As a racer, there aren’t many places better to grow up than the Midwest . Within just a few hours of my house, there are a ton of great race tracks: Eldora, Lima , Findlay , Bloomington , Terre Haute , Fremont , Kokomo , and a whole bunch more.

            By the early 1980’s I had begun to have more success as a race driver. It’s funny how it works; the better you get going, the better rides you get, and you win more races. I guess they call that a breakthrough, when you’re finally able to get that right combination of confidence and a good car to drive.

            USAC raced a lot in my area, so it was only natural that over time I would begin to race more with USAC. Although it was still a tough series, things had changed since I raced with them in 1976. At that time I was really just learning the basics, but by the early 1980’s I had improved a lot. I went from missing most of the shows to being a contender to win races.

            USAC had also changed, too. In 1976 you had to buy a USAC license, and with that license you agreed not to race anywhere else. By the early 1980’s they had relaxed that rule, and you could race with USAC on a Temporary Permit (everybody called ‘em a ‘TP’), allowing you to also race with other series. That suited me, very much. When USAC was racing on the pavement, I could go race somewhere else.

            I still held out hope that racing with USAC would help me get to the Indianapolis 500. That was still my dream. Plus, some better races cropped up in my area for USAC. In 1981 Johnny Vance introduced the 4-Crown Nationals at Eldora, and big races like that made it more attractive to stay closer to home.

            So much of what a driver does is dictated by the car owner. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to race with the World of Outlaws; it’s just that I didn’t have a ride there. I could have run some hit-and-miss events, but it wasn’t solid enough to give up the rides I had around the Midwest .

            And I crashed a lot, so maybe I didn’t suit the car owners very well. I don’t know. It just wasn’t meant to be, I guess.

            In 1980 or so I began driving the Radar Racing car out of Pleasant Hill , Ohio , right around the corner from me (everybody around here just calls the town P-Hill). We picked up the USAC schedule in 1981 and ran many of their races, and we were doing okay, running in the top 10 pretty consistently. When I wasn’t running Larry’s car, I raced a good bit with the Nickles Bros. car out of Lima . I won several All Stars races in Ohio with those guys in 1980 and ’81.

            One All Stars win that stands out in my mind was in September 1981 at Lincoln Park Speedway in Indiana . That was a weird race, because I ran off the track and had to go to the tail for the restart. I had to come all the way back from the tail to beat Brad Doty for the win, which was no small feat, beating Doty.

            Let me tell you about the Nickles Brothers. Throughout my career, no matter what happened, it seemed like they always had a car for me to drive when I needed it. There are several brothers in the family, but Harold and Don are the primary ones involved in racing.

            If you knew those guys, you would laugh, just thinking about being around them. They are characters, I’m telling you. They’re also just about the greatest guys in the world.

            The Nickles are from Lima , not far from Limaland Speedway. The first time Dad went to Limaland with Junie Heffner, Don Nickles came down to their pit, and he was a cocky little dude. He walked up to Junie and said, “How much do you want for that car? I think I could stick my driver in that car and make a winner out of it.” Dad went out and won the dash, his heat, and the feature, and then he told Junie, “Fuck that greasy little hillbilly!”

            After that they all became really good friends. Don was a hell-raiser of the first order. When Dad started driving for Harold and Don later on, they had an old CAE car. He’d spend a lot of time up in Lima with those guys.

            I had gone into the army by this time, and right after basic I bought them a hat at Six Flags, and had their names stitched on it. Don’s nickname is “Scritchy,” so I had ‘em sew “Scritchy and Hurald” on the hat. Yeah, I know, that’s not how you spell “Harold.” But I honestly didn’t know any better because everybody-and I mean everybody-called him “Hurald.”

            Later on I started driving for them, and I’ve been in and out of their car more times than I can count. They’re so much fun to work with, although sometimes it doesn’t seem quite like fun. One night at Limaland, I was the last car to qualify and set quick time, which is very difficult to do. Now, you have to understand, the Nickles Bros. weren’t the most delicate, highly-technical mechanics. For example, Don used to adjust the fuel injection with a pair of Vice-Grips. Nothing delicate as far as he was concerned!

