 And welcome to season two episode two arbitrarily determined the seasons that is of figments, the power of imagination. The shows intended to entertain you and inspire you and it might do that probably will do both today. I am making a big sacrifice to watch the or to conduct this show right now, because my Milwaukee brewers that's the shirt. are playing the Chicago Cubs starting in 10 minutes in a pivotal series between the central division leading brewers and I can't give the full name of the Cubs without violating some FCC standard. But it's worth it because today i'm going to have a good friend from boyhood days who's become a better friend to the thanks to the connections of the internet and he's going to tell you about his pigment. The reason I wanted to have dick and let me first talk about pigments, because if you're a new viewer if you haven't watched for a while. pigments are kind of fanciful notions that enter your mind and they have a bit of a bad reputation is is being just that fantasies in. They're the root of all great innovations accomplishments ideas that make a difference when the dreamer dreams enough and has enough determination perseverance and good luck to make his dream reality. So i'm a car guy, you may not know that unless I said it in a previous episode and you watch the episode but i'm a car guy i've got a slightly modified Mustang that you can see here. Nice I like that car lot in Hawaii, it just means I can merge like a big dog because there's no real place to let it eat what the big dog eat. So I fancy myself a car guy but through Facebook and other means i've reconnected with a friend from my days in shana wisconsin not spelled like it sounds. Name dick carthen i'm happy to have him here as a guest and talk about how he said to his wife Kathy honey I bought a race car aloha dick and welcome. Thank you, thank you glad to be with you. it's a it's a great story but you're not such a fanciful guy and we'll get to that in a bit after you're pretty serious about this now we we both grew up near. Half mile clay oval and shana Wisconsin at the fairgrounds we don't think this is the actual track but we both watch cars like this race around that oval and I remember vividly i'm sure you do. Yeah, I was I was as a kid went to the races just about every weekend. Yep, Saturday night and my first recollection ever of going to a motor sports event was the my family owned a funeral home and back in the 50s and 60s. funeral homes, typically in small communities provided ambulance service, so it was our funeral homes turn to provide ambulance service for the for the fairgrounds during the fair and they had midgets racing. And this was in the days of people know anything about motor sports midgets were very small cars or cylinder engines I remember my dad talking to one of the owners and the guy said he had about 90 horsepower in it. But looking back those cars didn't have a lot of protection. drivers went into the corners and had to pump by hand fuel pump to be able to keep the fuel pressure up. And now I thought that was just the coolest thing i'd ever seen and then after I got older to the point where I could be out alone on a Saturday night. Then my parents allowed my brother and I and the neighbor guy up the street probably a friend of yours Jim Spiegel to go. Go to the stock car races on Saturday night because his dad was in the vfw and work the beer stand so we had a ride out to the track and and back so I just about went there every. We rarely missed a race. I remember well I remember the days that my parents for whatever reason probably bad behavior didn't let me go to the races and we were close enough on Furby way to hear it drove me crazy to hear the cars racing around the track. And not be able to see it they can other memory I have is on that plate track the clumps of play coming off the wheels as they went into the corner it was awesome. It really was and and going back and i've learned this since then to some of the people that i've met through racing, but the guys that raised in the 50s and 60s there were no places to buy parts they bought everything came out of the junkyard. exhaust pipes often times were drive shafts and the cars were pretty rude and crude to drive, but at the same time. A lot of them home their skills and some of those guys that you and I watched at the channel fairgrounds went on to racing usack and usax dot car series. yeah they they were, as you said, pretty crude cars, but to me they're just awesome machines and. You know i'm a dinosaur who loves the sound of a reciprocating engine and man it was beautiful so tell us a little if you would about your family and your upbringing and what led you to your eventual life in racing. Well, our family was my mom and dad and brother and sister and as as we were growing up. I was I was not much of an athlete I wasn't into sports we went up to circle drive once in a while and I tried to play baseball and that didn't work out well. And and and then we started skiing there was a ski hill built west of shadow on elder coochies hill used to create a rope to pull us up the hill and I seem to enjoy that. And got to where I could get down the hill without having too much. excitement and I recall vividly going with the channel high school ski club, which was actually an outlaw club this school would not sanction it for the liability. And we went up to powder horn. And I think your family had a had a place up there and remember you as being one of the hotshot skiers. Your name was on a list of guys that had done real well on the slalom and whatever else they have there so. Well, I was voted most likely to be exciting but not very good. So the don't don't oversell that but our family did