Gone Racin' - Tex Smith, Everybody's Friend
By
This is a story about a man called Tex who didn’t come from Texas, with a common last name but an uncommon story. It isn’t a biography; there are much better obituaries on record and Brian Brennan did a wonderful story of his life. He was everybody’s friend and if he had an enemy I don’t know of any. He had the most irrepressible smile and charm. They say he could talk the Devil out of Hell and the places Tex traveled to often were hellish. He was urbane and suave but he preferred the rugged outdoors of his beloved and very rural Idaho. He tired of the city life and moved to Driggs, Idaho and one of his daughters’ lived in Veyo, Utah. I’ve never been to Driggs, but I have been through Veyo and it is a beautiful, out of the way place on no one’s particular route. Another favorite place was the wild, wide open Montana heartland where his in-laws were supposed to hail from. A little place called Wilsall and yes, I’ve been there too and it is heaven on earth in a sort of SHANE (the movie) backdrop.
There wasn’t anyone he didn’t know, or at least I haven’t found anyone who didn’t have a Tex Smith story. There was good pal Ron Ceridono, whom he called Ronnie Poo. But then if he liked you he gave you some sort of baby talk name. I never heard him curse; he might have, but I can’t recall. He was one of the few men I know that could get my stepmother to smile and giggle like a young girl. Barbara Livingston Parks wasn’t one to trifle with; or to suffer fools easily and she was very protective of my father, Wally Parks. Barbara not only tolerated Tex but worked on important projects with him. The youth of the times loved him. Why not? He was an Air Force fighter pilot and a hot rodder who went where he wanted, made friends easily and well, he was really cool to have as a friend. He was friends with all the old Hot Rod staff members. He could even persuade Tom Medley to give up his comfortable digs and go fishing with him. Tex knew all the old fishing holes, because he made friends and friends will share their favorite fishing hole locations with friends.
I meet people all the time who look just sort of common. They really aren’t; they are just unassuming until they tell me they know Tex Smith. At that point I know I’m dealing with people of substance. One such man is Burly Burlile, whose real name is Barry I think, and he isn’t as burly in person as you would think. Burly is just helpful and friendly and kind; the sort of man Tex would encounter. You see Tex just had this foresight to see good people, or maybe to see the good in people and encourage it to come out. It’s also possible he may have stomped out a good bit of the devil in people and left the good in its place. All I can say for sure is once Tex was through with you the general opinion is that you were a nice fella. Burly and Tex went on a lot of trips, hot rodding trips. Tex was a real hot rodder; when the mood struck he was off on a trip and it wasn’t one of those “wagon train trips” where you packed for survival. The only thing Tex needed was a roadster, a set of keys and enough gas to get started. He didn’t care if it rained or the weather was blistering hot or frigidly cold and there were always places to get a bite to eat. If there weren’t any motels around he would sleep in, under or besides his roadster. If there were no cafes along the route he would make friends with people along the way. He was what the people of today call a minimalist; he really only needed himself and the open road.
Another one of his friends was Don Francisco who was the resident grump of the group, but then you needed someone grounded to keep Tex and the hot rodders focused. It is probably easier to mention the people who didn’t know Tex; but where is the fun in all of that. Another friend was Dick Wells, another Hot Rod editor and long time friend of Wally Parks. Jack Stewart was another buddy as well as all of the guys in the L. A. Roadsters. Ray Alcaraz was in the Air Force with Tex and stationed in Germany back in the 1950’s or maybe a bit before. Tex bought an Austin Healy and Ray owned an MG. Sports cars were cheap after the war and they were light and fast. Many servicemen came back from Europe with sports cars. Alcaraz told me, “At the time he had an Austin Healy and I had a MG. We and some others formed a Club called the Birkenfelders and ran in a lot of Rallies and races at the Nurburgring. We used to have some good times together.” Brian Brennan added this about his good friend, “Yes, the first time I sat down with Tex we had Dr Pepper and Snowballs. Oddly enough Dr Pepper was and still is my favorite drink. The Snowballs I have graduated to something more substantive.” Throw in some Twinkie’s and you have the makings of a feast on the hot rodders road trip.
Personally I preferred the oranges and heavily salted peanuts and pistachio nuts that you could find everywhere on the roads of Western America. There is no denying that Tex loved to drive. Whether alone or with some of his closest friends he would take off and just drive. I remember a typical day trip when my father would pick up my brother David and I and we would drive south, around the Salton Sea, down to Mexico and probably over the border on some unmarked dirt road then head north past Indio and back into Orange County. If he stopped at all it was for gas and a quick hamburger. Tex was like that too; what good is a roadster unless it is churning up the miles on roads hardly traveled. It didn’t matter if we passed the Baghdad Café or motored up to Gerlach and out onto the miles of hardpan playa to just “spin the tires.” If there was a road, gravel path, or just ruts to follow you found Tex and the other hot rodders with an itch to follow and find out what’s on the other side.
