1966 PRO Nationals

[racingfan1]

Here is the last of the early years. I don't have to much from 1966 , only a few program pages and a couple articles out of Propeller magazine. Thanks again to RC Hawie for the articles!!!

[Ron Hill]

Prineville is a beautiful place, I've only been there once. It is in eastern Oregon in agate country. All first place trophies were made out of cut agate stone in-layed in fiberglass.

We met Mark Hatfield there who was running for Senator at the time, and the California "BOYS" played the Region 7 "BOYS" in football. The California "BOYS" had won at the 1963 Nationals in Boston and this was the first time we'd found a good place for a re match...In a cow pasture. (Seemed like a good place anyway) The game started out in fun, but when California had to "PUNT" on fourth down, I stepped back to "PUNT" and stepped on the big assed "COW PIE" and slipped. I flew up in the air, never kicked the ball, and landed in this "COW PIE". When I stood up my pants and pant legs were full of ****....and it didn't come from me. Between the smell and the mess the game got cancelled.

Sunday morning driver's meeting came at 8:00 A.M. and the Massachusetts and Wisconsin "GANGS" weren't there. And as I recall, Henry Wagner, was the referee and he said, "The hell with them, I'll disqualify them all for being late." So, he started the meeting, about thirty minutes into the meet here comes about six car loads of people they said they got in the middle of a "STAMPEDE" (Actually, a cattle drive that held traffic up for thirty minutes). Everyone got quite a laugh out of it.

The local people did a great job of promotion and they had a special trophy that they wanted to give to the driver who won by the most time. Of course, I got in the middle of the discussion, and tried to explain that faster boats cover more distance quicker than slow boats and I was sure the trophy would be won by a JU or JSH. They decided to use "time" without my help.

As it turned out, I won DU by what seemed like a big margin. But I ran second to Clark Maloof in D Hydro, and as it turned up, his margin was the largest at the Nationals. So, not only did my theory about the slowest class winning, it was the fastest class that won...and what it also meant was that I had the WORST second at the Nationals.

This trophy is in our office at Hill Marine...1966 Stock Nationals, DU, 1st Place!