Roostertail Talk
A show dedicated for preserving the history, breaking down the racing and looking to the future of the incredible sport of Unlimited Hydroplane racing. My name is David Newton, and I will be bringing you a weekly show in which we will discuss the boats, drivers, owners, crew members, legends, fans and anything that is involved with the sport that I love; hydroplane racing.
Fans you can now sign up for a subscription service for the podcast! As you can imagine, running a podcast can be pricey (from hosting fees, website fees, travel, equipment, etc.). You can help the podcast by subscribing to our new service, Roostertail Talk+. The podcast is still free to all on our website and through all major podcast platforms (such as Apple Podcast, Spotify, Castbox, etc) but with Roostertail Talk+ there is more you can enjoy ! With this service you will get early links to new episodes, enjoy access to extra content, raffle prizes and more. This is a new service that we will be adding to as we move along. As always your support to make this show grow is very appreciated! TOMORROW, there will be an announcement for the first prize for subscribing to Roostertail Talk+.
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Roostertail Talk
Episode 150: Steve Montgomery, Part 1
The legendary voice of hydroplane racing, Steve Montgomery, takes us on a nostalgic journey through his extraordinary career and lifelong passion for the sport in this captivating conversation. Steve shares the path that led him to becoming a broadcasting legend. This episode is packed with insider stories and connections that shaped hydroplane racing for decades. Don't miss part two next week as Steve continues sharing tales from his broadcasting career and sponsorship adventures.
*Photo from the Steve Montgomery Collection
Help the podcast by subscribing to our new service, Roostertail Talk+. The podcast is still free to all on our website and through all major podcast platforms (such as Apple Podcast, Spotify, Castbox, etc) but with Roostertail Talk+ there is more you can enjoy ! With this service you will get early links to new episodes, enjoy access to extra content, raffle prizes and more. This is a new service that we will be adding to as we move along. As always your support to make this show grow is very appreciated! https://www.buzzsprout.com/434851/supporters/new
Ruchetel Talk, the podcast dedicated to everything about the sport that we all love, hydroplane racing.
Speaker 1:I am your host, david Newton, and it's time once again to sit back, relax and welcome Rooster Tail Talk talk, bill, we've got to come back and get a little more dope from you, but right now we have to introduce the rest of our crew and we've got a brand new pair of pit reporters this year and one of them now you people are used to hearing Mike Fitzsimmons talk about boats and history and everything like that One of the few people that can stay with Mike off the top of his head is a brand new pit reporter for us this year and we're just tickled to death to have him on the crew and I'm going to bring him in right now and that is Steve Montgomery. Thank you, rod.
Speaker 3:Hi everybody, I'm Steve Montgomery. Hello everybody, I'm Steve Montgomery. I'm Steve Montgomery. I'm Steve.
Speaker 2:Montgomery. Any Hydroplane fan recognizes that voice and name, steve Montgomery. He is joining the podcast today on episode 150. And this is going to be part one of a multiple part episode and I talked with Steve not too long ago. We talked via Zoom. He's living over in Coeur d'Alene, idaho now. Long ago we talked via Zoom. He's living over in Coeur d'Alene, idaho now, and he's enjoying retirement after many years of his voice talents on the air, radio, television and notably around the sport of hydroplane racing.
Speaker 2:When I think of hydroplane racing and the icons around the sport, I always go towards the drivers and the boats, but the announcer should also fit in that category and there's been some great voice talents over the years, including Jim Hendricks, don Poyer, bill O'Meara, pat O'Day and many others, and definitely not in any order. But when you think hydroplane racing and announcing, steve Montgomery should come to your mind because he knows the sport in and out and had a true passion for the sport and that came out when he was talking about it. Now, like I said, this is a multiple part episode and we're going to start with the beginning of his career, how he got involved with hydroplane racing as a fan and an announcer, and you're going to hear that story and we're going to go into much more detail here, but you don't need to hear me talking anymore. Let's listen in to my interview with Steve Montgomery. I'm sitting down in my Richertel Talk office and I'm talking via Zoom with Steve Montgomery. Steve, how are you doing today?
