Ol' Jack Hewitt promoted some of those Eldora shows with Earl. We were shootin' the breeze with Jack at Springfield following the Bettenhausen Memorial one time during the years he and Earl were promoting those shows. Jack always ran a late model and/or a modified at the Illinois Fall Nationals back when they held that deal on The Springfield Mile but he said he wouldn't be racing that weekend 'cause it was the same weekend as the AMA show at Eldora. He asked me if I'd ever seen the flat trackers in action and I said no. He looked at me and said with all seriousness "those guys not only have big balls they're crazy, too". We laughed like hell. I figured if Hewitt seriously thought they were crazy then they have to be a great show.

We'd love to go to The Springfield Mile to see them but we're always at Indy over Memorial Day and Du Quoin over Labor Day. Gonna' have to break tradition one of these years and go see 'em on The Mile.

I was talking to a guy in the grandstands during the Horn Memorial at Du Quoin several years ago that rode in one of the novice classes there. He said Du Quoin, for whatever reason, was a place where several riders had been seriously injured or worse over the years. He said he didn't know why even after racing there a few times. Don't know if that had anything to do with them dropping Du Quoin off the schedule or not