According to the dash plaque, "CCC" (Chicago Corvette Club?) ran the "Scotchman 50", an economy run at MIR in late 1964. Rally buddy Dennis Holland and I entered his Triumph TR3A. You topped up your tank and went out and ran around the course, striving for the best gas mileage ...at least that was the plan. It quickly turned into hot lapping (well, in our case, flailing around without a clue). At the end they topped off your tank and calculated MPG. I doubt that we were found to be very economical. But we sure had fun.
A pivotal occurrence that day was meeting Lou Knoelke, a racer in Midwestern Council. We talked of our hope to race a TR3, the same model Lou raced and Dennis drove. I'd grown up next door to the aforementioned founding member of Chicago region SCCA and was aiming for their racing program, but Lou told us that "Council" was the way to go for people who were not independently wealthy. There was another thing that tilted us toward Council, but that comes in the Wilmot and Lynndale stories.
Lou also mentioned the free Indoor Driver School seminars put on by North Suburban SCC, a Midwestern Council affiliate. We attended them the next spring. At the end of the school, they had a club outing at Meadowdale, using the north portion of the course. It started as an instruction session, but once we learned the line, it pretty much turned into hot laps again. Less flailing, however, and even more fun. (Plug: North Suburban SCC still runs this free school seminar series. Click here.)
In early 1965, I was a first-time corner worker on the Little Monza at the end of the 4,000' main straight. There was a signal tower high up on the outside of the turn, but it was so rickety, no one could go up in it. My other memory of that day is a big yellow Corvette ending up atop the concrete wall that surrounds the Little Monza. I think they stopped the race and about 20 guys lifted the car back onto the course. I decided that day that working races was light-years better than just spectating, but still not as much fun as driving. 35 years later, that opinion holds.
Real Racing - The seduction is complete
An official Midwestern Council driver school at Wilmot Hills race course in mid-1965 provided an MC competition license. Real wheel-to-wheel racing was the most fun of all! I ran a race or two at Wilmot, one at Lynndale Farms, and the year-ender at Meadowdale.
My stone-stock TR3 was far outclassed on the long 3.27 mile course. The leading Alfa Romeo lapped me 4-5 times in 60 minutes! But it didn't bother me a bit. I'd raced at Meadowdale- on the same paving trod by Parnelli Jones, the Unsers and those guys. And the car stayed in one piece to drive home. A wonderful end to a great first season of racing.
Meadowdale was completely closed down all during 1966. We raced at Lynndale Farms near Pewaukee WI, Wilmot Hills, Wilmot WI and State Fair Park in West Allis WI.
Early in 1967, North Suburban SCC presented "Mexican Road Race", a solo
reliability-run type event with three separate courses set up on the 3.27 mile track. The north mile was one course. The Monza Wall was another- reverse- course out the pit lane and around the flat bottom lane toward Doane's, then U-turn and back on the Wall to the finish line on the front straight. The third course ran around the back of the track.
After practice runs, you predicted your race times. Closest estimates won. I was an official for this event, so could not compete, but of course, officialing required a certain number of trial runs to be sure the course was right. 8^) Oh yes, this was also an early date with the sweet young thing who was to become my wife of 33 years (and counting). Our first date had been for the Midwestern Council awards banquet. She can't say she wasn't warned.
In July of 1967, with my freshly issued Instructor license in hand, I taught my first student at a Midwestern Council driver school at Meadowdale. His name was Raoul Elli. He had an Alfa spider, like the one I'd bought from Bill Knauz after selling the TR3. The school was on the 2.2 mile course. In those days, we started out by driving the student's car. As I piloted Raoul's Alfa around, the oil pressure dropped to zero. My heart dropped, too. I had broken a student's car my first time out. Towed in, we were relieved to find that the line to the oil pressure gauge had split. Messy, but no damage. Repaired, the day continued. As a totally green instructor, I am not sure how much I taught Raoul, but I don't think I did him any harm, as he raced for many years, and I think his son is now racing as well.