The first time I met Tex was sometime in the late 1950’s when he convinced my father that what I needed was some dude ranchin.’ So my dad agreed and put me on a DC 6, one of those squat and bulbous propeller driven planes that did such wonderful duty for our troops, but bounced all over the place when buffeted by winds. I can still remember seeing the fields and houses below. In Butte the Woosley family picked me up and we drove toward Livingston, Montana and then up a lonely and beautiful road, down a valley with towering mountains on all sides. The Woosley’s were Peggy’s family I believe, or some sort of relatives. Tex idolized Peggy and they were quite a pair, cut from the same cloth and fated to be together for eternity. They had a cattle ranch and fields of green alfalfa which they would mow with a reaper three or four times during the summer. For me, a 125 pound kid it was overwhelming. The hay bales weighed more than that. If I ever imagined my life to be tough I was in for a rude shock. I learned to rope, ride and herd cattle but there was nothing dude about it. You had to tend the cattle on horseback through rain or shine, day or night and the lightning doesn’t come one at a time; it comes by the dozens. I came to love the tough men and women of the western cattle ranches though I was a complete failure as a cowboy. The men were rugged, the women were all beautiful, the air was clear and the streams teemed with trout. The alfalfa pollen did me in after a month and that was the end of my dude ranchin.’ It was pure Tex Smith though. He loved the land, but he loved “old iron” better and that drew him away from “God’s Country,” and into the cities where he made his living. But he always found a way to get back to open sky country. A week after I returned home an Earthquake devastated the area to the south of the ranch and caused the Hebden Dam to collapse.
There are some people who look for arcades and others who yearn for arenas and sporting events. For Tex there was the dump, the junk yard, parts depot, the wrecking yard or better yet, a good old trash spot. Finding old iron in the form of abandoned autos was an addictive drug to his system. Another place was the local dragstrip and the possibility of a blown engine or totaled drag car. I was visiting my father in Sherman Oaks in early 1962 when there was a knock on the door and there was Tex and two other men, carrying the remains of a drag car that they had picked up and welded into a floor lamp. It only stood four foot tall and it was the ugliest looking thing that you ever saw. In fact it was so butt-ugly that I wished I had it to put in my living room. It is now in the Wally Parks NHRA Motorsports Museum, located on the grounds of the Los Angeles County Fairplex, in Pomona, California. Nearby is an uncomfortable green bench with racing stickers that used to sit in dad’s basement. A lot of famous butts sat on that ugly wooden creation, including Tex. That would look nice too in the living room, but I’ll have to sit on it when I visit the museum.
Tex came in a rough package from a tough childhood, but you wouldn’t know it after speaking to him. He was self-made in every fashion. Smith was his stepfather’s last name; I don’t think he ever told me his real father’s surname. He wasn’t born in Texas either, but in Oklahoma and he claims real Indian blood, even back in the day when it wasn’t politically correct to be a Native American. I never knew Tex to raise a fist in anger towards anyone, but that’s not to say he never did. Those old hot rodders had a code, sort of like the code of the old west. It was a hot rodders code; we take care of our own. That meant they helped out a buddy who needed help. Why bother the police or the government; that would just mean more headaches. So if someone needed help you gave it to them. You didn’t wait for them to ask; you pitched right in and helped. Much of the time you did it anonymously. Who needed to stick out like a sore thumb when you could simply do it on the quiet? The code also worked in reverse. If hot rodders were illegally street racing there was no need to call the police. You simply got your friends together and you went over to the miscreant and “reasoned with him.” If that didn’t work you offered a hot rodders “massage,” and that usually took care of the problem.
But few people argued with Tex. He had that special charm that made you want to do what you were supposed to do. The young hot rodders and drag racers of the 1950’s and ‘60’s idolized Tex. He was the real McCoy in every sense of the word. When he spoke they listened. Tex never bragged; he just did what he had to do. That’s why my father assigned Tex to work with my stepmother around 1960 to rebuild or bring back the car club culture that was dying out. Everyone in the 1930’s, ‘40’s and ‘50’s belonged to a club, though it wasn’t always a car club and sometimes it was more akin to a gang. My father belonged to the Road Runners and they were a serious racing club and an original founding member of the Southern California Timing Association (SCTA). Another famous club of the time was the Gophers and while they did belong to the SCTA and some raced; their main purpose in life was fun. They were the Frat boys of their time. Their hijinks were legendary, often illegal and beyond risky. They were the club to belong to if you wanted excitement. Every club had its own boundaries and purpose for being. By the 1960’s with the growth of drag racing there wasn’t a need for the car club format. Clubs disbanded by the tens of thousands and reformed into two or three man racing partnerships.