ski and just to talk about our upbringing in China and our families are both living pretty well at the time but but our the place we had. The first one I remember was in cable or in I'll think of the name of the place outside of early and all nine of us slept in a one room house so don't think of a luxury shall a viewers it wasn't so anyway so you're you're living life and professionally you went school and got into financial management i'm going to kind of summarize it and dick. After we spoke about three weeks ago getting ready for this show and I reflected on what you shared about your journey and racing it really occurred to me that you're a very methodical guy. And you've taken the same approach to this journey to having your own race car is that a fair description. I, I think it is I spent my career, almost all of it in the mortgage business the last few years. I spent with an operational risk for M and I bank and be more Harris from Toronto. You know, I learned that being successful in business, you can't take giant huge leaps at one time, things come along methodically. That was not my plan and racing when I bought the race car. I had all I started going to the Indianapolis 500 in 1968. Yeah, and I know I know that race and we hope to have you on the Monday after but schedule didn't work but that race is special to you right. Yep, we a Chevy dealer and in Sean Oh Bert Anderson was originally was very close to the Benton housing family and he told my dad he said you need to go and take your sons to the Indy 500. It's an experience they will never forget so my parents bought tickets when they were driving back from Florida when they drove through Indianapolis went to the ticket office bought three tickets. We went to the race in 68 and that was really something my dad renew that's and we started going every year thereafter and I think there were. I had to miss the race twice due to weddings in the family and twice it was rained out on race day and I wasn't able to stay for one day it got delayed to Wednesday another another year it got delayed to the following weekend and work wouldn't allow me to go there but I've been to a lot of races. There and we continue to go back every year since then. I'm going to guess that just doing simple fighter pilot math that means you may have been to the Indy 550 times. I think I think I've been there 50 times I know that I've been I've been in my seat at the at the start time more than 50 times. Also was boring. That in the upper deck underneath a canopy so we were dry. That's cool. So eventually having been around racing and there's a lot I'd love to talk about that we probably won't have time we'll see. Like your flying experience because we share that passion as well but eventually at age what you bought a race car. 52 I've got it and I took poetic license on the tagline for this and said the tagline was honey I bought a race car but it really isn't that your wife Kathy knew that you were thinking about it and you mentioned as we did the lead into the show that you really want to mention the folks who've been supportive to you in your racing pursuit clearly she's right there at the top of the list. Without her I would never have been able to do it. We were living in New York City from 2002 to 2005 and commuting to Bristol Tennessee for the NASCAR races. And I had been to road America for a vintage event and I saw vintage Indy cars and I saw vintage stock cars and I actually went to a vintage Indy car dealer in St. Louis to look at some cars. Who knew there was who even knew there was a vintage Indy car dealer. And unfortunately he talked me out of an Indy car. My friend Dick Trickle from Wisconsin Rapids had driven a car for Junie Don Levy of Richmond Virginia and coming back I knew that we were going to be real close to Richmond so I called Junie's shop, talked to him said I wanted to buy one of Dick's old cars and said we'll stop by. So on Monday after the race we stopped by and to make a long story short that was in August and in February he called me and he said I got a car for you come look at it. We drove down from New York looked at it I agreed to buy it. Got my job in Milwaukee with M&I and took the delivery of the car in August. Hey Dick let me interrupt to just say Dick Trickles was a friend of yours. Andy somebody I know that you think a lot of and work for his Memorial Project legendary racer over 1200 victories. Didn't do as well at the highest levels of NASCAR for some but a legendary racer. How did you get to know Dick triple how did that happen. I lived in La Crosse for 23 years. And La Crosse Wisconsin on the west side of Wisconsin for us here in Hawaii. Home a train company and I was working for a real estate company and we were doing business with a real estate developer and in La Crosse by the name of Charlie Raymond and we were at a meeting. At the end of May and my boss wanted to have another meeting on the last Friday of May and I said I'm not going to be here I'm taking off that day and Charlie looked at me and he said I'm not going to be here either that day. And he said are you going south and I said yeah he said so am I so we realized that both of us were race fans. He was a big long time friend of trickles and a big he introduced me to Dick and I started following him then and through Dick I went to a lot of NASCAR races and spent some time with him and I decided if I'm going to have a old stock car I want one of his An old stock or something you mentioned as we were getting ready for this is that you've never bought yourself a new car through. That is correct. But you did buy this car. This race car the one behind you know we've got another graphic without your face and for that is your car. Well