            I no sooner pulled into the pits, and they’re changing the car all around. Don jerks the hood from the car and starts adjusting the fuel injectors. Harold starts jacking weight in the car. My dad was parked right next to us, and he and his mechanic jacked my car up and started changing the stagger. All this, after I had gone out last and set quick time. Man, I was hot. I told ‘em, “You guys drive it!”

            They kept you in stitches, all the time. They had a trailer with a big metal tray underneath, where they stowed all their spare gears and other parts. But if it rained, water would fill the tray, and it was a mess. Down in Florida one year their van was broken into, and Harold said, “I lost a suit and a half!” The thieves had taken two t-shirts and a pair of pants.

            The thieves also stole their tools, which you couldn’t help but laugh at that thought. If you’d ever seen their tool box, you would have figured you needed a tetanus shot just to reach in and grab a screwdriver. They just said afterwards, “Aw, them poor people really needed those tools...”

            They’d give you the shirt off their back; they’re just that kind of people. And so full of shit! They’d lie to you when the truth is easier, just to screw with you. That’s where I learned to bullshit, and I got pretty good at it. It wasn’t that I wanted to lie; with those guys, it was self-defense. Survival. Actually, over time I think I got ever better at it that they were. I would call them on the phone from my house, “Come out on the Interstate and pick me up, my car broke down!” They always had a brand-new tow-truck, and they’re running up and down the Interstate, looking for me, and I’m sitting at home laughing my ass off. Then they’d figure out I was messing with them, and they’d get hot. It was so much fun.

            During the 1981 season I got a major break when Johnny Vance called and asked if I’d be interested in running his car at an unsanctioned 150-lap race at Paragon Speedway in Indiana . Johnny had one of the best cars on the USAC circuit, and Rich Vogler was his driver at that time. But Rich didn’t want to run anything other than USAC, so that opened the seat for one night at Paragon. We won the race, but Vogler was back in the car for the USAC races.

            A funny story about that night at Paragon: Bobby Kinser (Steve Kinser’s dad) was leading, and I was running second when Bobby got taken out by a lapped car. I went on to win, and Bobby was so mad he was spitting nails. He went down to the kid who spun him out, and the kid looked at him and said, “Mr. Kinser, I’m real sorry I bumped into you...I’ve admired you ever since I was a little boy, and I’m so sorry I cost you that race.” Well, what can you do when a kid says that to you? You can’t just haul off and hit him, that wouldn’t be right. So Bob just walked away. Problem was, he still had this real good mad worked up. So he walked into my pit, and started to give me hell. I saw him put his beer in his pocket, and I knew he was fixin’ to take a poke at me. I said, “Now Bob, if you swing at me, we’re going to fight. There ain’t going to be one punch, we’re really going to fight. So don’t swing at me. Besides, you’ve got no bitch with me...you’re just mad because you let that kid get to you.” He looked kind of surprised, and then he had this great big grin on his face, and he took his beer out of his pocket and we were friends again. Just a little diplomacy, you know.

            By that time I was running a little bit of everything. A lot of car owners called me if they were looking for a driver, and other drivers were calling me because I knew where the open cars were. I was the middleman; I should have worked on a commission. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to stick with one car; I just bounced around a lot, in terms of the series. All Stars, USAC, World of Outlaws, whatever it took to go racing at the time.

            My one-off deal with Vance in 1981 paid good dividends, however. That winter, he came to me and said, “Look, you can drive my race car, but you’ve got to cut your hair.” No problem, I said. Johnny was promoting his company, Aristocrat Products, and I understood that he was conscious of the image of his driver. So I cut my hair, no big deal. It was kind of a special deal because Johnny and his company are located in Dayton , right down the road from Troy .

            I’m not sure what happened with him and Vogler, I don’t know if Rich left, got fired, got hurt, I just don’t know. But it damn sure opened up a good ride for me, one that I knew could win races. I had no idea how quickly I’d find out.

            We started out at Eldora in April for the USAC opener. The race was televised on ABC’s Wide World of Sports, which was a big deal. I qualified fifth-quick, I think, looking for a good transfer to the feature in my heat race.

