- 7 -  Notes roughly coordinated with Tam McPartland's Old Race Car site  - 7 -

Alan Brengle is from San Diego. He was pretty much my mentor in SCCA stewarding. We worked a lot of races together. We developed a practice that was effective at Holtville: A Chief Steward with all the responsibility for interfacing with racers and rules, working in tandem with an Operating Steward, who ran the racetrack. I got to be very good at the latter, and passable at the former.

More Class "G" Modifieds: Bob Engberg was also a San Diego racer, and like his brother Chuck, was very quiet-spoken and thoughtful. Engineers, I think, and runners; bearded, too. It seems to me the last time I saw either of them was (very long ago) around the time we were running the Heart Of San Diego Marathon. Maybe the Bonita half-marathon tune-up a couple of weeks before.

Hourglass Field is now the site of the Miramar campus of San Diego Community College, where the Police Academy has its home. I was there once, in about 1956, when some of my L.A. friends and I were out for a Sunday drive, and somehow hooked up with a Morgan that had a sign on the back: "Follow Me To The Gymkhana." We did, and enjoyed seeing something we knew about but had not experienced. Beanbags and reverse gear in competition. The most spectacular performance was by a man driving what I remember as about a 1940 to '48 Plymouth. He really flung it around. The last time I was at that campus was four or five years ago, when I was trained in use of Capsaicin spray. I thought some of the pavement may have been original.

Some time in the middle or early 70s Sandy and I ran a slalom on this lot in her '66 Elan. I remember the P.A. announcer calling the car a "Spitfire" as I roared off the start. By the time I had made half the circuit, someone had corrected him, and he apologized. I had a CB radio installed in the Lotus, and a good noise-cancelling microphone. The mic fell between the seats during one of our runs, and jammed "on." I guess it was transmitting on channel 13 for fifteen or twenty minutes before I realized it. The pylon-counters must have thought someone was sabotaging them when they had to change to another channel. Thank goodness for the "talk close" feature. I never had to face the music on that one.

John Timanus: I've mentioned that he may have been the driver of the silver Lotus that spun through the flag station I was working at Pomona. Several years later I had numerous contacts with him in his role as SCCA Technical Administrator. He was a real resource, and a respectable negotiator. When someone got caught cheating, or was accused of cheating, Timanus could usually make a plea-bargain that obviated the need for an engine teardown. Racers knew he was strict but fair.

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