that's actually the NASCAR Xfinity car I drove it wrote America. The trickle car was the High League Myers car as you can see. Yeah feel free to give a plug we don't get. There's no money in this and think that folks. But they're nice people. I bought the car from Junie he outfitted it for me and connected me to Joe Ryan and Gary Indiana who put the engine in it and the car was all put together by Ken Bell Junies shop foreman and I picked it up all the back to Wisconsin and then went to driver school. Okay let's stop there for just a minute. Let me put a plug in and take a quick commercial break if you will and tell you that we are brought to you by think tech Hawaii a nonprofit corporation that can use your support you can go to their website think tech Hawaii all one word calm. Don't put the all one word in there and make a donation if you would. They bring you both this show the power of imagination and my commentary show figments on reality now there won't be a figments on reality that's the reality of the holiday weekend next week. But we'll be back in a few weeks and see you then in figments on reality. So dick when you bought this car. Did you buy it to have in the garage and say I've got the coolest garage ever. Or did you really intend to race it you indicated you went to driving school so you at least intended to drive it. Right I made a range was to buy the car. My plan was to run it in vintage events up at road America. You're Elkhart Lake Wisconsin. And during the time that the car was being finished out for me by by Don Levy shop. Adding small things like an engine right because it didn't come up an engine. I was connected to a guy by the name of Chuck King from West Chicago and Chuck has worked for various usax dot car teams and and NASCAR teams. And he said what I should do is go to the driver's school at Midwestern Council of sports car clubs. It's going to have in early September. So I checked that out and decided yeah that's probably a good idea. I was so naive when I bought the cars I bought it with one set of tires. Not enough not enough Chuck said well you know how many sets of how many sets of tires that's for did you get with the car I said well it's on four tires. Yeah. They're probably need more than that so I went off to driver's school and didn't know what I was doing that the com director for Midwestern Council. Criticized me for bringing a 3400 pound 750 horsepower car to come through driver's school with as it was by far the biggest car they'd ever had in driver's school. And it's my car. Yeah. One one interesting experience I had in driver's school is we start out and we play play follow the leader. And we did for a couple of laps with the yellow flag out of each flag stand on the corners and then they dropped they dropped the yellow flag and now you can start to pass. So okay I'm going to go a little bit faster. And after a lap or two of that I came out of the last turn to go down to the front straight away and I thought to myself now's my opportunity to see what I paid all this money for and what I've been waiting for. So in second gear coming out of turn seven at Black Hawk farms I put the hammer down and the car took off and is like holy smokes this is from a Cessna 150 to 900 horsepower and a beach 18 on floats I mean it took off. And I rocketing into the first corner hammered the brakes and the next thing I know the car the car is galloping like it's going over. Culverts and I couldn't figure out what that was went through the next corner everything's fine. Checkered flag came out I pulled into the paddock park next to my trailer Chuck comes over and he said somebody's looking for you and I got out of the car and here's two of the safety workers. And each of them had a 42 pound piece of lead and they said we found these two in the grass and the other one is out in the fucker brush somewhere and we'll get it at lunchtime. And what had happened was the lead in one of the frame rails hadn't been properly fastened in when I hit the game flying out went out in front of the car and then I drove over all three pieces of the lead. Nice. So why do they call it fucker brush I think I know but why do they call it fucker brush. Being a pilot I think you and I understand. It's a tightening of a certain part of your body as things get bad and you get up what's called a pucker fact. Yeah, you get out there you're in an area you don't belong. So that's a great segue to what's your if not that what's your scariest moment I have a picture of the car. Driving on the grass which I don't think was intended. Well what's your scariest moment in the in your car any other race car. I think probably the one you're looking at there really that's a that's an ARCA stock car that some friends of mine put together with me and we ran it at Road America in 2017. And this I qualified I think 23rd out of 38 cars. This is my first professional race my first ARCA race and I'm first lap going into turn 12 Canada corner at Road America and I think somebody touched me from behind. There were no marks on the car, but all of a sudden I'm turned around. I'm looking at the inside of the fence, and I'm waiting for somebody to hit me in the passenger side, because I've got this probably over 13 cars to come around me they all made it around me. I was able to get going again, and continue but I, even though I've run 16065 at Road America, I've done probably 177 at Indianapolis motor Speedway and a vintage event. I did a test at Daytona and an ARCA car and probably got up to 182 or 185 cars always under control, but in this case, I didn't know what was going to happen. And of course, it's a steel body car, and when they hit it, it takes days to repair it and that's the last