            During this time Weld Wheels had introduced some new wheels, steel wheels with magnesium centers. But there was a problem: the taper on the wing nuts that held the wheel in place weren’t exactly the same as the wheel, and they wouldn’t stay tight. I’m flying around Eldora and my left rear wheel came off. I absolutely flipped my butt off, and bent the car all to hell.

            They towed it back to the pits, and we’re all depressed. Jim McQueen, who was the mechanic on Vance’s car, was all set to load the thing up and call it a day. I was looking at the car and I finally said, “Look, Jim, we’ve got to put it on it’s wheels to load it, so let’s do that before we make a decision.” We thrashed around, replaced the axle, and fixed the bolt-on stuff that was broken. But the frame was busted up near the radiator, on the bottom of the car. Joe Saldana came walking by and saw us fixing the car, and said, “You’re not going to let that boy race the car like that, are you?” Jim just kind of shrugged.

            I had been running on Hoosier Tires, but Duke Cook talked Vance into trying a set of Firestones. I guess they figured they sure as hell couldn’t hurt anything. Jim cranked as much weight in the car as he could, and he finally said, “Jack, I can’t do any more to help it. It’s probably got 150 pounds of weight in the left rear, and there isn’t a thing I can do about it.” Then I climbed in and rolled ‘er out for the b-main.

            Amazingly enough, that bent-up race car was really hooked up. I won the b-main, which gave me a starting spot on the outside of the front row for the feature. Johnny came to me right after the race and he was just tickled to death that we had come back to win the b-main. He said, “Jack, I’ll tell you what...I know this car has been bent pretty bad, and if you’re not comfortable racing it, you just say so, and we’ll park it. You’ve already made my day, winning this b-main. You go ahead and do what you think is right.”

            “Well,” I told him, “now we’re gonna win the feature.”

            We did, and we were all on cloud nine. We didn’t just win; we beat Vogler and Sheldon Kinser by a half-lap, and they were the nearest guys to us. I can’t explain why that car worked so well, but it did. I came up to lap Gary Gray going into three, and I dropped down to put a big slider on him, and that ‘ol car just stuck so hard...I could go anywhere on the race track and I was fast.

            The Hoosier Tire guys were so excited and they came running, but they were sure surprised to see that I was on Firestones. It wouldn’t have made any difference; that car was gonna win that day, no matter which tire we were on. It was just our day.

            I’ve thought of something else about the Nickles Bros: They are fashion trendsetters. Really! You know the fashion for kids today, to wear their pants way down so that their underwear and butt crack is showing all the time? Well, Harold and Don Nickles have worn their pants like that for years.

            Trendsetters!

            Vance was the kind of car owner a race driver is always looking for: He’s always willing to buy whatever it took to win races. Having Jim McQueen for a mechanic was a big, big bonus, too, because Jim was one of the best guys with a wrench I’ve ever worked with.

            Jim set the car up to win races. Not how you drove; but what it took to win races. It was up to you to adjust. The race car was always tight; Jim always had tight race cars. That’s why we did so well on slick race tracks, but on the other side we struggled some when the track was wet and heavy. It just seemed too tight for me, for the way I drove.

            With Jim, everything had to be meticulous. Even him personally; his hair is seldom out of place, his clothes are always clean and neat. He always had a couple of guys working with him, and he ran those guys to death. But that race car was ready to go when the time came, you could count on it.

            Jim’s wife was Helen, and one day I spotted Helen’s daughter, Dana. She was laying out by the pool in her bathing suit, and she was absolutely a living doll. Naturally, I was very interested. She was going to Indiana University , and I said, “Yeah, you probably go out with doctors and stuff.” She said, “No, I like racing people, that’s who I was brought up around.” Not long after that Dana started dating Steve Kinser, and the next thing you know they’re getting married.

            Am I surprised Steve got married? Not when he could marry Dana. That’s a catch of a lifetime, and I think Steve was smart enough to see that.

            Some years later Jim and Helen split up, and he was a ladies man again, playing the field. But it never changed his racing deal. He was good to learn from, just a good guy all around. He is still involved as a racing mechanic, and I still see him at the races. He didn’t used to have a job outside of racing, but today he works for Roadway Express, loading trucks. And he loves it. Still, he takes no shit from anybody. He just doesn’t. That’s why he’s moved around some through the years, from race car to race car. But it’s always on his terms. I admire that. Without a doubt he’s pretty sharp on making the car go.

