Wheaton Wins!

So, we're back with race number two, and the results of the race are very interesting.  Ivan wins his second race, but as the headline of September 14, 1914 reads, "Three cars mixed up on race track".  Mixed up indeed!

This second race of Ivan's career takes place at Fonda Fairgrounds again.  An interesting description of the race indicates that the track is located on the river, which supports a view from a previous post that the Fonda speedway of today may well have been the same location as in Ivan's day.  This race also attracted another large crowd, by one account it was double (3000 people!) the size of the first race!

The twenty mile race is the focus of the headline, and the mix up occurs at lap 17.  According to the first article, it was obvious to the writer that there was an attempt to keep Ivan from passing during some portion of the race.  Seems to me like Ivan was getting a little testy about this and decided to make a bold move on the back straight.  Somehow while he was passing Stewart, he caught the guy's rear wheel, taking him out of the race.  The other Ford apparently had some engine trouble, and Ivan won the race.  Ivan placed third in the 10 mile race.  (this clipping is readable at full size, but Lightbox sometimes doesn't let you view it full size. Try right-clicking this if you can't see it full size and either "view image" or "open in new window)

This next set of newspaper articles is taken directly from the scrapbook.  They're all interesting reads, but especially the last clipping, which is a direct response to the article above.  Stewart answers the writer's accusation that he and Jones were attempting to keep Ivan from passing them.  I'm reminded of the quote from the Marx Brothers movie, Duck Soup.

Mrs. Teasdale: But I saw you with my own eyes!

Chicolini: Well, who you gonna believe, me or your own eyes?

Stewart accuses Ivan of passing on a "dangerous curve", and states that he should have been disqualified.  He finishes up the post with some classic 1914 trash talking.  The first article answers a question that I've had while viewing these old photos... who is the other guy?  Charles Vollmer.

Here's a photo from Fonda, probably Stewart.  Notice the amount of spectators lining the infield rail this time.  You can also see a number of shadows from spectators to the left of the photographer.

Another vantage point from the race at Fonda.  Very difficult to tell much through the dust, but just having a photograph of this event nearly 100 years ago is, to me, really amazing.

More 1914 racing coming up.  Next we'll be racing at Ballson Spa, and unfortunately, I don't see much in the way of Ivan taking up Mr. Steward on the rematch.  We have some really, really excellent photos of this event as well.

-kpw

1914 Indy 500 Continued...

It has been a very busy week with school, but I'm winding down this afternoon and plowing into the scrapbooks.  I don't handle these very much, since they are so delicate, and they are just shy of 100 years old.  It's apparent that my grandfather enjoyed them, and must have gone through them with friends many times over the years.  When I do get to slow down and pay attention to each photo, do some internet searching and cross-referencing of other photos in the scrapbook, it's an adventure.  It really is like discovering an old abandoned house, or warehouse full of related items that tell a story once you look at them in context.


This weekend I'm finishing up the Indianapolis 500 from 1914.  There are so many photos that are exceptional that I'm hard pressed to choose, and I have a fair collection to show you today, so I'll get  started!


I'll begin with a great photo of René Thomas in his car.  I'm pretty sure this is following the race, but it's arranged very near the beginning of the sequence of photos in the book.

This next photo, is actually a scan of 2/3 of a page of the scrapbook.  I just couldn't decide which of them I would eliminate, and I thought it would give a good feel for what a page looks like.  It was nothing fancy, just some glue and the page in the scrapbook.  The photos aren't  carefully cut, and you may be able to see that they were not particularly carefully developed, either.  One interesting aspect that I've been meaning to mention can be seen in the photo in the lower left.  You see this in many racing photos in the early years of racing.  It's caused by the way the shutter worked in old cameras, and began allowing light to strike the emulsion at the bottom, working its way up.  Here's a fantastic explanation, with an animation to drive home the point.  The same photo gives a good view of the famous bricks of the speedway.

This is probably one of the most interesting photos of the bunch, to me.  I love the feeling of speed and the closeness of the action. It is uncharacteristic of many of his photos, more daring, and creative.  Maybe he was just too lazy to stand up and take the photo?  Part of the fun of exploring photos is that they connect you to the photographer, as well as the event.  

I love the idea by the great photographer, Gary Winogrand, where he said that "...putting four edges around a collection of information or facts transforms it".  This was just a racecar going past my grandfather as he sat in the grass, and he put his four edges around this in a really well composed photo, probably spontaneously.  Look at how the scene opens up from the left.  The road divides the frame vertically, organizing the image. The lines of the road opening up as it leads to the right dragging your eye along with the action.  The blurry foreground pushes your eye up into the action as it comes into focus, and the grandstands in the back contains people looking for the next car to come by as this one roars out of the photo.  This car is driven by Georges Boillot.

Next is a photo of René Thomas (center), the race winner, and Barney Oldfield on the left.  I'm not sure who the other person is, but I think it's his mechanic.  The other Stutz drivers were Gil Anderson and Earl Cooper, neither of whom finished the race, and this guy's face is still pretty dirty.  I absolutely love the body language and the eye lines here.  The guy on the right, leaning in toward the race winner, and Oldfield with his stogie, giving him a look.

I wanted to include this photo of the pits area since it provided some information you don't usually see in photos of the race.  Again, it connects me to what my grandfather found interesting.  My eye was drawn to the keg of gasoline, and the various tools, buckets, and gestures by the gents in the pits.  I also like the depth of field, and how it excludes some of the people who are part of the conversation.

