Bury Me in An Old MOWOG Parts Box - Doctor’s Office
By Jay Lockrow
A week or so ago I was waiting in a doctor’s office and picked up an outdoor magazine. I have always enjoyed this type of publication and often read it when having to wait prolonged hours in places like doctors’ offices. In this particular publication there was an article about how the author became interested in hunting, fishing and the outdoors. It seems he found a couple of books around the house, when he was young, about hunting and fishing and enjoyed reading about it. He became interested enough to go to the public library and begin reading the books and publications available there. He claimed he read all of the books on the subject that were in that particular category in the library. Through this and other books and periodicals he could find, he became an avid hunter and fisherman.
Oddly enough this is pretty much the way I became interested in automobiles. From about age six or seven when my dad returned from WWII we had automotive magazines and books around the house. Any of you out there remember “Speed Age?” It was an early magazine and covered oval track racing and other venues. However it wasn’t until the advent of Road and Track in about 1946 that the automotive magazines really started to run stories on some of the more interesting imported vehicles. We had some early motor books but nothing like there is available today. There were some antique automobile clubs around but again, it was not until after the war that SCCA was formed. (There was a pre-war club called the ARCA, Automobile Racing Club of America, that kept road racing alive in the states but on a much smaller scale and many of the vehicles were homebuilt or modified early imports. ARCA was disbanded at the start of WWII and never reinstated) ARCA is sometimes referred to as the prewar forerunner of the SCCA but SCCA was really an offshoot of the Veteran Motor Car Club of America as there were members that owned cars like prewar Bugatti’s, Alfa Romeos, MG and Bentleys that decided they wanted to race. So SCCA was formed to do just that. Early events like Watkins Glen had many pre-war entries. Myself, I first attended the Watkins Glen race in 1950 and even then there were still some prewar cars entered. George Weaver ran his old Grand Prix Maserati, called “Poison Lil” there way up into the late 1950s.
But I digress. I grew up with Road and Track coming every month and my dad bringing home the occasional motor book. I can recall giving book reports on motor books or motoring novels in school to the annoyance of fellow students and teachers who had no idea of what I was talking or writing about. Once in High School one of my English teachers read a story by the late Ken Purdy, a well-known automobile writer, called “Change of Plan.” During the dissertation he mispronounced Alfa Romeo (Alfa Row-me-OO) and I spoke up and corrected him. If looks could kill I would not be writing this. He was a bit strange anyway. I had already read the story and I resisted telling him that, yes it was fiction, but really a short biography of the great Italian driver Tazio Nuvolari.
As the years went buy I discovered a few other kindred spirits and we did all we could with our limited financial means to keep the spark from going out. I for example, read the books and magazines as often as possible. Once free of Uncle Sam and in the workforce I, along with those kindred spirits, were able to pursue or interests to a greater degree. All of this was of course intertwined with the occasional tune-up, brake job, car cleaning, or dragging some prize out of a barn somewhere. All great fun and I still do it to this day.