            By the middle of the year, though, I could see that I wasn’t getting the job done for Vance. Sure, we had won some races, but after such a good start it was disappointing that it hadn’t gone better. We were getting along just fine; we just didn’t have enough success on the race track. Eventually, later in the summer, Vance fired me.

            We had a good parting. We never had hard words, ever. We weren’t getting the job done for each other, so we both moved on. And that’s how we left it. No hard feelings at all. It was just time to try something different. I don’t remember how it was said, but I can tell you that it’s not easy quitting or getting fired. I don’t enjoy it at all. But there is nobody I’ve ever split with that I’ve felt that we left problems on the table. We’ve always managed to be civil and positive about everything.

            I become friends with people way, way too much. It’s not that I couldn’t handle being fired; it’s just that I wasn’t going to be with the friends I had made. You always leave a little bit behind. Then you have to start things all over again. It’s part of racing, and you understand that. It’s not like a regular job. If you get mad and quit because you don’t think the car is capable of winning, or you’re not winning in the car whatever the reason might be; then you really can’t get upset when you get fired if you’re not winning, and they think it’s the driver. Now, maybe it’s a little of both; maybe it’s neither, and it’s a little bit of luck. But whatever the reason, it’s not an easy deal to change.

            Later on that summer, Vance called and asked me to run his car at Bloomington , Indiana . It was only a one-race deal, because I had already committed to travel to North Dakota to drive Doug and Joanne Howell’s car. Jim McQueen had Vance’s car set up tight as usual, and I went out to qualify and just crashed the shit out of the car. It was way tight, and I drove ‘er into the corner and bicycled, and I just couldn’t catch it. It just wasted the car, and I felt terrible. Johnny wasn’t sore about it; he knew I didn’t crash it on purpose. That was the last time in my career I drove for Johnny, and to this day I wish I’d had a chance to get in the car again sometime down the line, just to do well for him. I still like him, very much.

            Like I said before: he and Jim McQueen were associates only that first night. After that, they were my friends.

            I’m thinking now of a day at DuQuoin, and I’m standing there talking with Johnny. He had just bought a new Ferrari, and he was telling me all about his new car.

            “Jack, it’s just an awesome car, you’ve got to come down and take it for a drive.”

            “Oh, John, I can’t drive that car.”

            “Why not?”
            “Because if I wrecked it, I’d feel just terrible.”

            He paused for a moment.

            “Hell,” he said, “it didn’t bother you to crash my race car! What’s the difference?”

            Good point.

            In early 1983 I hooked up with Bill King and Bill Powers, from the Evansville , Indiana area. They had a nice race car, and I had good success in that car. They had a guy named Doc as their mechanic, I never knew his last name. Just Doc. I actually drove the car on a one-off basis at Terre Haute in ’82, where we finished second to Sheldon Kinser in Ben Leyba’s car.

            I was in the King & Powers car in early May for the Tony Hulman Classic, and we won it. That was a big race to win, there are some heavy hitters on the list of winners of that event. Jan Opperman, Pancho Carter, Gary Bettenhausen, George Snider...I was proud to win that race.

            I don’t know why, but shortly after that I quit the car and went somewhere else. In the meantime they hired Rich Vogler, and won the summer USAC race at Terre Haute . A few weeks later I was back in the car, and in late August we won again at Terre Haute with them. The King & Powers car won all three races that year at Terre Haute , between Vogler and I. It was a really good race car, it worked very well.

            When they hired Vogler, they asked him how he wanted the car set up.

            He said, “You know how you had it for Hewitt?”

            “Yeah.”

            “I want it just the opposite.”

            Vogler liked a lot of left-rear weight, and I liked right-rear weight. He liked to go into the corner and throw the car sideways, and then he’s on the gas all the time to keep the car driving forward. I’ve got to stay on the gas to keep my car from spinning.

