In music when you’re bad, that means you’re good. But in racing when you’re bad, YOU’RE BAD! The place was Tillsonburg at the Ascot Park Speedway, a 1/4 mile dirt track. Now I’m a promoter, a good one but not a successful one. There is a difference…about $5,000 a show!
Before I worked on the Ascot Park Speedway, I had been trying to get the old Atherton track going with Mini Stocks. There were lots of cars around, and Atherton was paved. I made a deal with the owner Tony Haggman, and all I had to do was to get a building permit from the township and repair the bleachers. We didn’t need lights as we were going to run on Sunday afternoons.
Here we go again, the government workers were telling us that we couldn’t run races there because it was zoned agricultural. So, they didn’t let Atherton run. What a bunch of dorks! There was a paved track, stands, out buildings, and hundreds of huge burdocks, some over 6 feet high. They should have let us run just to clean the place up, but we all know how these morons do things. Atherton, (between Simcoe and Delhi) would have been the better track as it was paved. Tillsonburg was dirt.
This was 1971 and when the track ran in the early 1960s they had all these problems with red tape. Another thing was that they could not charge money on a Sunday for racing in those days, so the promoters, Marsh Forchuck and J. P. MacDonald of Brantford, charged the fans $1 each for a coke and let them in to see the racing free. It worked. I don’t know why the track failed, but it sat there for about 10 years until I came along, and a whole lot of money was spent to tear it all up, haul everything away, and level the land so the burdocks could do what burdocks do best.
After we were shot down racer Harry Cooper said why not try to get Tillsonburg, so we did. We were told that #3 Highway was going to be bypassing the town sometime in the next three years, and if we kept it clean, we could have it for about $100 bucks a day. We all put a lot of hard work into the place, and got it ready for May 24th. Things went pretty good and we were starting to get decent crowds and lots of cars. Like any track, we needed local cars and we were starting to get some, when in comes the heavy equipment and our track, (Tillsonburg) was gone.
There are two things I must tell. One was on an afternoon when we had a roll over contest, someone brought in a 1953 Chevy. We built a ramp, wired the doors shut, and had a big rope for a seat belt. This was real stupid on our part, but you had to wear a helmet, not much good if you fall out and the car lands on you. Anyway, none of the locals that were doing this could roll the car, they would get it way up on two wheels, but would correct it. I was standing with Doug Sutton, a racing buddy, and with each attempt we would look at each other and shake our heads. Finally, after no success, we decided that we would show these folks how it’s done, and guess what? We were worse than the others, too damn much racing experience! We even tried to help each other, like saying, “remember, don’t correct it”! Nothing worked, and we were both booed and had very red faces. Finally, another race driver, Stu Pritchford, took the car and every time he would do a perfect roll, (landing back on four wheels).
The second thing was that the construction crews only took a wee bit off of turn one, and with a bit of work, we could have been there forever. We didn’t know this until a few years later.
Courtesy of Jim Dunham