Speaker 3:Very good, david, good to talk to you again. I'm sure you hear this from everybody you talk to, but your dad was one of my favorite guys in the 40 years I hung around the sport and I'm sure I'm not the first to tell you that huh, yeah, no, I've heard that a few times and I appreciate hearing that.
Speaker 2:Still, it's been almost 20 years, it's like 18 years since he's passed.
Speaker 2:It's sad and it's uh, it's sad but um, it's and it was a shocker. It was, yeah, cause he wasn't too old. He had a heart attack and passed. But I appreciate hearing the stories and and that cause it feels like he's still still with me in some sense. So I appreciate hearing that Well. Well, it's been a little while since we've talked, but I'm glad to catch up with you and hear and talk more about your legendary career as a radio broadcaster, tv broadcaster. You've done a lot for the sport of hydroplane racing but a lot of different things you've done with media and I think you're gonna have some great stories to share with that. But before we get into that, I'm always curious where it began for people with hydroplane racing, because at some point or another you fell in love with the sport and I'm curious how it started for you. How were you introduced to hydroplane racing and where did that start for you?
Speaker 3:Well, I came from the only hydroplane racing fan family in Yakima, washington. At least I never found another one. In the time we were there, in 1950, I was six years old and I was part of the only hydroplane racing fan family in Yakima, washington. My parents went to Sela High School and they had friends from high school who lived in Seattleattle and we would go see them every summer.
Speaker 3:So in 1950 we were actually in west seattle when slow motion four won the race in detroit, the gold cup, and word spread through the neighborhood that what had happened and and with a race, the gold cup was coming to seattle and the place that was going crazy, there were people in the streets. And so my mom and dad want to know what's all this about. And so they explained to my dad coming to Seattle and the place that was going crazy, there were people in the streets. And so my mom and dad want to know what's all this about. And so they explained to my dad well, what was going on with this race boat? Well, my dad had been a B-29 mechanic in World War II, okay, and when they told him the thing had a, an airplane engine, he said well, I got to see this.
Speaker 3:So the next year we were there for the 51 gold cup and many after that, and there one of the families had a son about my age. We became hydro geeks immediately and that was where it all began. Right there we were two of the kids with our noses poked through the fence trying to get a look at a driver. Back then it was a you know, when the crowds were huge and all that going on. I'm really glad I'm old enough to have done that, because it was really something was.
Speaker 2:It wasn't really. I've heard stories of like half a million people being on the beaches and it just like wall to wall. Was it really that that packed back then?
Speaker 3:yeah, it's hard to uh, it's really hard to describe, but you got a picture of the whole stan sares pit area the beach all the way up to the uh, the bridge and quite a way South, because the race course went down there a ways and it was. It was a shoulder to shoulder. You had to get there early, spread out a blanket and then protect your turf so you had room for your family to sit and watch the race. Yeah, a lot of a lot of my early memories are from that vantage point. Right there we were a little bit South of the pits, the place we chose to sit. So a lot of the videos in my mind are boats coming by that area. I remember things like Billy Shoemaker coming by and I think it was Miss Everett or something and I thought, wow, he's only a little bit older than me. And then the Miss U District coming by and trying to get on a plane. Yeah, videos like that. I wish they all had timestamps on them so I knew what year?
Speaker 3:that was you know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, pretty wild to think back on and I've talked to other people that have gone, that were there at the beginnings in Seattle with Hydro Twin Racing, and just seems like a magical time.
Speaker 3:You know, I always tell people back then there were half a million people on the beach and maybe 120 in the pit area working on the boats and stuff. Yeah, and now there's 120 people on the beach and a half a million in the pit area. Everybody has a has a pit pass. I remember dreaming of being able to go into the pits and get up closer to the boats, yeah, and I finally had a chance in about 1964. I think it was. Yeah, I was.