            I like my car to go in tight on the right rear, where today most everybody likes their car loose on the right rear. Kids today run the right rear way out, with more air pressure in the tire. They’re so brave they can haul it in really hard, and you can see how hard they drive today without flipping. Years ago we couldn’t do that, because we would have flipped over. They’re fearless now because they’ve got the right rear way out there, and they’re trying to get the left rear to drive forward so they can come off the corner really hard. They’re making the cars work like that, and usually they’re fast. But when you get the tracks dry-slick, you see guys struggle who are usually unstoppable. Tracy Hines is a perfect example, and so is Derek Davidson. They can’t get their cars hooked up tight enough when it’s slick. They won’t move their right rear in and lower the air pressure, because they’re so paranoid about flipping over. They just won’t. They’ll try to do it in other ways, but there are times when that doesn’t get the job done.

            One of my wins in the King & Powers car came in early August, at the expense of Sheldon Kinser. USAC implemented a rule that season requiring every car have no less than 12 pounds of air pressure in your right rear tire, and they checked the winner after every event.

            Sheldon was leading the feature that day in Ben Leyba’s car, and I was second. Kenny Schrader was third. There were two red flags, and each time Jack Steck, like all the other mechanics, would come out on the race track to check his car over and make adjustments. At each red flag, they apparently didn’t check the air pressure.

            One of the problems with racing tires is that as they heat up, the air pressure increases, which really changes the setup on the car. To remedy that we use “bleeder” valves, which we can set at a certain pressure and it “bleeds” anything greater than that. Sometimes, they stick closed, or they leak, and that’s what bit Sheldon and his team that day. Their bleeder was apparently leaking, allowing the pressure to slowly drop in the tire.

            I was absolutely driving my ass off to try and catch him, running just inches from the wall, balls out. But Sheldon was just too fast, and I finished second. After the race Schrader told me, “Jack, if you would have taken it into the corner just a little bit harder, I think you could have caught him.” That damned Schrader loved to be cute.

            We were pitted right next to Sheldon, and all of a sudden the USAC officials came over to check our tire pressure. “Looks like you won,” they said. “Sheldon’s been disqualified for low air pressure in his tire.”

            Man, Sheldon was hot. “We didn’t even check it!” he screamed, insisting that the low air pressure was an accident. Finally he got so pissed off he grabbed one of their tools and threw it on the ground, busting it into pieces.

            But he didn’t raise hell with me, which was a good thing. A very good thing. I had long ago decided that I didn’t want that big boy mad at me, not ever. He was so physically strong, with huge hands, and you didn’t have to be a genius to realize that he wouldn’t be much fun to tussle with.

            We just kept our mouth shut and took the money and went home.

            Sheldon was a neat guy. He liked to laugh and clown around and have fun. One time we were flying home from California together on a red-eye flight, seated right next to each other. He wasn’t all that much older than me; but the flight attendant took his drink order, nodded at me, and then asked him, “And what would your son like?”

            He just went crazy. “Lady!” he yelled. “How old do you think I am??!! He is NOT my son.”

            Aw, come on Dad. Lighten up.

            Sheldon died of cancer some years ago, but not before showing us all that he was one tough sumbitch. He had surgery and cancer treatments, but he still came back to race. He had a hole in his throat from the surgery, and when he raced he taped a little air filter on his throat to keep the dirt and dust out of the hole.

            Now that’s a guy who wants to race. I loved ol’ Sheldon. He was my buddy.

            A few days after my August win at Terre Haute , I left the King & Powers car to drive for Fenton Gingrich out of Kokomo , Indiana , in the McGonigal Buick car. Fenton was a really cool guy, he had absolutely the scratchiest voice I’ve ever heard. Very distinctive. It was a good situation because Jim McQueen had moved from the Vance car to work for Fenton, so I felt right at home. Bobby Adkins was also helping on the car.

            One night at Kokomo we were leading the feature when there was a red flag. My radius rod had broken off, where it mounts on the birdcage on the right-rear suspension. Jim looked at it and said, “Well, we better bring it in.” I said, “Oh, Jim, wait a minute, now...I’ve been running it that way for a few laps, and we’re leading this thing. Let me just go back out there and ride around on the bottom, and see if I can finish. At least let’s see what it’s going to do.”

            He finally agreed, partly because there were only four or five laps to go. We restarted, and I drove to the bottom, and that car was so absolutely nasty bad down there, I took that sumbitch right back to the fence and we ran up there. We won the feature with no right rear radius rod, which was pretty cool.

