly said, “It’s hot.” I yanked as if my life depended on it, which I believed it did. The Merc didn’t come to life with a pop, it came to life with a scream, one of the loudest sounds I’d ever heard, especially being in a hangar with corrugated steel for walls, like shooting a 30.06 without earplugs, but the Merc’s sound was high pitched, like a witch disapproving at the stake. Dad made it go, “WOW! WOW! WOW!” a few times, and then hit the kill switch. We were ear to ear smiles and wide eyed. Futrell said, “Dat…dat Neal a good boat. Dat boat a winner.”

We loaded up the Neal and hauled it to Bass Haven. With Dad’s unspoken, “You like to go fast in boats, Stevie? Give this a shot.” I donned Futrell’s racing life jacket and a motorcycle helmet and climbed in—we later discovered the old life jacket surrendered its buoyancy long ago and wouldn’t float a small child, much less a 170 pound high school football player. Dad and Ed lifted the stern out of the water, I gave that frightening rope a yank, spun around and grabbed the steering wheel and throttle, revved up the engine, they lowered me down, and I was off—getting it up on plane was like going from low to high with no gears in between. I seemed, indeed was, right on the water. Crouched down, the water was no more than a foot away, and it came up fast and disappeared chattering under the bow; looking to the side, the water was a blur. But the old Neal was stable, just floated and screamed down the straights, and then carved through the turns with the Merc’s scream then oscillating. It was amazing, exhilarating, death defying! In other words, it…was…fun!

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(Those were the only pictures I have of he old Neal and were taken later at boat races; the last with brother Charlie on the left.)

By the time Dad went for a ride, after tweaking, adjusting and topping off the fuel tank, where I, from the bank, could appreciate the sound that negated all other sounds on and around the lake for a mile, spectators began to gather, but not just gawkers, boat racers whom we had never met. Jim Yates, who, it turned out, was a mechanic at a marina not far from us, showed up, but not before calling a few friends, all of whom came to watch. Jim raced a De Silva D-runabout, with a similar 40 cubic inch Merc, and also owned a Jones cabover D-hydroplane, but stopped racing the cabover, because, he said, it scared the hell out of him. Vernon Ashley also raced D-runabout. Bill Henderson raced D-Hydro, but was still recovering from the snakebite of flying one, some said, nearly as high as a telephone pole with disastrous results. Mickey Macguire raced B-Hydro, and was looking to buy a Konig alky burner and move up to Pro Class. Roger Purtee had a B-hydro with a flathead Merc, but had yet to race. And Tom Goslee, who raced C-Service Hydro, an antique class using a highly modified and alky burning version of the Evinrude engines Dad had on No-Go and Joy Toy. With three lakes around Hot Springs, boat racers were in abundance, and from these new friends, we began to acquire knowledge.

[Ketzer]

The Barn Door: One of the first things we learned, after several threatening phone calls—one promising to shoot us from the water with a shotgun—and a visit from the sheriff’s office, was that what we considered fun, as far as many were concerned, was a disruption of the peace. Our newly acquired boat racing buddies verified, that, yeah, according to local law, we weren’t supposed to be on public water raising hell unless in preparation for a race on that water, and that a mere 48 hours prior to the event. As our property at Bass Haven bordered a perfect bay for such activity, we considered it a pity, but started testing out at Twin Creeks on Lake Ouachita, where lakefront houses were not allowed, and people were scarce.

When Dad jumped into something, he not only jumped with both feet, but with all the feet around him, including mine, Uncle Ed’s. And any of my buddies who happened by would be put to work cleaning and sanding, lifting this, holding that. There was no free lunch at the Ketzer’s. He began searching for, buying and resurrecting old racing boats and engines, all modified gas burners at that time, some found covered with dust and chicken droppings in barns or hanging from rafters that he acquired by trade or purchased for a song. Soon, including Jim Yate’s Jones, we had three D –hydros, a B-hydro, a D-runabout, and an B-runabout with Merc engines to match. We also ended up with Futrell’s racing trailer than could carry three boats, had an engine box large enough to house six engines, and we built a rack for the pick-up truck to carry and additional hydroplane. Obviously, we were going boat racing.

We also learned that the “Lo” in Lo-113 was no longer legitimate, that in years gone by it meant you were from Louisiana’s district, but Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi had been combined into one district, District 9, that used only the letter “L” followed by a number, and you couldn’t just slap on any number, but had to apply for it through the National Outboard Association (N.O.A.), or the American Powerboat Association (A.P.B.A.). With verification no one else had your requested number, it would be granted, and that number could be used for your entire fleet of racing boats. We dutifully became members of the N.O.A. as well as the A.P.B.A. and later applied for the racing number, L-113. Until then, we raced with Lo-113 on all our boats. (A shot of our boats at a race in Oklahoma during the summer of 1968; Vernon Ashley in his runabout.)

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At Twin Creeks in the Spring of 1968, with only the Neal, we attended our first, although unsanctioned and local, boat race with the aforementioned boat racers. Dad already knew, but here I learned about the running start, that is, where the race starts off a huge, white clock, usually positioned on the bank or a boat dock, parallel with an imaginary start line to a buoy, the clock with but one black hand, equally huge, that marked down the seconds. By the clock was a canon rigged to blow a substantial puff of white smoke. Five minutes prior to the start of the race, the canon fired, which meant you had five minutes to get your engine started and get out on the course. Go out too soon, and you risked running low on fuel or tempting fate with your engine; wait too long, and you risked giving up time for any quick fixes if your engine failed to start. After five minutes, each indicated by a tab disappearing from the top of the clock, the one minute gun fired, and the second hand began to sweep the last minute. At that point, no boats could leave the bank; those still pulling ropes were screwed. Out on the water, with all the engines screaming, the canon could not be heard, and that accounts for the white smoke. Once seen, boats headed to the rendezvous area at one end of the course and positioned themselves for a run at the clock. Often, the clock had only one number, a zero at the top, and the object was to cross the start line at full speed just as the second hand hit zero. Crossing the line before it struck hit zero meant disqualification. Waiting too long meant the rest of the boats were in front, and you were in for a ride in rough water, especially in the turns. Likewise, if you approached the clock too soon and had to back off, boats blasted by on either side, and you were left playing catch-up. Right off, Dad and I were pretty good at hitting the clock; it may have helped that we were pilots and had developed good visual acuity, depth and timing from practicing flight maneuvers, hitting the numbers on landings, and so forth. Or, maybe not.

