Wing Side Up

By Bob Gangwer

Acing History

(Reprinted from Wailing with Wing Side Up LIVE internet radio show)

Oswego, NY 3/30/09….I’m a history buff and I’m not ashamed to admit it. I can dig into a book as big as David MacCullough’s 1776 or H.W. Brand’s The First American and not come out for days. I get equally enthralled with a quick story put up on yahoo about some hidden treasure they unburied in Arizona. Suffice it to say that the History Channel is one of the biggest reasons I keep cable. Call me a dork if you want to but I think it’s pretty cool to dig into the past and see how things were done, learn about great battles and politicians that shaped our world, or momentous moments in mankind that make us who we are today.

Now if you are a supermodified fan, there’s some great history that’s been made that’s pretty cool to benchrace about. Our division hasn’t been around as long as the sprint car, midget, modified, or Indy, but it’s a pretty storied one to say the least. Filled with exploits of great characters, fantastic inventions, and pioneering men who went out and built racetracks that we flock too for our fix. Many of us, myself included, have collected a whole lot of that history down through the years in the form of Oswego Speedway Eagles, and Open Wheel Magazines.

Today, as is normal whenever I come back to the original G-Pad, I headed to the basement and started going through some of my stuff and dug out a couple old Oswego Classic Yearbooks and Open Wheel magazines. I got to looking through the 1971 Classic yearbook and was groovin’ on all the shots of the greats that made this DIVISION what it is today. Seems there sure was a lot more Canadians racing back then, and you just never knew who would pull in from Michigan.

I looked at full grandstands in the background of pictures depicting Todd Gibson, Jack Conley and Jimmy Shampine and for a moment I was disappointed, but then I’d turn the page and look at some more cool Holynski roadsters or Doug Duncan’s rear engine creation driven by John Spencer and it’d be lots better.

Now history should teach us not only about what was good in the past but where we went wrong. I’d guess some of the wrongs were the definite lack of safety. Not that they knew any better back then but we certainly have learned from then haven’t we?

I wonder now what we are learning from the past that will make things better for the future of supermodified racing. Are we looking ahead or are we just coasting along wishing things would be as good as they were before? Are we finding new ways to get the word out, are we even remembering what worked so well in the past and working on making it work today?

Today, I wonder how much we dwell on the history aspect and get left wondering what to do for the future. I dug into the old open wheel mags and read a story about how horrendous the 1990 Copper World Classic was for the supers. They ran something like an hour and a half and only had completed 1 lap. Cars were blowing engines left and right including Gene Lee Gibson, Bentley Warren and Joe Gosek. Cars were crashing and fans were booing. There was a question as to whether or not they’d even run the next year. So after reading that, and knowing that we were seeing radical one off cars and guys were spending tons of money, I have to question why anyone thinks we need to go back to Phoenix again.

I would like to think that we have learned some good things from our past and aren’t just resting on our laurels. That we are coming up with good new gimmicks that bring in the fans but don’t break the drivers and that we know the direction we need to take for a great future that makes kids today want to collect papers, magazines and the likes so they have them for tomorrow.

The End

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