Speaker 3:I was working at a KIMA radio and TV in Yakima and somebody I don't even remember who it was came in and said would you want to go to the seafair race? And I said, well, yeah, how would I do that? He said King TV in Seattle had a piece of equipment they wanted to borrow from KIMATV in Yakima. It was a special effects generator which you used to split the screen and things like that. Oh, okay, and King used it to put the clock up in the corner of the picture. Oh that, and King used it to put the clock up in the corner of the picture.
Speaker 3:Every station had one of those, but King's was a big one, built into their wall or whatever the control board, and ours was smaller and portable, so they took it out of the control room and put it in the passenger seat of my 59 MG and I took off for Seattle and it was an incredible experience. I went straight to King TV, met all the people and they treated me great and I had a pit pass for me and my hydro geek friend. So that was a big deal. I'll never forget that weekend, wow.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a big deal right there. So it was 1964?.
Speaker 3:I think so yeah just about Okay. I went to Yakima Valley College for two years. I had stumbled into radio my senior year in high school, which was 62. So then I did two years at Yakima Valley College and went to Pullman and talk about a place where nobody knew hydro racing. Pullman Washington was, uh was one of those places. So it took me a while. I was kind of. I was kind of away from the sport there for a couple of years.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I guess at that time that was very isolated from hydropon racing because they weren't racing in Tri-Cities then. But I guess they would be racing in Coeur d'Alene, but I guess that's not close enough for them to know.
Speaker 3:Well, that's another story.
Speaker 3:Coeur d'Alene. Um, I was, uh. We moved back to Spokane. My dad and his company kept transferring him around the state of Washington as they promoted him from truck driver all the way to general manager and several stops in between. So the races were happening in Coeur d'Alene. I believe it was 1959. And my timestamp on that is because Norm Evans got thrown out of the Miss Spokane right in front of us on the beach in Coeur d'Alene. So my dad took a friend and I over to Coeur d'Alene the night before and our job was to sleep in the park and get up early and go stake out a space on the beach and then, and that's what we did, and the neat part was the night before the pits were pretty much open and a lot of people were working on their boats, so we got to wander around in there and that was pretty cool. Then the next day the only thing I remember about that whole day is Norm Evans and the Miss Spokane, but at least it jogs the old memory and I can remember that happening.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And interesting that Now I'm now I'm coming to you from Coeur d'Alene, idaho actually post falls. Yeah, debbie and I built a house over here two years ago and I am a member of a group called the uh diamond cup hydro maniacs. It's a bunch of the guys that were involved way back then and it's a group that tried to put on the race here in uh in 2013. Good people, and it was good to know them right away, because Debbie and I love the area, but I didn't know anybody over here, and as soon as I met those guys, I did, and they're a good group.
Speaker 2:Well, and I think you're a part of. Is that same group a part of, or helping at least with Mark Evans and Mitch Evans with the Spokane, or is that a different group? Nope, they're all mixed in there, Okay.
Speaker 3:And, in fact, the maniacs are the ones that are doing the website. Okay, I became an amateur website builder so I put that together for them. If you go to msspokanehydrocom, you will see the website for that project and we post the pictures as they, as they go along. It's gonna yeah, that one is gonna take a while. I'll tell you, it's uh that that boat had been abused, yeah, yeah well, I used to.
Speaker 2:Well, I race rc models and we used to race over in spokane and I remember going um and seeing poncho every once in a while and my dad and my dad always pushing him to do more with that boat and uh, yeah, it's uh, it's been sitting for a while but I'm glad, glad to see that it's being restored and I love seeing all the updates from the restoration.
Speaker 3:If you go to the website, you can see, um, you can see inside the thing. I, in some ways it was in better shape than I thought it would be. Okay, I thought all the wood would be rotten and all that stuff and that's not the case. But, man, every little piece of it has to be redone somehow and it's huge. Yeah, we've got the bottom off and the top off, and Poncho works on the framework with guys that he doesn't have. If he had a crew of nine people working every day, I'd say this could happen in a year or two. Yeah, but it's mostly Poncho and a friend now. And then, of course, the Evans brothers have the motor in Chelan, so they're going to rebuild the Merlin engine. Yeah, we will see. In the meantime, my job is a website and I'm glad. That's all it is.