Here's a shot of Barney Oldfield cruising by, a quick glance for the photograph.  Awesome.  I love his stogie, hard to believe he raced with this (at least with one that was lit), and he's pulling off the track, so very obviously post race.

Another really well-composed photo, I thought.  Gil Anderson in car 24 goes screaming past at 90+ miles per hour.  Probably more, but I'm no race historian.  I figure if these guys qualified at 90 mph, they must have hit 100 at times.  I appreciate the lines here, again.  The perspective gives a sense of grandeur - the amount of folks watching the race, and the distance of that section of the course.  He opens up the depth of field going really deep, so that nearly the whole scene is in focus.  To me, this is a defining photo in some ways.  It tells me that it wasn't a great camera, and the photo wasn't given a whole lot of care in processing.  Van's photos are crystal clear and are taken on good equipment.  I don't know what the camera was, but all of these photos are 3x5 format.

I alluded to a wreck in the last post, and here it is.  I out of time to research this, but if someone has some information, please post!  I'm posting this for the same reason as the tires/pits photo; you just very rarely see this aspect of the early races.  Here's the car driven by Joe Dawson.  The wikipedia entry cites "Crash BS".  I'm sure Joe agreed.

Just a couple more photos to wrap up this section of the scrapbook.  First is a great photo of Spencer Wishart, although probably not a great action photo of him racing.  I'm like a broken record here, but again I get a glimpse of what was important to Ivan.  He's clearly into racing by this age, and he knows first hand what racing is about.  It's not always winning the race, and this photo and the ones preceding it show that he was connected to the drama of the whole race, not just the big win.

Jules Goux congratulates Barney Oldfield after the race.

Finally, I believe this is the number 16 car of René Thomas winning the 1914 Indianapolis 500.  The car is the right shape, and the number appears to be 16 on the car (with a magnifying glass).  The sign to the flagger's right reads "16".  I wonder why he didn't make his way further down there to capture this, but I can imagine it was a zoo around the finish line.  The camera was by no means a new invention at the time, and there were plenty of photographers at the race. 

Next photos will be of the Indy 500 in 1915, with a couple of very good photos of Eddie Rickenbacker.  The first photo captures his high hopes at the beginning of the race. Rickenbacker threw a rod at just over half way through the race, and the second photo shows the disappointment as he exits his car to take it all in.

-kpw

1914 Indy 500

I finished up my studying today a bit late, and started in on the album at 6:00 p.m.  It's winding up to be about three to four hours work to finish a post!  I noticed this evening that I've stopped sneezing, too.  I guess that having the scrapbooks out in the fresh air has done them some good.

As I started digitizing what I felt were interesting photographs, I began to realize that this race may take more than one or two posts.  There are just some great photos here, and a lot of interesting stories to go with them!  So let's start off with a little fanfare.

Hopefully, we all have the theme from Rocky and Bullwinkle playing in our heads.

I thought this was a fun photo, since I had mentioned the marching band in a previous post, and it appealed to the little kid in me.  I've always loved listening to a brass band at a parade, and I can imagine Ivan running out there to snap a photo with his camera, although he was actually more like 20.  I don't have a clue what he used, but I do have a couple of his cameras as part of the collection.  It was actually a bit of an ordeal, not like snapping a digital photo with your cell by a long shot.  So this shot would have had quite a bit of planning before releasing the shutter.  Unfortunately, they all stopped playing just as they got to his position.

Ivan wasn't really careful about the order he put photos in, so I'm not going to try and guess the series of events, but the upcoming photo of the drivers did come after the band.  I thought it built a good sense of tension in the scrapbook, so I included it here.

Now it starts to get more interesting.  The cars are on the track and we get to walk down and see them in their starting order, sort of.  For whatever reason, there are only 4 photos of the grid.  It's possible that the photos just didn't come out, but we start with starting position 4, 5, and 6.

Mulford-23, Carlson-25, Chandler-38

Positions 9-12.  Bragg-21, Duray-14, Guyot-10, and Knipper-31

I promised in my goofy pre-post to this race that we'd see a famous WWI aviator in this round of photos, and here's our ace.  Eddie Rickenbacker, (from Stephen Sherman's great site) who changed his name from Reichenbacher, so Americans wouldn't confuse him with one of the German aces.  My son and I have read his autobiography a number of times and loved it.  This was one fascinating man, and I really love the parallels, however few, between him and Ivan. I promise to post a couple of great photos of Rickenbacker at the 1915 race.

Positions 22-26.  Burman-17, Rickenbacker-42, Disbrow-1, Wishart-19, Grant-27

Positions 13-17.  Mason-13, Cooper-2, Thomas-16, Anderson-24 and Dawson-26

For this post, I'll leave with this final photo of the pace car and the start of the 1914 Indianapolis 500.  Notice the driver and the observer looking back over their shoulder's to get a good look at the start.

I had a major shift in my understanding of the time frame of Ivan's life tonight.  I had been working on the incorrect belief that he was much younger when he started flying.  I thought he was around 19, when it turns out he was more like 22.  This actually answers some perplexing questions I had regarding his military service.  I only mention this to point out that it's fun going through this material, and being able to reconstruct facts about a person's life that were misunderstood previously.  I'm excited to dig into the collection more as a result.

There are a number of outstanding photos in the next batch coming up.  I have a couple of wrecks, breakdowns, and more track-side photos of racers and cars.  I also wanted to mention that I'm not doing any photo retouching at all, so far.  There may be some that I need to mess with the exposure, just so they're view-able, and I have done a number of photos that I have reprinted with really good results that I hope to frame, soon.

-kpw