freaky friday

A couple unrelated things:

Just finished Bob Dylan's book, Chronicles, Volume One, and noted a short passage about stock car racing in the Hibbing, MN, area.

From page 233: There was other stuff going on. Dirt track stock car racing on cool summer nights, mostly '49 or '50 Fords, bashed in cars, coffin contraptions, humpbacked cages with roll bars and fire extinguishers -- seats taken out, doors welded shut -- bumpin' and rumblin', slammin' and swivelin' on a half mile track, summersaulting off the rails...tracks littered with junkyard cars.

Reminded me that in Toby Thompson's 1969 book, Positively Main Street, one of the people he tracked down to try to sort out Bob's beginnings was a woman Bob knew during his university days, Ellen Baker. And it's pointed out that Ellen drove stock cars at one point in her life.

"Yes, well, I used to be a professional stock car driver. Nothing international or superglamourous, just races around the state."

"Powder-puff derby affairs?"

"Nope, the real thing. No sex discrimination where the big money is, at least not in these parts. I didn't do too badly, either."

Would love to find Ellen's name in some sort of results from that area or, better still, up north in Winnipeg where the clipping for an IMCA stock car race comes from. The ad and other items mention names like Don White, Ernie Derr and Johnny Beauchamp coming to Brooklands Speedway. The next year Johnny would be oh so close to winning the first Daytona 500. He was part of the photo finish that Lee Petty protested finally to be awarded the win after Johnny had been in the winner's circle after the fall of the checkered flag.

And I've wondered if Dylan (the young Robert Zimmerman) saw the big cars of the IMCA at the local fairgrounds when they came through town.

(You got your Bob Dylan questions, I got mine.)