Speaker 3:Well, it's a labor of love and passion.
Speaker 2:That's for sure I'm not much of a boat builder. Well, you can talk about boats all day, though, and uh, but I'll. I'll make sure to put a link in below on the bio for for the website, and that's. That's exciting to see that restoration happen, and hopefully it doesn't take more than a few years to see that back out on the waters.
Speaker 3:That was. If you asked me my favorite boat of all time, that would be it.
Speaker 2:I was going to ask that Okay.
Speaker 3:Because we were living in Spokane. My dad sold welding supplies to that crew and we loved all the boats in the fifties and sixties. Anybody that could beat the Detroit boats. We loved them. You know Thriftway and all those boats. But once the Miss Spokane came along, that was it for us. We were totally hooked. Yeah, bought a, bought a one of those. I think I owned a square inch of it or something.
Speaker 1:Okay, as a kid.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I took one of those. I took one of those Thriftway model kits that were so popular and build it and put the different tail on it, turned it into Miss Spokane Perfect, yeah, had it on my dresser well into my adulthood. Okay, yeah.
Speaker 2:Oh, I was going to ask if you uh, cause in the Seattle area was a big thing back then to tow a little model boat behind your bike. I was going to ask if you ever got into that.
Speaker 3:but the funny thing is when I never did do that. But but you know what we did? My Denny, my friend, and I carved Balsa hydroplanes that were probably three, four inches long, okay, and they were, and they were. I mean they really looked like little, tiny scale model boats painted them up with the different colors of the boats. You could put one on the rug runner in your hallway and stick your finger in the cockpit and give it a shot and it would zoom down the hallway and catch a little air and walk from sponson. It was pretty cool. Yeah, we did that for approximately 2000 hours hours, I think, back then, but they were really neat little boats. He lived up by Northgate and there was a hobby shop in Northgate. We spent a lot of time in there and that's where we got our balsa wood.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, for me, when I was a kid, it was Legos, so I always made Legos, well, you know that's.
Speaker 3:That's another story. My sons, Craig and Brian, built incredible Lego hydroplanes. They were pretty good sized, In fact. I had a stop action video camera and they raced those things by moving them a couple inches and taking another picture and another picture. They actually, they actually made an animated video of Lego hydroplanes going around the living room. I had forgotten about that one that's fun.
Speaker 2:Well, hopefully you can dig that up and find it. That'd be fun to watch, all right. Well, one thing with this, miss Spokane, I got to know, is it going to be a mahogany deck or a painted deck?
Speaker 3:when it's finished, I hadn't ever asked that question. I think it's going to be painted um. The deck will be new because the old one is long gone. Yeah, and you know, poncho is a craftsman, he's a wood, he's a wood guy. It's amazing the work he does and I haven't asked him that question, I think. I think it'll be painted.
Speaker 2:If you look at the website, you'll see the the most of the pictures are are the painted deck right, right, yeah, I think I think it's going to look like that, yeah I know, I think I believe it raced, more so with the painted deck, and those are the pictures you're using. I'm partial to the mahogany deck. I think it just looks cool with on it.
Speaker 3:Well, there are some of those on the website, so you will like them.
Speaker 2:All right. Well, I can't wait to look for more of those. Well, fast forward a little bit. You touched on it. You did go to Pullman. You're a Cougar alumni and you got a degree in communications. Did you know that you wanted to work in communications and broadcasting at a young age?
Speaker 3:How did that pan out for you? In high school I had a kind of a flair for mechanical drawing and I thought I was going to be an architect. That was actually my plan until midway through my senior year when fate stepped in. I got myself elected student body president of Eisenhower High School in Yakima, and toward some, at some point in the senior year the vice principal called me in and said the radio station has a feature called the student report. A student from each high school comes out on their selected night and gives a little report on what's going on. Go do the Eisenhower report. It's Monday night. And I said okay, so I go out and do a report. And then, uh, the DJ said I did Okay, felt good about that.
