Indy 500 fans recall Speedway in the Month of May

SPEEDWAY, Ind. — Julie Bolejack remembers when racing legend Parnelli Jones used to sleep at her uncle’s house in the Month of May.

Tony Ray used to sneak into the track the night before the race and guide his car with only his running lights on to a coveted spot inside Turn One.

Randy Roberts knew the name of a buddy who would push his car into the infield on Race Day and set fire to it by the end of the day.

Talk to any veteran race fan at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in the Month of May and they will tell you, “It’s not like it used to be.”

“I been coming over here my entire life, you know,” said Ray. “During the Month of May, we were here all day every day, we had our garage passes, took vacations, we were here all day every day and we had a blast.

”When it was two weeks when we had the Month of May and we were out here for two weeks, at the end of that two weeks, we needed another two-week vacation to recover.”

Roberts recalls skipping classes at Speedway High School 50 years ago to attend Carb Day at the track.

”I got caught on TV and my science teacher said, ‘Well, Mr. Roberts, I saw you on TV,’ and I said, ‘Oh, man, I was home sick,’ and he said, ‘No, I saw you on TV’.”

“Busted.”

Roberts and Ray are surprised all these years later that they survived the Snake Pit.

”You name it we had it,” said Ray. “You walk through the Snake Pit and it was an education.”

Roberts agreed.

”When it was the mud daubers out there. They had truck pulls down there. We were down there in the first turn the whole time. It was nuts,” said Roberts, who remembered the name of Snake Pit royalty including The Governor and the Mayor. ”That was Rabbit and Rooster and Jeff. They called him the Mud Dauber and he would do flips in the mud down there. We know all those guys.”

Including the car owner who dragooned his friends into helping push his disabled vehicle off 16th Street, down the ramp and past the Yellow Shirts on the way to Turn Three on Race Morning.

”That car he’s talking about is Ken Harrelson’s car,” Roberts told Ray after I recounted my own story of cars aflame in the infield on Race Day. “They were pushing it in, it had checkered flags and all colors paint on it and it was a convertible. Yeah. It was a friend of ours.”

“What became of that car at the end of the race?” I asked.

“Oh, they burned it. They burned it down in Turn Three.”

“Towed it to the junkyard,” said Ray.

Back in the day, police would shut off westbound access into the track along 16th Street at Tibbs Avenue at about 9 p.m. the night before the Race, cars lined up, fans partying all night, as a strip club charged $50 cover at the corner where Georgetown and Crawfordsville roads and 16th met out front of the White Castle, everybody waiting for the 5 a.m. canon blast from inside setting off a land rush for the best viewing spots in the infield where three-story scaffoldings would go up and only the bravest would climb to watch the race.

The Snake Pit was coveted acreage where it was every man and woman for him or herself and Indiana State troopers, the biggest and tallest in the state, passed through every couple hours to drag the rowdiest and drunkest fans along to a holding pen behind the Speedway Museum on their way to Lock Up in the basement of the City-County Building where they would wake up hung over on Monday morning.

”And that one year they were carrying big clubs, I mean big clubs, and people were feeling it,” said Roberts.

If you hang around the track long enough, like Ray and Roberts, you’re bound to meet some racing heroes when you’re walking around Gasoline Alley.

”We all went in, sat around the table and talked to Bobby Unser for 20 minutes,” said Ray, recalling the three-time Indy winner. “He was telling us stories. We were cracking up laughing. It was a great time. He was a great storyteller.”

Bolejack said her uncle discovered Jones, winner of the 1963 Indy 500, sitting dejected and broke on a cooler in Turn One without a ride his first year at the track and took him home to make a lifelong friend.

She hasn’t missed a race with her husband in decades.

”So I’ve sat in the penthouse, I’ve sat everywhere, but we sit in the fourth turn and we sit down pretty close, about six rows up, and there are times when depending on what happens we’ll turn and look at each other and we’ll have grease and tire pieces on our faces and that’s our race experience. We know we really enjoyed the day when we get dirty.”

The track and the race and the people watching from the stands and their adventures have changed over the years.

”Look at the investment in the grounds. Look at all the investments for the fans and fans experiences, it’s beautiful,” said Bolejack.

”Things have changed,” said Roberts. “It’s definitely a lot nicer but not as much fun.”

Just then the Gordon Pipers rolled through the plaza below the Pagoda nearly drowning out my interview with Ray.

”When you hear that,” he said, “you think of Indy.”

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