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                                                         POP

I was thinking about some of the interesting characters from my boat racing days, and one man immediately popped up to the top of the list. Old Pop was of indeterminate age, probably in his mid 60s. He always wore an old ragged red hat, and a 3 day beard. I never knew his real first name. He was always just Pop Schlipf to all of us young-uns. We were ALL young-uns to him, regardless of our age.

 

 

Pop had been racing since the early days of the sport. When I knew him, it was the mid 1960s and early 70s.  By now, Pop had quit driving himself, but he had three sons involved. One of them, Wally, was about my age, a younger son, Jimmy raced, and an older son, I don’t remember his name, helped with pit duties. I tried doing a Google search about them, and find that Wally has recently retired from racing, and I think he may have died. He also had sons, Pop’s grandsons, that are still racing.

 

Pop’s son’s most always won the races they were in. They raced A-stock runabout and A-stock hydro. As I remember, the runabouts competition speed was about 45 mph, and the hydro was about 55 mph. Don’t quote me on these speeds exactly. Memories are a bit foggy. The power for these boats was a 15 cubic inch Mercury. Either a 7 ½ hp KG-4 Rocket, or a 15 hp Mk-15. Yeah, I know, how can a 7 ½ and a 15 be the same. Just chalk it up to the way Merc did things back then, but they were the same inside. These motors were mated with the Mercury Quicksilver racing lower unit.

 

Enough background, let’s get back to Pop. Pop, over the years, had learned all of the tricks about how to go fast. We all had suspicions that they weren’t always legal, but he never got caught at inspection time. Privately, he revealed some of them to us, but I’m not gonna reveal them to y’all. We did come to the conclusion that it might be a good idea to make him an inspector for our APBA races.

 

The A-stock classes were very sensitive to weight, and Pop always made sure that his boats were right at the minimum. The weights were actually a combined total of boat and driver. Lead weights attached to the boat were used to “fine tune” the over-all weight. I remember standing next to Wally as he waited to be weighed at the end of his final heat. Pop would bring him a bottle of water or soft drink to ensure that he was of legal weight. As he was helping carry the boat to the scale, Wally would “accidentally” slip and fall into the water to add an extra bit of insurance. One time, Wally really had to urinate, but Pop wouldn’t let him go. That might be enough to make him under legal weight.

 

Some of us liked to travel with our wives or girlfriends from St. Pete., over to Pop’s house. I think it was over toward Bartow, but memory fails me again. Anyway, we’d sit around his dining room table listening to his racing stories, as Mom (We didn’t know her name either.) brought us cookies and large, cold glasses of iced sweet tea. We were always treated like part of the family. Eventually, we guys would find ourselves out in the shop where Pop would show us his “stuff” and help us to know how to work on our boats and motors. During these times, he would let us in on some of his “secrets”. Remember the speeds I told you about earlier in this missive? As pop told us each of his little secrets, he would exclaim, “That one’s good for 1 to 3 mph!” After we left his house one day, some of us added up these “1 to 3 mph” secrets and found that his hydro must actually be running over 100 mph! One of Pop’s favorite sayings, when a boat was running fast, was “He’s really scootin’”! So I guess he was.

 

Pop loved to help young kids get into racing. He would often bring one to the races, and let him drive one of his boats, or help him get his own. I was working for Charley Morgan, builder of Morgan Yachts. I’ll tell you a bit about that in a later story. Anyway, Charley learned that I raced, and asked me one day if I’d help his son, Charley Jr. get into racing. I introduced Charley to Pop, who sold him his runabout, engine, prop, and a mess of other stuff. Pop often did this and would build another boat to replace the ones he sold. The “other stuff” was all of the odds and ends he didn’t need. Both Pop and I worked with Charlie to get him ready to race.

 

 

The big day finally came. The 5 minute gun fired, and little Charley headed across the lake to get ready for the start. I guess I’d better explain how these races were started. At the 5 minute gun, the drivers would all start their engines and go out onto the race course to start getting ready for the start. They’d all spread out in different directions to make final adjustments to their carburetors, decide on their approach to the starting line, and psych themselves up for the race. There was a large “starting clock” on the judge’s stand, right at the starting line, that had “paddles” sticking up above the clock to count off the minutes. One would drop at each minute, right up to one minute. At that point the last paddle would fall, a gun would be fired, and the clock’s hand would start going around counting off the final 60 seconds. At this time, the drivers would line up for the final approach . The idea was to be in the lane the driver wanted, going at his fastest speed, and cross the line just after the clock hit zero.

 

Remember, as we left Charley, he was across the lake getting ready. At one minute, we looked to see where Charley was. He was still across the lake getting ready. As the clock hit zero, he was STILL across the lake getting ready. At the end of the race, Charley finally came back to the pits, but never could explain what he was thinking about out there getting ready, while the race was starting. Soon after that, Charley brought everything back to Pop, never to race again. But there were many others that did continue on to racing careers of their own.

 

Pop was quite a joker. As a matter of fact, he had “Joker” painted on the side of the trailer that carried his boats and motors. One day, one of the kids that he was helping to get into racing, flipped his boat as he was practicing before the day’s racing started. The poor boy was devastated that he had hurt the motor. Pop re-assured him that all would be ok, but the kid was still worried. Pop figured he’d give him something to do while they got the motor flushed out and ready to race. He told the boy that it was a cold day, and that motors need to be kept warm. He sent the young racer off down pit row to find a blanket to wrap around the motor. Off the gullible young man went. He stopped at each boat to ask for a blanket. Naturally, they’d ask what he needed it for.  And at each stop, we could hear uproarious laughter erupt!

 

I don’t recall if the aspiring young racer ever figured it out, or how he did when he finally got to his racing heat. I do know that everyone loved old Pop and no one ever seemed to take offence at his little jokes. I value these memories of my racing years, and will tell you some more of them later.

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