PR: Can I name a name or subject and could you give me your impression? Barney Hall?

DM: I pinch myself everyday that I get to work with him. He’s a very quiet guy. He doesn’t talk a lot. He certainly doesn’t talk a lot about himself. The first time he and I sat down and he started telling me old stories from the fifties and the sixties and the seventies… the fact we get to come to the racetrack and work with him every weekend is amazing. I look at him the same way I look at Ken, that they are living legends of the sport. They were here when it started. There wouldn’t be racing on the radio or television if it weren’t for Ken Squier. And Barney Hall in the radio realm is the same way.

PR: Dick McCabe.

DM: He was phenomenal. McCabe had a great career in the state of Maine for years before we ever saw him over in Vermont. But then he would start coming over the mountain to Thunder Road for the Milk Bowl. The late Butch Lindley used to make a deal with McCabe. They both had their cars built by Mike Laughlin. Butch would come to Vermont, he would run McCabe’s car, he would bolt on a bunch of his trick rubber and maybe some of his fancy parts that nobody up north had even heard of yet and he would “forget” to take them off after the race was over. Now McCabe would have them. Then he (McCabe) came over and ran with us when the old NASCAR North Tour got going. He won more races with five laps to go than anybody I had ever seen. With two laps to go there would be McCabe on the leader’s back bumper and he would pull to the outside, drive around them and win the race coming off of turn four to the checkered flag. He would infuriate people not because he beat them, but the way he beat them. He wasn’t content to beat you. He had to beat you in a way to let you know he could have beaten you at any time he chose.

PR: Jean Paul Cabana.

DM: Cabana is a wonderful guy. He is absolutely a clown. He reminds me of Rene Charland. Rene in his time was a practical joker, a great sense of humor. And Cabana understood early on that selling tickets was part of the game. He would come down to the states out of Canada, a French speaking, French-Canadian guy, which made him public enemy number one to a lot of those people at Thunder Road and Catamount (Stadium). And then they would hate him even more because he would come in and beat all the American guys. He was really, really good. At Catamount Stadium up in Milton (VT) he won the first race in the history of that track and thirty years later when they closed it down he won the last race. Which tells you how good he was and for how long. He would win the race on the last lap when the first and second place guys wrecked in front of him racing for the lead and he would drive through the wreckage and stand there in victory lane and tell the crowd he ‘Had it all the way.’ And they would boo their lungs out and he would give them this flourishing bow and he would play to the crowd. He understood that in order to have a white hat you sometimes had to have a black hat. He knew how to excite the crowd. He knew that part of his job was selling tickets. Everybody in the pits loved Cabana. He was just a funny guy.

PR: The Dragon Brothers, Bobby and Beaver.

DM: Consummate racers. Bobby ran his race teams in the early seventies like race teams run today. Bobby worked as hard at the financial end of racing as he did on the mechanical end. Back in the seventies most guys had Ed’s Auto Body as a sponsor. Bobby Dragon had banks. He had restaurant chains. Major auto dealership groups. Back in the day when people didn’t have that kind of sponsorship. He really ran his race team like a business long before anyone else ever did. He would go out and he would work hard and he would secure great sponsorship. He was one of the first to go down and buy a car from Bobby Allison. And came back north and just destroyed everyone with it. Over the course of three or four years people looked at him and said ‘OK, maybe we need to approach this sport the way he does.’  And he was very much responsible for bringing late model stock car racing in northern New England into the modern age. He figured out twenty years before anyone else how a race team needed to run. Beaver was just the opposite. Beaver was a guy with a great knack for finding great people to build race teams around him. Beaver ran his own stuff minimally. He owned his own racecars very rarely. He was always good at finding a guy with money that could build his racecars. Beaver would show up with his helmet in his hand, he would strap into that racecar and he was good. When these cars started on a Tour concept, Beaver Dragon was the guy that made that deal work. He was the champion the first two years and was a consummate professional. His cars always looked right, he was great with the media, great with the fans and a hell of a racer. He and Bobby were amazingly talented but very, very different.

PR: Tom Curley

DM: He is the singularly the smartest promoter I have ever been associated with. He’s had a knack since day one of being able to look and see where the sport is going to be ten years down the road and position himself to be there. Back in the late seventies he looked at it and said ‘We can’t afford to be running these cars every week at the same racetrack. We’ve got to take them out on the road and make a traveling tour out of this deal.’ And people thought he was nuts. Nobody in the state of Maine knows who these guys are. Nobody in Quebec knows who these guys are. You’re never going to be able to get a race at Stafford or Thompson or Waterford. But he did. You look around now in New England you can’t swing a dead cat without hitting a touring series anymore. There is a touring series on every corner. Back then there really wasn’t. Back then he was the guy that really made the touring concept work. He’s so sharp. He’s run Thunder Road and turned it into one of the premiere short tracks in the country. And he’s a tough guy to work for. He’s got that fiery Irish temper. He’s loud, he’s blustery, and he can be a little bit obnoxious. And he’s not all that worried about stepping on people’s toes sometimes. But you look at the people who have worked for him; they have been there ten, fifteen, twenty years. He commands a great deal of loyalty among the people that work for him. He is a tremendous promoter. He looked at the old A.C.T. (American Canadian Tour) and it used to be Pro Stock cars, super late models. And twenty years ago, fifteen at least and he said ‘We’ve priced ourselves out of the market’. Nobody can afford to pay us what these cars demand, to be able to run. So he scaled the thing back and he came up with this ACT late model deal. He’s got an engine rule, a shock rule, and he’s got a tire rule. Where can you spend money on a racecar other than those three places? In an era now where P.A.S.S. (Pro All-Star Series) will bring twenty-two cars to a major race. The modifieds will have twenty- five, twenty-six cars at a major race, ACT rolls into a major race with forty-five, fifty, fifty-five cars. He saw long before it became a critical issue that he had to make these cars affordable to race. And that has been the kind of vision he has had from the start. He has been able to look ten years down the road and say ‘Here’s where we need to be’ and then position his racers to be there.

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