Speaker 3:About the second or third time I did that, the phone rang in the control room. Don Lewis was on at night and he said the program director wants to talk to you. And I went oh no, what'd I do? So I had a phone. He says hi, steve, this is john goodman, I'm the program director. Have you done some radio? And I said no, sir, I have not. And he said would you like to? And I said well, sure, he'd come and see me. So I did, and that saturday morning they started training me to be the weekend morning dj. Oh okay. So the architect thing suddenly went by. The sun, you know, went away, and the rest of my life was in radio and TV, never, never, had a real job.
Speaker 3:Well, that's a start of your, your career there, you reminded me of something, one of my favorite stories I get out of Washington state. I graduated in the spring of 1966. My first job out of college was at Creme TV in Spokane. We were live. Things weren't recorded the way they are now, so I was a booth announcer, which meant every half hour I opened a microphone and said TV to Spokane, which was pretty exciting for my mom because she lived in Spokane and she could hear me.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Well, in 1966, there was a diamond cup and word came through the building that Krem TV was going to cover that diamond cup and I thought, ah, my dream come true, I'm going to be on the broadcast crew for an unlimited hydroplane race. Well, it was a union shop and I was the bottom guy on the totem pole. I did not make the list of people that were going to work on the diamond cup. They found out how much I knew about the hydros and they had me work with the other two people who had the same job I did and they were going to be the pit interview guys. And they were. I didn't get a pit pass and I sat at home and watched the race and it broke my heart. Oh man, years later I said I hope Walt Scharr and Chuck Cromwell are watching ESPN and they go. That's the guy we didn't even use on our hydroplane race. That was a that was a tough one.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I stayed there about another three months and then went back to Yakima and on to Seattle.
Speaker 2:Okay, Okay, Wow. Well, somewhere along the way, I believe, you did get to uh broadcast your first hydroplane race in Seattle 1974, if I'm not mistaken.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And I hadn't planned.
Speaker 3:I hadn't planned on doing that actually.
Speaker 2:How did that opportunity come up?
Speaker 3:I was program director of Cairo Radio 50,000 watts, 710, big station. I'd been playing music and I was in the process of changing it to news talk and the general manager, jack Adamson, came into my office and said the sales department would like us to cover a seafare. And I said, wow, great idea, we should do that. Well, my sports director was a wonderful guy named Pete Gross. You probably remember the name, yeah, voice of the Seahawks. So I called Pete in and I said we're going to do the seafare race and Pete said I'm not. And I said, oh, really, no, I don't do boat racing. And I said, oh dear. So I went back into Jack's office and I said Pete doesn't want to do the seafair race. And I hadn't thought beyond that. And Jack said do you know anybody that could do it? And I thought, well, you know, I watched Bill O'Meara once and I do know the sport. Why don't I give it a shot? So that's how I ended up doing the 1974 race. Yeah, and I sat. I sat a few feet down from Pat O'Day and, um, I have a few. I don't have a great memory. That's one of the things I don't have that really good sportscasters have, but I do have some memories of that day, including meeting Billy Shoemaker, who became a good friend, and it was momentous because right behind me on that Sandpoint Tower was a couple from the Tri-Cities, ken Maurer and his wife, who had put that race together years ago. So I got to know them a little bit, which was a key. A lot of times it's being in the right place at the right time.
Speaker 3:The next year I'm over in the Tri-Cities and I don't really have anything to do except I was feeding some reports back to Cairo in Seattle. Ken walked up to me and said what's your job over here? And I said I'm a spectator and I'm doing some reports back to Seattle. And he said well, you know, we build a PA system all up and down the beach and, um, I need somebody to talk on it. Could, could you do that? And I said I think I could.
Speaker 3:So for the next I don't know 10 or 12 years I was the PA announcer for the tri-cities race and then you got to mix in Jim Hendrick because Jim had uh, he he had put his network on Cairo while I was there. Later he put it on Country KO while I was in sales over there. So I got to know Jim really well and that was my entree into the television work, because they needed a pit reporter to begin with. I was the third person. So Dick Crippen and Jim Hendrick were the anchors on ESPN in the beginning and I did the pit interviews ESPN in the beginning and I did the uh, the pit interviews. So it all. It all kind of grew out of that experience in 1974, where we needed somebody to do the seafair race and I didn't have anybody so I did it myself.
