I did the tour a couple of months after my dad passed away, kinda as a tribute to him. It was fun when I got to the section with all the Sprint cars from the 60's and 70's, most donated by local/regional race teams, as the docent who accompanied me (and was about 15 years older than me, 70-something, was amazed at how much I knew about some of the cars/teams. I explained to him that I grew up in a racing family and I saw these cars race and knew the teams.
Funny story. In the late 1980's TNT Network rented the 30' platform boom truck from my dad's sign and lighting company to use as an aerial camera platform while they televised the World of Outlaws ⅓ Mile National Championship Sprint Car Races at Eagle Raceway. So, I spent the entire night with the truck parked up against the pit wall between Turns 1&2 about 20' up in the air and hanging 5' out over the track with the TNT cameraman, tripod and broadcast camera in the platform cage next to me on the Elliot lift.
After the race was over, I stowed the boom and drove the truck back into Lincoln and to dad's shop. Now, dad also owned the building across the parking lot from the sign shop building, which housed a coin-op laundry on one side and had his private office and behind the office his residence in the other side. Just to the south of the office/residence/laundry building he also owned a three-stall 'quarter carwash' that had bays tall enough and wide enough to easily put a semi-trailer truck in. The parking lot area between the sign shop, office and wash was huge. Anyway, I pull up to park the boom truck in the storage lot behind the shop close to 1am and notice three really nice semi-trailer rigs lined up each in front of a wash bay, with racing graphics and car numbers on them.
I go into dad's place and who's sitting on the couches in dad's livingroom drinking beer and shooting the shit with dad? None other than Doug Wolfgang, "Slammin" Sammy Swindell and his brother, Jeff Swindell - only the three best drivers in the World of Outlaws at the time! Doug Wolfgang drove Speedy Bill Smith's sprint car, 4x, for quite a few years in WoO before forming his own team, as did Jan Opperman drive sprints - a 427 BBC powered one - in the 1970's for Bill. Jan also drove the Speedway Motors Indy Car in the Indy 500 (Google: Indy Car drive with old bus engine) in the mid-70's.
