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50 years of Hot Rods and Racing remembered |
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1954 |
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2004 |
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The Early Days Remembered |
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from Al Howlett I was part of the delegation that approached the senior/senior Melenbacker about using the property for drag racing. Another Stroker member Bob Young was also on the team.
An organizing meeting was held in Galt with quite a few car clubs being in attendance. There were clubs from Brantford, Barrie, Toronto, Hamilton, Kitchener and possibly others who were in attendance. I do not remember all the club names from that time. All these clubs had a hand in organizing the races.
The other prominent promoter was Gray Yonocko who had moved to Simcoe about that time. Gray was not a Stroker but was a very good friend of mine for many years and we kept in touch up until his passing in May. Gray was a founder of the Toronto Rod & Kustom Car club. The Strokers attended the
first drags held at Edenvale. We purchased the old horse drawn milk wagon
that was kept at the club house to carry the timing equipment. It also had
a viewing platform
Club house improvements There were three club houses over the years. I believe the first one was on East St. We rented an old 2 car garage that had a pigeon loft upstairs. The gent we rented it from was always looking over our work to see how we were doing. The pigeon loft was cleaned out and we used it for club meetings. While the meeting was in progress everyone had to sit still, if you moved around too much the whole building would sway and threaten to collapse. However some work was performed there on members cars. Bob Young was “frenching” the headlamp rims on his Ford. Frank Trevor was welding up the trim holes in his brand new Pontiac convertible. Next for a very short time we moved to a back yard shed over on Beverly St. This location was not adequate, so a search went out for something better and the old barn at the Delta was located. This served our purpose for many years. At first we only used the rear lower portion of the building. Under the barn portion was an old stable that still smelled of its former occupants. Several years later this was cleaned up and used as working space and a meeting room. Upstairs was a body repair shop operated by a Bill Bowman. After this Jackson appliances used this for storage and many old washing machine parts found their way into the downstairs projects. As Harold Dale has pointed out a wood stove heated the club portion. Andy Marsh who was in tin work offered to build an oil furnace for heating. An old oil burner and tank were obtained and Frank Trevor got some of us into the Sturtevant fabricating shop after hours, were we used the big metal brake to form the parts. These were welded back at the clubhouse. This did not solve the heating problems, as it did not matter where you stood inside you could see outside by way of the joints in the cement blocks. In Stroker fashion bags of cement and sand were obtained and a coat of slurry cement was brushed over the entire outside of the building. A small man door was cut in the large entry door so that the large door was only used for car entry. Winter also had more problems for the resourceful members to solve. The flat roof collected a lot of snow and this was converted to ice by the heating and cooling of the aforementioned furnace. So several members decided to remove the ice as it was looking like the roof might collapse. Brandishing an axe and shovel they proceeded to remove the ice. This conveniently converted the lower portion into an instant car wash when the thaw came. Well nothing beats learning on the job, so a new roof was installed at club expense by the club members. Over the years all repairs and maintenance to the building were at club expense. Another memory is of the demand electric meter that if you did too much heavy welding the meter could get pushed up on the peg and the bills would go up. Now were have I heard that lately? At one point the property owner rented out the back yard for the storage of used cars and do I have to tell you what a bonanza that was to the car converters? The clubhouse operated night and day and some nights and days were better than others. But the spouses and girlfriends always knew where to locate us. Al Howlett Be sure to check out the
Remember When page
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Later,
Bob was elected as the first president of the Automobile Timing
Association of Ontario. (Originally the OTA but due to
trademark conflict with the Ontario Trappers Association the name was
changed to the ATAO).
built on top. I was in charge of the towing of this
wagon with my (horse) 48 Ford pickup to all the races. The wagon was
painted red and white and had the Strokers crankshaft logo on it.
Hopefully someone has a photo of it. I can't find the one that I had. This
old wagon was a terror to pull because it would go into a speed wobble and
some times you were not sure if it was behind you or beside you.