Speaker 2:Well, thinking back on that first race you did, how would you rate yourself? Do you think it was a good broadcast?
Speaker 3:I would not want to hear a tape of it. Um, that was, although sometimes I find an old tape of me on the radio and it's not. I didn't, I didn't, I didn't develop as much over the years as I thought I might've, so, but I can't imagine that it was great stuff.
Speaker 2:Well, it's hard, hard for me to think it wasn't great, because you have a iconic voice for the sport.
Speaker 3:Um, I think when you think of broadcasters and the hydropon racing years is one of the first that pops up, uh you can probably tell, the voice just turned 81 years old, and so although that's another thing I found, I came across a tape of me on the air in Yakima in 1963 or so, uh-huh, and it really doesn't sound much different.
Speaker 2:No your voice Than it does right now. No, it doesn't. Yeah, it still sounds like you know, 1980s, 1990s, steve Montgomery, yeah, yeah, your voice hasn't changed in my, in my, my ear at least.
Speaker 3:Sounds different to me, okay, but that's how it works, you know? Yeah.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah. Well, do you like listening to your own voice, because I hate hearing my voice on recording.
Speaker 3:Yeah, but I got used to it. In the beginning it's tough because what you hear in your head is not what goes out there. But after you've done 270 commercials which is what I did for 25 years in Seattle and all those races, you get used to the sound of your voice. Finally, yeah, you know my wife has a beautiful voice and she does not like to hear it recorded. Right, typical of most people.
Speaker 2:Well, I want to talk about sponsorships for a little bit, because you had notable sponsors that came into the sport because of your own doings and you brought some people into the sport. I think one of those when you think of Seafair and Heisman Racing, it kind of goes hand in hand nowadays is KISW, the Rocks radio station, and I believe you had a big part of bringing them in as a sponsor. I believe you had a big part of bringing them in as a sponsor. So how did you convince a radio station and keep them doing it to be a sponsor?
Speaker 3:It was the easiest one ever out of everyone I worked on, because I didn't have to convince anybody. Really, I had arrived back at the station, it probably was Monday and I had been in the Tri-Cities. I don't know which job I had at the time. It may have been. I was still on the PA. I did several years of Kona radio with the folks over there and it might have been one of those races. So anyway, I'm in my cubicle, I'm a salesperson, a sales representative, and we had been involved in some things, like we had a top fuel funny car we were sponsoring and stuff like that. The general manager, steve West, came over and stuck his head in my cubicle and said do any of these boats need a sponsor? Now, remember, this is Monday and the race is the following weekend. Yeah Right, when I think back on it, I think this couldn't possibly have happened and I said, boy, I think they're all sponsored, but I will check.
Speaker 3:So I made some phone calls. Every boat that had raced in the Tri-Cities had a sponsor for Seattle. So I started racking my brain, going where do I find a boat? I was trying to think of boats that had raced, maybe the year before, but we hadn't seen them this year and the one that came to mind was called the Elliott Dog Ration. Doug McIntosh and his sons dragged that boat all over the country and he told me later that all they ever did is change the spark plugs and put it back in the water. And I wondered whatever happened to that boat. Well, somebody said it's sitting down by Ron Jones shop. I got ahold of Doug McIntosh and I don't know how somebody gave me a contact for him. He said, yeah, the boat's down at Jones shop, we could run it. And I said, really, yeah, I think. So Meet me down there tomorrow and we'll take a look.
