Lake Garnett Races 50th anniv.

[ffstorer]

Nine SCCA national races were held at Lake Garnett between 1959 and 1972. The Garnett, Kansas car club is seeking participants in an observation of the 50th anniversary on June 6. This includes a car show in the town square and parage laps around the course. The course is in it's orginal configuration and in better condition than it was in 1972 (no marbles on the flat iron).

In 1964 the first FV's appeared at Garnett, Ray Caldwell was amoung the participants.

I have a press release I can forward.

Fred Storer
Formcar 96

[ajax]

Fred, your Formcar will be the best looking one there, I'll bet! what are "parage laps around the course" Any chance I could spin??

[Rickydel]

Fred, your Formcar will be the best looking one there, I'll bet! what are "parage laps around the course" Any chance I could spin??

A parage lap would be the opposite of a disparage lap. So I guess during that lap, the drivers would be drivng cars that they are normally not worthy to drive. Above one's class, as it were.

"Etymology: Middle English, to degrade by marriage below one's class, disparage, from Anglo-French desparager to marry below one's class."

[ffstorer]

I see that "parage" was my mistake, I intended parade. Not much of a typist and an even poorer speller please forgive me.

Never-the-less, parage is a good word for the Formula Vee community as one of its definitions is "equality of condition". This brings back reading Chaucer (?) which is at least better than reading the General Competition Rules.

Parade laps are planned. I can assure you that we can not turn cars loose on the Lake Garnett course. However, Garnett is a small town and if you catch the police at the coffee shop you can get an idea of what racing there was like. In early January on at trip to KC I drove the course in my Cayman, I kept the speed down along the Santa Fe straight to what I thought might have been my top speed in my D-13 in 1972, as I braked to turn right and cross the damn I thought "you must have been crazy".

A bit of good judgement and a lot of good luck were a requirement for survival on those tracks.

If you know of anyone who might like to participate in this event please put them in touch.

Fred (completed without spell checking)

[Mad Dog Racing]

As I remember, the Topeka paper reported the reason the races were cancelled after '72 was the "college students" in town for the races barracaded the main street of Garnett with empty beer cans four feet high. (But it was only 3.2 beer.)

More likely it was the gradual change of safety requirements that later claimed Ponka City and finally Lake Afton. But I like the beer story.

I'll try to keep the weekend open, no races in SowDiv, might decide to take a weekend drive to see what's happening there.