thing I wanted to happen was a was a major. Yeah, probably would have taken days to repair you to I know they've got their safety cages but you know what I've been thinking about that night, I share that sense of, you know, being in an airplane and a jet, whatever were as long as you're under control. Even the risky things don't feel, I wouldn't say not risky but if you get a vote, you feel like you've got under control. When you don't have a vote, say the airplane is departing control flight, and I've experienced that. That's a bad feeling. I'm not up to being a pastor and in a fighter and I'm sure you're not up to being a pastor in your race car. That's right. That's right. So let's time is flying. Let's talk a little bit more about your, your mentor Dick trickle. As I said he's he was a short track legend with over 1200 victories. What did you learn from him and about him that that drew you to him. I knew the name dick trickle when I first was introduced to him by Charlie Raymond. It was successful. I would read the Milwaukee Sentinel on Monday mornings after a USAC race at State Fair Park. Dick's name was always close to the top. But only after I met him and interacted with him and had and Charlie told me the dick trickle story. Did I realize here's a guy racing short tracks. They raced Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday, and some Sundays they had a race in the afternoon and in the evening, and they had specials on Tuesdays. All he did was the short track racing that a lot of for a lot of guys was a hobby, but he made a living. He had, he had two or three employees at the time he had two trucks the hall three or four race cars around. He had a dedicated race shop, and and he truly made a living and owned a home and raised family through through through relatively small time motorsports. And that was that was the outlier at the time I can remember guys showing up at the channel track with their feet up pickup pulling a trailer and you know it was, as you said just to have. I'm sorry I interrupted. It was what I call the, the golden days of short track racing, where they race on a budget with a modest sponsor, and the purses were big enough that that they could, they could do well spread. I mean, one consistently. Once he became a very consistent and he was a very personable guy. He ascribed to the what I what I call the Richard petty school of being a race car driver, you don't leave the track until you've signed the last last autograph in the evening. It all doesn't make any difference how late it is if there's still people waiting in line for your autograph you talk to him get your picture taken and you sign whatever they put in front of you and that's the way that was. He was in demand by a lot of tracks all over the country because he had a good following. You know they talk about professional football teams and college teams traveling well, the trickle fans traveled well and traveled extensively to watch him race. Yeah, and you know he got his success after I joined the Air Force and and left Wisconsin for travels around the world but I still knew how well he was doing. And his story gets to be so interesting when he got a call at age 49 to fill in for an injured driver at at Rockingham North Carolina that really started his NASCAR career he was the NASCAR rookie of the year at age 49. And I mean that was the most bizarre thing that that ever happened. So, folks I recommend you Google or whatever your search engine and preferences Dick trickle it's an amazing amazing story and sad ending and, and, Dick I know that you still support the memorial project and keep his memory alive and I'm grateful for that. I'm not so grateful that this has gone by so quickly. There's a lot more I'd love to talk about, including your flying because you've done extensive flying in float planes and other stuff that I have flown. But before we go I do need to ask you what's your current pigment so you live the dream and bought your car and I know there are many more stories to share on that but what's your current dream, your figment. As far as racing goes. I want to run Bonneville. I'd like to run Bonneville salt tracks where salt track where speed record you're set folks. I want to run my highlight Myers car over 200 miles an hour and probably the most difficult thing would be for me to do would be I'd like to run the pike speak hill client. Awesome. Yeah, the hill climb I've watched that on various shows and I'm not going to Bonneville because I'm smarter than that. For my own feel level and probably not going to do the hill climb my we usually close with what would figure here's what big would do big would not get in his Mustang and think that he's dick car. Okay, I'll remember that I'm just Dan leave on the streets of Oahu and try to keep things reasonable. Dick an amazing story. I wish we had more time maybe we'll come back again sometime. Thanks so much for sharing your pigment and how you made it reality and for making the time to talk with us. Well thanks for the opportunity I really appreciate this keep up the good work. Oh, thanks. My pleasure. So that's it in the can already another edition of figments power of imagination season two episode two. No figments on reality next week the following week in the next pigments the power of imagination. I'm going to try to talk my friend Ross rolly rolly into coming back and talking baseball. If he doesn't, I will because I'm a fan, and it'll be just the day before the all star game so hopefully Ross and I will give our assessment of the season thus far and our figment will be that we're MLB network commentators, which we're not. So thanks again for viewing thanks to think think tech Y for hosting and aloha.