Speaker 3:So Tuesday I'm standing by this boat and it it didn't look a lot better than Miss Spokane does right now. It had a deck and a bottom. There wasn't a motor in sight, some of the hardware was on it, some wasn't, and I I said is it? I tell the story that there were. There were plants growing in the sponsons with little animals living in them, but we we decided to give it a shot.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so on Wednesday, the sales department and the program director, bo Phillips and Steve West, the general manager, mark Jeffries and Nick Neil Mayberry, we all went down and looked at the thing and they all said do you think this can race? And I said, well, doug says it could. So we went to work on it, just rubbing stuff off and cleaning it up and all of that. And I said to Doug well, it's going to need a motor. Well, his sons, kelly and Scott, were experienced motor guys from all the time they had spent with their dad on the circuit. So I said I'll have the boys build a motor. And I said okay, then we'll do the boat.
Speaker 3:So on either Wednesday or Thursday we had cleaned it up enough that we could paint it. Mark Jeffries said yeah, I painted a car when I was a kid. I'll go rent the spray paint thing and all that stuff. And we went and bought a couple of gallons of black paint. Yeah, we painted the boat and it looked pretty swoopy. It was just solid black and I don't know remember if that was Wednesday night or it must have been. Must've been Wednesday because it looked fantastic.
Speaker 3:So Thursday we had hired this sign painter who did the KISW logos. There was no vinyl back then. It was all paint Right. So we had the sign painter with us and we went down and he was going to put some red and yellow stripes on it and all that stuff. Well, it wasn't shiny black anymore, the dew had settled on the finish and now it looked like velvet. But we said you know, when you, when you look back, when you get back from it, it looks okay. So we added some red and yellow and some logos and the hole was ready to go.
Speaker 3:We got the, we found a rudder for it and all the hardware was on it. And um, and the boys, we didn't see them at all. Doug assured me that they were finding parts and they would have a motor together. So now it's um Thursday night time to go into the pits and uh, and we're not ready. The boat is close. So we drag it down to the pit area and there isn't a motor in sight. But Friday morning the boys pull in with a friend in his pickup and there's a Merlin engine sitting in the back of this pickup and they go to work getting it installed in the boat. Then is when I found out that the ownership on the boat had been a bit of a question and Brian Keogh from Detroit was one of the owners. So when he was asked, could the thing run. He said yes, if I drive it, so he got on a plane headed for Seattle and the rest of the story.
Speaker 3:Gosh, it would take hours. Brian was trying to qualify it. I think it was saturday morning. He had made a couple of qualifying attempts and he had been just under I think it was the hundred mile an hour mark that he had to reach to qualify. We had we had time to do one more shot. So I told him, if he came by a couple of times when it looked like he was really close to him, he did a couple of qualifying laps at 99.6.
Speaker 3:Oh, wow, he's going out for the last shot and I said if you think you're close to, but not over, the a hundred miles an hour park, it turn it off up in the North turn. So they have to tow it down the beach in front of all the people, right, well, he he had. He went by us and the thing was running good. I think he was on a hundred mile an hour lap, plus in the North turn we hear a cup boom and the thing just blew exactly where I wanted him to stop. So he told her down the beach and he kept back to. Brian was from Detroit, he didn't know a thing about K I S W. He got back to the pits and said you guys are pretty popular, aren't you? And I said you got a sense of that. And he said there were guys swimming out with a beer for me. So that was that was Ms.
Speaker 3:Rock's first, uh, first attempt. The other funny part of it was the parade back then. I think was Saturday night, right, and they used to take all the boats out of the pit area and take them up, you know, line them up and go through the parade. Well, I think you had to pay an extra thousand dollars for that or something and we didn't pay it, didn't even mention it to the guys. I'm sitting at home watching the parade and here comes Miss Rock down Fourth Avenue and the crew is on the boat and they are covered with.
Speaker 3:Most of the boats in the parade had their crews in their shiny uniforms. Yeah, we had Doug and his sons and their friends in their greasy t-shirts on Miss Rock in the middle of the parade. So I talked to Doug yesterday, the next day. I said that was pretty cool, but I don't think we were supposed to be in a parade. And he goes well, you didn't tell me that. I figured it was the whole deal and when they said line up the boats, we lined up. Nobody said anything. That was a. That was a fun deal. Yeah, miss Rock in the parade. Yeah, the other one was many years later. In fact it was after I left KISW late eighties when Fred Leland's Miss Rock had a fire and it was a fairly bad one.
