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| 1991 | 1992 | 1993 | 1994 | 1995 | 1996 | 1997 | 1998 | 1999 |
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1995 was a great season for
us. We won the track championship at State Fair Speedway and won
another 10 features one of them was the Missouri State Championship
during the Missouri State Fair . We also won a good paying 410
race at Pleasenton KS. with several good cars from Tulsa, Iowa
and the mid west with our 360 engine
.
The only thing that was missing was my best friend and helper Charlie Kelly. He was getting tired of all the hours of work and travel. He had some fish at Truman Lake calling his name!
Eric Rose helped me that summer at the track. He was a big help with Charlie being gone. Eric has since done all of my paint work and now has a sprint car of his own that his brother Doug drives.
Some years no matter how hard you work nothing goes right. This was not one of those years. If a tire was going to go flat it would do it in victory lane. At the last race of the season I finished a perfect season by meeting my girlfriend Amy Fisher (not the one your thinking about!) She and I have been together ever since that night and she has become my best support in every way. She cleans, organizes, and she knows every part on the car. One day I went to work and told her that I needed to strip the car apart after work. To my surprise when I arrived at the shop there she stood in the middle of a pile of parts, grease from head to toe all 95lbs. of her. She is great with my kids and I love her and thank God everyday for giving me the privilege of her company.
This
is my Amy Fisher!!!Well 1996 started off just like
1995. We started with a win at Sedilia, Moberly and then Granite
City, ILL. the first three weeks of the season. The forth week
was not so good! We were at Granite City running the heat race
and I was all by myself when it sounded like a shotgun blast.
The next thing I knew my right leg was broken about halfway up
on my right shin. I think possibly a modified lost a lead weight
in the cushion and I ran over it. It felt like someone hit me
in the leg with an aluminum bat. It was the second time that my
leg had been broken in that very spot. The Mikels family drove
my truck and trailer home and I rode home from the track in the
back of their dual cab truck. They really have been good friends
and competitors over the years. Then Amy drove me the following
Monday to St. Lukes hospital in Kansas City where they installed
a rod in my leg, so there wasn't a cast. This was a great improvement
over my 1983 karting accident
where I had to wear a cast all summer. 
At this point I had some time to consider the future. We had been running for $500 to a $1000 to win in the 360 class and it was obvious that I could get hurt for that much money as easily as I could running for $5000 to win. We had borrowed a 410 from Tom McGeary, a friend I had raced against at Pleasenton KS. . We came from last in the "B"Feature and ran 2nd, then we came from last in the "A" Feature to fourth place before an engine problem side lined us at the Jayhawk Nationals. We finished 12th in the "A" Feature at Mayetta, KS. running with the World of Outlaws with a 360 engine in 1995. I bet your wondering where I'm going with this? Well here it is, I wanted to race 410 cars because I could see the television coverage picking up and if there would ever be any possibility of me being able to make a living at what I love to do this was the time. I had an extra three months to get everything ready and I knew that it would do nothing but get more expensive for someone small like me to make the jump once the corporations got involved and the gap would widen.
So now I had to sell all my 360 stuff during the winter and then I bought Tom McGearys used 410 but the heads and injection where outdated so I sold them and bought new ones.
We would have to travel more so we were going to need a bigger trailer. This turned out to be a major undertaking. I bought a 48 foot used refer trailer then I would need a truck to pull it with. So I borrowed the money to get a 1992 Kenworth T-600 for which we had no money to pay it off . I leased it out during the week to a local trucking company. So we had to learn how to run this business!! At the same time I had to design a lift gate to raise the car to the upper level of the trailer and close in the bottom to make it more useful. My dad and Enrie Walker helped me figure out the trailer problems.
1997 We started the season at our home track at Sedalia and had several mechanical failures that day. Our next race would be at Pevely MO. a couple of weeks later and our trailer was still not finished . I borrowed a truck and trailer from a friend and we never made it to the track so I vowed I wouldn't go racing until I could use my own stuff.
I took the trailer to a local welding shop to do some simple work and I thought I would never get it back. They wanted an arm and leg for the worst work I had ever had done. Needless to say I have redone most of it now but worst of all was they cost me two and a half months of racing.
We also had trouble getting our truck home on the weekends because of very poor management by the people we had our truck leased to. They left my poor driver stranded somewhere on the weekend with no load away from home several times which also left me without a tow vehicle. One of these weekends I wanted to go to Knoxville and had no way to get there when the phone rang. It was Jim Gill from Gill Signs he said " I got a guy down here with a brand new truck that wants to take you to the races" Well the beautiful white Kenworth in the photos has been taking us to the track ever since and he's a good wrench too. I wish that he was home during the week.
We did make it to the 1997 Nationals and ran very well. We led all but the last two laps of the qualifying heat race when our right rear tire sealed over on a yellow.That race had Steve Kinser,Danny Lasoski,Jack Haudenchild, Craig Dollansky, Randy Hannagon and some others. I was feeling guilty about not having run very much that summer for Tony Ross (American Compressed Steel,) Larry Ramey (Ramey Concrete Construction) both had been very helpful, so we decided to go west to Phoenix and Las Vegas in the fall. We really couldn't afford it but I wanted to race before spring and who knows maybe we would get some T.V. time as a bonus.
We packed up and headed west the first night in Phoenix the car wasn't bad in practice but we didn't qualify real good. I was starting on the fourth or fifth row of the heat race the kid on the pole drove Johnny Herrara into the outside wall on they came across the track right in front of me and flipped me end over end. The frame was badly damaged. A local racer Monty Shaw invited us to his shop to assemble our spare car. We literally worked around the clock and as soon as it was together we headed straight for the track with no sleep. In practice the car felt great until the last lap of practice when our only engine flatted out. We chased the engine problem all night we were running second in the "B" Feature when I finally had to shut the engine off it seemed to be really missing and it was our only one. When we had more time to think about it we decided that our ignition had been shaken up in the crash the night before. So we headed to Vegas with a new Mallory ignition installed.
Our Phoenix luck followed us there the first night I punctured a right rear tire and got into the wall with my new car and the second night our frustration showed by just being plain slow.
make them work.
I fought them for about a month and a half, finally I came to
my senses and put my Pro Shocks back on. The change was unbelievable
the car felt much better. The second weekend running them we
were starting on the front row at Knoxville and jumped out into
the lead what a great feeling to be back in the lead again!!
As good as that felt what was to happen next felt equally bad.
A rod bolt broke and did $10,000 dollars damage in a few seconds
before I could get it out of gear.