            I also won the sprint car feature at the 4-Crown in September in Fenton’s car, which was my first 4-Crown win. Later on we were going out to Phoenix , and I remember a funny story from that trip.

            It was late at night, out in the middle of the desert. Tony Elliott was driving our tow rig, a Chevy Suburban, with the race car trailer on the back. Tony was traveling with us to Phoenix , to run somebody’s car out there, and he was taking his turn driving. Fenton was riding shotgun, and I’m sprawled across the back seat, asleep. Andy Hillenburg (Indiana Andy) was asleep in the back of the Suburban.

            All of a sudden, Tony is slowing down, saying, “What the hell is this guy’s deal?”
            I sat up in the back seat, and we could see this goofy sumbitch standing by the side of the road, wearing a stupid-looking old leather aviator’s helmet from the 1920’s, and goggles. When we got closer he walked right out in the road in front of us. Tony swung the truck to the left to miss him.

            Well, the whole thing just pissed me off. What’s this guy doing, waking me up like that? I leaned over the top of Tony from the back seat, grabbed the wheel, and swerved back toward the guy.

            “Hit that goofy sumbitch!” I yelled.

            Poor ol’ Tony probably figures he’s about to die, with the trailer whipping around behind us, and he’s wrestling me for the wheel. We miss the guy, and by then I’m really hot. “Stop!” “Stop!” I’m yelling. “I’m gonna kill that sumbitch! Let me out!”

            Fenton sat over there so calm and cool, not the least bit excited, and he looked at Tony and said in that raspy, coarse voice, “Tony, just keep going. Don’t stop. If Jack kills that guy, we’ll be all night taking care of the paperwork. We’ve got to get to Phoenix . Keep going.”

            During the winter of 1983 I hooked up with Richard Briscoe out of Mitchell , Indiana for the 1984 season. Richard had been running a heavy old Mitchell car with Randy Kinser driving, but he got a Gambler and it looked like it was going to be a pretty good race car. Daryl Tate was the mechanic.

            Dick was a good guy, he’s just like he is now, he doesn’t say much. If you won he was happy, if you didn’t win he didn’t say anything. His boy, Kevin, was just a little kid then, but today he’s a good race driver. I had a good year in ’84 with Dick; we would race all over the place, sometimes with the wing and sometimes without.

            We won a couple of USAC races that season, at Kokomo and Eldora. We also won five All Stars races, including one at Little Springfield. Probably the neatest race of the year, though, came at one of the last All Stars races, at Avilla , Indiana .

            Avilla was an asphalt track, but they put dirt on it that season. We had a helluva race that night. We came from way in the back, and on the last couple of laps we passed Kenny Jacobs and Jac Haudenschild. Haud, who was in Bob Hampshire’s car, hauled ‘er in on the high side on the last corner and passed me back, or tried to pass me. When we hit the finish line, I felt like I was in front. Instead of just pulling up and stopping the next time around, I took another lap. When I came back to the front stretch, my buddy Haud was climbing out of the car, and they’re getting ready to present him with the trophy.

            I stood on the gas and roared up there, and jumped out of my car. “Hey, whoa, wait a minute, this ain’t the deal,” I said. They said, “Well, we think Haud won.” Nobody was completely sure, and Jerry Clum had his video camera in the number two corner, so we all looked at his tape. When you looked at it from that angle, it looked like Haud smoked by me in the last five feet and won the race.

            But before we had looked at the tape, I told Hampshire, “Before they go to all this trouble, let’s just put first-place and second-place money together, and split it.” Hamp said, “Hell no, I won!” I said, “No, you didn’t, Hamp.” Haud didn’t say anything, he was just standing there smiling.

            Jerry Clum’s wife was taking videos right behind the flag stand, and they went to get her tape. When they looked at the tape, it showed that I had beaten Haud by less than a foot. They gave us the trophy, and man, was Hamp mad. I said, “See, you greedy bastard, that’s just what you get!” I really rubbed it in. Ol’ Briscoe was pretty tickled.

            Little did I know that I had a big, big season coming, right around the corner. And who would be my partner? Bob Hampshire, of course. It was the beginning of a beautiful relationship.