Speaker 3:So Fred called um or both. Yeah, fred called Bo Phillips, fred was the owner and, of course, bo was the program director and said, um, we had a fire and uh, so the boat won't be in the parade. And Bo said this is famous quote. He said I want the ashes in the parade. So they took this badly burned boat up to the start of the parade and went through it. That year the Christmas card for KISW was a picture of the boat on fire and it said miss rock roasting on an open fire.
Speaker 3:We had a sense of humor. Yeah, we ran some ads that were classics. They keep popping up on some of the Facebook pages and things and bring back great memories. Fred was a Fred Leland was an amazing guy, but he was not a type A personality who needed to be out there and in front of the cameras and everything. So, yeah, and the beginning. I know we skipped a little cameras and everything. So, yeah, and the beginning of the beginning. I know we skipped a little, but I'll go to the beginning of that story. Yeah, yeah, we can go back and fill in. Um, yeah, we, uh, we went from the uh, the original big log to bob miller's ute 29 and bob was just a great guy, ran the, ran that old sled of his with a it was a cab over and it looked like it was 90 feet long and he got it qualified, which put us in a whole different class.
Speaker 3:And then I was looking to upgrade one more step and I got a phone call from Jim Hendrick back East and he said, hey, fred Leland's going to need a sponsor. And I said what's up? And Fred had American speedy print back East and Jim was real close to that company In fact he owned a franchise and he said, well, the sponsor is moving over to RB Bob Taylor. When Fred gets to Seattle he won't have a sponsor. And I said, interesting, thank you.
Speaker 3:So I called his wife at the time and I said, hey, I need to talk to Fred. And she said, well, what about? And I said sponsorship. And she said, well, what about? And I said, yes, sponsorship. And she said, well, he has a sponsor, yeah, and I said, okay, please write down my name and my number in case he ever needs one, right? So Fred gets back to Seattle and I get a phone call and Fred said who are you guys? What do you do, and that was our first conversation. He came in, he came into the radio station and looked around and wasn't amused and we told him what we wanted to do and that became the. It was the boat that fred had built that scott pierce originally drove. I think it might have been in oberto at one time or something, but uh yeah, it started out.
Speaker 2:82 was the oh boy, boy Alberto, and ran as a lot of different names. Yeah, yep, yeah.
Speaker 3:So Scott was no longer the driver, though Fred was driving it himself. I remember that pretty well. And, um, he got thrown out of the boat in the south turn. He ran over the wake of miss Budweweiser, which was lapping him at the time, and he immediately was back on the deck and in the pits. I said, well, you got back on that boat fast and he said I can't swim. No, that's when I found out was a non-swimmer. If he hadn't had a life jacket on, we would have lost him. Jeez that that day. That's crazy. One interesting note about that boat and sponsors was companies that were co-sponsors of Miss Rock before. They had their own boat, included the Squire Shop, miller Beer and 7-Eleven, and they all went on to be full-time sponsors or boat owners. So we started some good stuff with uh, with that program, yeah yeah, definitely.
Speaker 2:Well, that's all the time we have for this week. Knuckleheads, make sure you come back next week as well. Part two of my interview with steve montgomery, and he's going to continue his talk about the rock days, his sponsorships, other involvements in the sport, and he's got lots and lots of tales to tell. And I really want to say thank you again to Steve Montgomery, taking time out of his busy schedule to talk to me and share his years around the sport of hydroplane racing. Until next week, don't forget, we're on social media. We're on social media. We're on instagram, facebook. You can check us out online at roostertelltalkcom and don't forget to put that roostertelltalk plus subscription.
Speaker 2:I've got a fun thing coming out. I'm going to share that this week that all members will get. There's not going to be a raffle in july because everyone's going to get this. It's something fun and new. I'm trying out something for the fans. We've got some racing coming up Madison Regattas on the 4th of July weekend. We're in the middle of summer hydroplane season. I'm excited. I hope you are too. But until next time, I hope to see you at the races.