Barbara Parks and Tex Smith were put in charge of the ICCA, or perhaps the CCA. It stood for the (International) Car Clubs of America and it taught the youth how to be hot rodders, how to work on their cars as a group and how to help the public. I remember stopping to help a woman who had a flat tire and I changed it for her. Tex visited car clubs all over America. Ten years before it had been the Safety and Drag Safaris with Bud Coons, Bud Evans, Erich Rickman and Chick Cannon who had gone out to America’s Heartland and taught safe racing techniques. Now it was Tex and Barbara who tried to reorganize the nation’s youth. A sort of hot rodding Boy Scout movement you might say. It failed badly. It left a sour taste in everyone’s mouth that the past was dead and a new future was coming. Perhaps it was bound to happen. The nation was torn apart by the Viet Nam war, civil and racial unrest and the drug culture. Hot rodders found themselves on both sides of this horrible period in our nation’s history. I chose to enlist, other’s fled to Canada, and some bombed government offices. Unity in hot rodding proved as elusive as it was in the general public.
Tex went on to a successful publishing career and started up his own business with his friend Ron Ceridono. Tex was also a successful editor, writer and photographer with other publications, including Petersen Publishing. He knew Pete, as we called him, though he was the boss, Robert E. Petersen, the bedrock of all automotive publishing. Tex had an editing style that was worlds apart from that of my father and Dick Wells. Every story I ever sent to Wells and my dad came back red and blue marked. They even edited my emails to them. But Tex, what can you say, he destroyed the English language and made a new grammar and he did it deliberately. He listened carefully to how hot rodders spoke and he followed that speech and grammar carefully so that his style was exactly like the rest of us. In the beginning when I published some of his wonderful stories I would try and edit his spelling, grammar and syntax. What came out was not Tex Smith, but a fakery that was insulting to him. So I quit trying and left him to express himself as he chose to be. Did he lack education? No, he was a very literate man who simply found the idioms and language that expressed his spirit. To put it bluntly he was speaking and writing in the 1930’s Dust Bowl Okie style. It must have driven the hyper-careful Wells up the wall to see the writing style that Tex mastered. But whatever editors thought, the public loved it.
If Tex was fun to be around it was because he never really took things too personally. It’s true that he helped to create the street rodding phenomenon and many organizations owe much to his input and creative talents. Hot rodding and street rodding would have been different without Tex Smith. Yet when he blended with his friends he could be just as fun loving as they were. You always had to look out for the pranks that were sure to be pulled. They weren’t really bullies; in a sense they were perpetual teen-agers who never grew up and their shenanigans were tame. We laugh at their antics now. I remember the time dad put an NHRA decal on the window of the rotating “Space Needle” in downtown Seattle. It was very difficult for the waiter to peel off the sticker as the booths rotated and the glass remained stationary. The waiter had to move to another empty booth every two minutes or so. As soon as he got one decal off they stuck another one on the glass window. It provided two hours of merriment for these “old” hot rodders.
When Peggy died Tex sort of drifted away. He missed her terribly and where he found comfort was on the open road. He would fill his station wagon with books and other products and head for races and car shows. Then after being surrounded by admiring fans he would get his fill of civilization and head back home to Driggs and the Big Sky Country. He met an Aussie, a pretty lady, who brought some spunk back into his step and he tried to get her a visa to come and live here. For some reason, probably a minor thing, the new lady in his life could never get a visa or green card and was fated to stay in Australia. Tex loved the Outback Country; plenty of spaces to roam around over there and Aussie friends everywhere. He loved Lake Gairdner, a great salt lake playa that looks today what our Bonneville Salt Flats looked like back in 1949 when the SCTA first went up there to race. He was at peace in the Great Island Continent with his new wife, emailing us stories from thousands of miles away. But he missed the racing he knew over here; Bonneville, El Mirage, Indy and much more.
There was another aspect of Tex that I will miss. He was the guy to go to, the doyen of the sport, the father figure who was always kindly and patient. He was the expert on many subjects and the person to admire and look up to. Now that he’s gone there is an awful emptiness in my soul. I have no one to turn to now. It is up to me to be what Tex was. I have to set the example, have more joy in my manner, and help out those in need. I’m not sure I’m up to the task. There will never be another Tex Smith and I can deal with that, because he left a lot of friends behind who will help with the task he set for himself. A Celebration of Live for Le Roi "Tex" Smith is scheduled at the Wally Parks NHRA Motorsports Museum, on the grounds of the Los Angeles Fairplex, in Pomona, California for October 3, 2015 from 3pm until 7pm. For additional information contact Brian Brennan at [email protected].
A Celebration of Live for Le Roi "Tex" Smith is scheduled at the Wally Parks NHRA Motorsports Museum, on the grounds of the Los Angeles Fairplex, in Pomona, California for October 3, 2015 from 3pm until 7pm. For additional information contact Brian Brennan at [email protected]. The museum is a half hour drive from the Santa Ana Drags Reunion, so you can make both events.
The Santa Ana Drags Reunion will be held on Saturday, 3 October 2015, at Santiago Creek Park, from 10AM to 2PM. For more information contact Richard Parks at [email protected]. There is no charge for attending and light refreshments will be provided. Bring copies of your photos and memorabilia of the old dragstrip to show.
Gone Racin’ is at [email protected].