The next day was an MC race presented by Salt Creek SCC. I raced my Alfa, but with only moderate success, from the results. Damn, I always remembered myself being faster than that! There are some photos on the 'net of this race (click here), but I'm not in any of them.
That was the last time I raced at MIR. Midwestern Council had a race on the north course in June of 1968, but I didn't run it. I was busy buying a house and doing all the other stuff you do getting ready to marry that SYT. I was sorry to miss that race, but it was probably a good move, matrimonially.
1968 was the year track management gave up on trying to put smooth pavement on the Monza Wall. They bulldozed it flat and laid asphalt in a pattern that sort of followed the Wall's sweeping path. But it was a poor replacement for the magnificent Monza Wall and the track had lost its signature feature. The paving applied was apparently not the best, or not cured properly, or something, as it came up in large chunks during the Trans-Am race in July.
North Suburban SCC had booked a race for the long 3.27 mile course for the fall of 1968. I was Club President then and the main contact with the track. The track surface was still too torn up to use following the Trans-Am race. Track management promised it would be repaired right up until the last minute, but they apparently just did not have the wherewithal to handle it by that time. We had to cancel that event and the long course never re-opened. In 1968 Blackhawk Farms Raceway opened and most Midwestern Council club racing events moved to that venue.
Two Meetings Much Later in Both Our Lives
It was over 20 years before I set foot on the Meadowdale property again, sneaking in the back gate to look around in 1990 or 1991. The place appeared to have been used as a dump, filled with old refrigerators, rusty car parts and a lot of other junk. Houses were under construction along the south edge of the track. It was pretty dismal.
Then this spring, another 10 years later, I went back again, entering via the Raceway Woods nature preserve. The track paving itself is now gone in many places, but the trash has been picked up and the area has largely returned to nature. A tour of the old race course is a pleasant afternoon adventure, although it is a hike, not a stroll in the park.
What was the scorched earth paddock now has large areas of big trees and brush. The corrugated steel underpass beneath the main straight, through which you could once drive a semi, has filled in to about 6-8' clearance. Pedestrian and vehicle overpasses are now steel skeletons leading nowhere. Where the grandstands once stood, there are now large stands of trees.
There are small sections of solid paving remaining leading to and through the Monza Wall area and on the front straight, near the 2.2 mile cut-off, on the back section leading to the jump, in the Little Monza and on the Uphill. The latter two are shrouded now with trees and heavy brush overhanging the track surface. It is hard to recall that almost the entire grounds were stripped bare during the heyday of Meadowdale, but that was over 30 years ago and nature has healed those wounds quickly.
The dip near the end of the main straight now has a deep washout with very steep walls. The 3 foot wide creek at the bottom has eaten away all the fill placed there to support the track. The paving between the dip and the Little Monza is completely gone. The stream has also washed out a shorter section of track at the low point after the silo.
Immediately after the vehicle bridge on the backside of the course, developers of an adjacent area have dumped fill that completely buries the track. When the paving along the back sweeper reappears, trees and brush are pushing up right through the asphalt. Houses adjoin the sweeper. An off-course now could put you on someone's patio! And don't even think about the noise complaints.
Some say that if you really concentrate, you can hear the echoes of the big V8 C-Mods at MIR. I have to squint a bit to see past the broken paving and the overgrowth, but my visits recall skittering around on the rough banking of the Monza Wall, having the earth tilt as I come off the Wall flat out and rocketing down that long, long front straight. It is good.
It is amazing the MIR property has not been developed for something before now. This is a large prime piece of property, now in the middle of a bustling Chicago suburban area. I suspect government bodies are lusting after it to keep it an open land preserve, and I hope that they can do that. But its open market value may be too high for that to happen.
It is encouraging that the north end of the property has been acquired for a preserve. Let us hope that naming it Raceway Woods indicates a respect for the track history that will allow the Pure Oil silo, the Little Monza and the other scraps of track still present to remain in place, rather than being bulldozed to return MIR to its truly natural state.
Thank you, my dear. It is good to see you again. Good night.
Ross Fosbender, June 2001
copyright 2001 Ross Fosbender