Either way, all we had at Twin Creeks was the D-hydro Neal. There weren’t enough D boats in either hydro or runabout to have a decent field, so they ran together in one D heat, with two of each. Bill Henderson’s hydro was having problems, however, and Vernon Ashely’s runabout was slower, so it ended up being me in the Neal against Jim Yates in his DeSilva. With true beginner’s luck, I won, but it was close at the end. Having led the entire race, but with Jim just off my shoulder, I drifted a bit wide on the last turn, just enough for him to poke the nose of that runabout between me and the buoy. We came across the finish line neck and neck, and the official gave me the race and consequent trophy; although walking by me later, Jim snarled, “That’s my trophy, and you know it.” Well, I didn’t know it, but he put doubt in my mind—after all, we were eye-to-eye at the finish, and his runabout had a longer snout.

While Dad didn’t drive in our first race, it must have looked like far too much fun to pass on, and that’s when we ended up with Jim’s D-hydro, the Jones cabover, so we could race together in the same heat and thereby increase our odds of winning. We last raced with Jim somewhere in Oklahoma, where he blew his runabout over backwards. The accident roughed him up and gave him second thoughts about racing. It happens, whether boat, motorcycle, or skateboarding, serious accidents sometimes result in serious reflection. Over the years, I flipped my share of boats, usually in the first turn, but had no time to reflect. Being a strong believer in getting back on the horse—and I mean getting right back on that horse—Dad and Uncle Ed had me out for the next heat. While I might have been content to sit in the pits, wet and shaking on a lawn chair, they, after quick verification that I was okay, went immediately to work on the boat, dumping out the water, duct tapping if necessary, drying out the engine, firing it up, and having it ready for the next heat. I was busy helping, so there was little time to reflect and moon over, perhaps, my lucky stars. And one does feel somewhat lucky coming away unscathed from a first turn spill amid a flurry of rooster tails, boats on either side, and boats coming up from behind. (Pictures of Jim's DeSilva, T-84, and coming back wrong side up, Jim at the stern with cigarette in mouth.)

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In 1968 at a race in Rogers, Arkansas, Dad ripped the bottom off the Jones cabover, at least part of it. We were in the same D-hydro heat. Two boats behind Dad in a turn, I saw the cabover go up on its side, come down in a fan of water, but with Dad still in it and in control. Coming out of the turn, I passed him on the straight; he grinned and nodded me forward. With the heat over, he stayed on the course until I was at the bank and out of the Neal, then he headed in, faster than usual, and frantically motioned for us to come. Ed, Bill, Vernon and I sloshed out to meet him. Closer, he began yelling, “Pick up the front! Pick up the front!” We did, and with him laughing and pointing, looked in the boat to see sections of boards missing, just forward of where he knelt to the front of the bow.

We continued to test at Twin Creeks with our racing buddies from Hot Springs, and turned it into fun events with socializing, BBQs, and beer at the end. My high school buddy, Pat Conover, helped in the pits our first couple years, until he got drafted and went in the Navy, and once at Twin Creeks, as either reward or punishment, Dad offered him a ride in one of the D-hydros—the one we rescued from the barn and chicken droppings, along with a runabout. We called that hydro the “Barn Door” for obvious reasons. As with a couple of our early boats, we never knew who built it, but I’m guessing Neal or Jacobsen. It was a good boat and a safe ride, but way, way obsolete. We figured you’d really have to try hard to turn it over. So we sent Conover out, and while he didn’t flip it, he did manage to get thrown out in a turn. After we got him and the Barn Door back to the bank and dried out, Dad asked, “You want to try it again, Pat?” And Conover replied, “No, thanks, Mr. Ketzer. That was good enough.” Dad gave the Barn Door to Vernon Ashley so he could race hydro with us, and Vernon did the best he could with it. (Pictures of the Barn Door all stripped down and then newly finished, testing at Twin Creeks, Vernon Ashley driving, just prior to Conover's ride.)

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In Conover’s defense, about four years prior to that, before we lived at Bass Haven, we lived in another lake home on Hamilton where we had a party barge and a little Ouachita flat-bottom boat with a 15 horse Merc engine, and it was pretty hot for a fishing boat. Conover, and another 8th grade buddy, Larry, and I took the flat-bottom and camped out on a deserted peninsula. The next day we got up and took turns making laps around the bay. Conover took his turn, turned too sharp, and fell out of the boat. Twist throttles on motors back then stayed wherever you put them, so with Conover in the water, the flat-bottom continued to circle and roar with him treading water in the middle. Larry and I screamed, “Swim, Conover, swim!” hoping he would swim toward the bank and out of danger, but every time he made a move, the boat had completed its circle and cut him off. Finally, the boat swamped itself and killed the engine. Conover grabbed the rope and started towing the boat, half full of water, to the bank as we swam out to meet him. So, with that and being tossed out of the Barn Door, Conover probably figured the third time might be the charm, the charm in a negative sense, so he declined another ride in the hydro.