Hey EDM-The PGCA forum's apparent FUBAR with your former posting priviledges is their loss, and our gain.
I bought a used copy of the Peter Johnson book on Parkers, believe it came out in 1961, and... A few years ago I bought a copy of the Larry Baer book on the Parker Gun- didn't do much for me however...
FUBAR brings back memories. In 1963, when I was in the Navy on a carrier out of Alameda CA, some of my boat racing buddies from Milwaukee had moved to Marin County, north of San Francisco. They set me up with a boat to race, and I designed a new hull for them, christened "FUBAR." If you know how to search old-time stock outboard racing on the internet you will find references to our boat and the setting of a world speed record in 1964 at Modesto CA. That people still remember such an obscure event is an amazement.
As to Peter Johnson, he wrote his book in 1958-60 and then disappeared till about 1994, when I tracked him down in Falls Church VA. I did a taped interview just before he died, which was published in the
DGJ. Last July I was in Montana, less than 30 miles from Larry Baer's place. I called but no answer. Maybe next summer. I think it's important to follow up with these people who jump started our collectors' area of interest.
When I was just out of high school, racing around in my A Stock Hydro in 1959, Peter Johnson's book was still a handwritten manuscript in process, yet to be typed with carbon copies by a public steno at the University of VA, where he taught.
When I was just out of law school and learning to be a lawyer in 1972, Larry Baer's book was a work in process, which preceded computers and, at best, was a hunt-and-peck typewritten manuscript helped along by xerox copies (no floppy discs or CD's). Knowing how the publication process works now, I can appreciate how difficult it was back in the 1960s and 1970s. Yet one thing has changed for the worse: The Internet sops up all the spare that time gun cranks once devoted to reading books. I caught the end of paper and ink publishing with my first book in 1995-97; now the Internet is supreme. Rats! All this in a blink of an eye; I'll be 68 next month. Double Rats!!
EDM
