Been awhile since I have done a continuous narrative for a couple of reasons. Number one is I have been busy at work, but mostly because I want to keep the story straight and tell it like it happened. Two things here have hampered me, and I have started writing notes, time frames, music broadcast from then to help me get it straight. And the fact that in 1968 I moved away from home, and thus lost the daily contact Baldy had with boat racing friends. There's a lot I would have known, and stuff he would talk to me about, but I wasn't there. Couple that with the fact that I was getting enough experience that I didn't write down everything I did or was advised to do in order to become a better mechanic. Jack Chance had things written down in his dark shop, but that was all about specifications. He already had that in his head when he started teaching me, and what he taught me was more hands on, and tedious crankshaft and rod spacing work.
The second and probably most important was that since I was away from home, and not working on boats or motors all the time I quit taking notes about the work, and the races. I was taking notes for my business administration classes and the other required classes plus electives. I was not writing down all the stuff we worked on for our racing agenda. Therefore, I remember a lot of what went on, but not exactly when things happened like I did when I was living in Alice and took notes. Since Bud Turcotte and I moved into San Marcos to go to Southwest Texas University I remembered most of everything on a time line, but it gets fuzzy within a few months either way from here on until after I graduated and started writing things down again. Some things until then are very specific on the time line, but other parts of the story I will have to take time to recollect and talk to friends about what they recall. It's been fun because I have talked to several before resuming this story.
This next story falls sometime between December 1968 and January or February of 1969.