> Johnny Rutherford, Lloyd Ruby, and Jim McElreath
Wow, there are some names from a while back. During the 60s I spent
a few weekends at Indy. My father was friends with this one guy who
lived maybe three blocks from the Brickyard. We'd drive down from
South Bend [ The home of Studebaker ] on some May weekends and
spend a day or two at the track during qualifying. Never a race, but still
fun times for a budding auto enthusiast like me.
This was back when the front engined roadsters, maybe Kurtis, Watson,
Offy? were starting to get surpassed by the likes of this little cigar
shaped, rear engined oddity, painted GREEN of all things, from England.
Jimmy Clark, the name sounds a bit familiar. Anyone ever hear of him?
And there were the STP Granetelli turbines, boy did they sound different!
Novi?
And speaking of Studebaker, a few years back my wife and I went with
her family on a vacation trip to the Bear Lake area in northern Utah,
southern Idaho area, which included some time in a town in Idaho called
Montpelier. I'm sure those names mean nothing to most of you.
Montpelier, though, at one time was a major stop on the Oregon Trail.
There's a nice Park Service museum there, and one of the things they
offer is this neat little tour that takes you through life during those
bygone times. At one point the guide is standing next to a nicely
restored wagon from that era, and he asks 'Who made such wagons
back then?' Some of the folks on the tour with us suggested things
like Ford, Chevy, Toyota. I piped up with 'Studebaker' - he looked a
bit surprised. I was wrong, though, as the Studebaker brothers didn't
start producing wagons until about a dozen years after the time period
in question. He did say later that my guess was probably one of the
most historically accurate he'd heard all season.
mjb.
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