Sonny's Boy

SONNY'S BOY

Hi. I'm Rick Clogston, and as of this writing I am the track announcer at the Legion Speedway in Wentworth, NH. I'm 50 years old, and have literally been involved in dirt track racing in NH and VT all my life. This blog will be the history of that, as seen through my eyes.

It will be a good idea, if this is a topic that interests you, to check the old entries every now and again, as I will be adding pictures, etc. as I go along. Also, it would be good to remember that this is all as I see it. This is not meant to be a definitive history, but merely some thoughts on a topic I've seen a lot about. Feel free to add your own comments as you see fit.

This first entry will be about my father, Albert "Sonny" Clogston. There was a time in my life that it kind of bugged me to be known as Sonny's Boy, but now when somebody remembers me as that, I consider it an honor. This isn't about him as my dad, though. This is about him as a race fan, and participant in the sport he loved so much.

Actually, it's also about my mom, Marge, and grandmother, Pearl. The three of them went as a package from track to track back in the 1960's. They were members of the American Legion post that owns the land the Legion Speedway rests on. The post built and opened the track in 1961, when I was 5. There is some dispute on that year, so if anyone can prove otherwise I'll happily revise, but I remember it being the summer before I started first grade. Dad was the announcer, Mom worked in the consession stand, and I forget what Gram did.

I was just a little squirt, but I remember the first two weeks of racing. The track didn't have a public address system, so Dad stood up on top of the judges stand, which was a platform with a roof, cupped his hands around his mouth, and yelled. The third week we got our first PA. Dudley Cotton, the brother of Senator Norris Cotton, brought his 1954 Plymouth sedan which had three bullhorns mounted to the roof. The microphone had a long cord, which they ran up to the judges stand, and that was the PA for the rest of the first season.

In '63, Dad, Mom, and Gram were offered jobs by Keith Bryar at his new 106 Midway Raceway. That track, by the way, eventually became Bryar Motorsport Park, and is now known as New Hampshire International Speedway. Back then, it was a 1/5 mile dirt bullring. Dad became the pit steward, and Mom and Gram were the checkers. For those of you who don't recognize those terms, the pit steward runs the pit area. He is everything from a rules enforcer to a parking attendant. The checkers keep track of the cars on the track, and the order in which they are running.

Dad enjoyed being Pit Steward. He got to hang out with all the drivers and crews, and they respected him enough to do what he said. The fact that he was 6' 2" and 240 lbs. gave him a little of that authority, but also the fact that he was upbeat, outgoing, and knew what he was talking about. He had his own way of doing things. One of the rules was that every race car should have a welded four-post roll cage, welded to the frame. Dad had a way of testing your race car to see if it was safe. He would climb in through the same hole the driver used, and he carried a short-handled sledge hammer. Then he proceeded to . . . uh, test your roll cage. If he could get out any other way than the way he got in, you couldn't race. You could tell when a new car showed up at the pit entrance. The racket it made could be heard in the next county.

Back before Mom and Dad were married, their idea of a hot date was to go to the races. It was usually the Gilford Bowl, Waterford Speedbowl, or Thunder Road in Barre, VT. After getting married, they waited until I was four or five before they started dragging me to the races. In retrospect, I guess I have to admire their discipline for holding off that long. I still remember the first time I ever went, which as I recall was Thunder Road. On the way home, they asked me how I liked it. I was unsure. It was awfully loud, and awfully crowded. But, I wasn't crying, so we kept going.

Usually, Mom and I would sit in the stands and watch the races. More times than not, Dad would wind up going off to talk to somebody. He knew EVERYBODY! I can remember him saying he'd be right back, and half an hour later he'd be on the infield talking with the flagman. Other times he'd wind up in the judges stand, or in the pit. He knew the drivers, the car owners, the officials, the guys who owned the track, just plain everybody. Now that I'm 50, and know what it is to know a lot of people, I can only marvel at how many people he knew by the age of 35. And had a day job, too!

For a while we did Saturday nights at Loudon for Keith, and Sunday afternoons at the Legion Bowl. The Bowl closed around '65 or '66, so they took a job offer for Sundays in Groveton, NH at a new track called Riverside Speedway. By that time, the team included Dad, Mom, and Gram as pit steward and checkers, and Ted Winot, a well-known flagman. Soon, I'll write more about Ted. Suffice to say for now that he was the best.

I'm hesitant to name many names here, but I'll take a chance with this one. There was a driver who made the rounds of the local tracks, a very good driver named Ralph Stygles. He was aggressive, but very good, and could sure build a car. He had a wife named Ida, who one could easily say was a passionate advocate of her husband. Nothing wrong with that, of course, but sometimes she . . . how can I put this? Sometimes, she let her advocacy of her husband go a little over the top. She was loud, and could sometimes get pretty abusive. At Groveton, Dad had a raised platform from which he could see the whole pit area and also the race track. It was a short distance from the fence that separated the pit from the parking lot.

One day, Ida perceived that Ralph had been treated unfairly, and decided that Dad was at fault, at least in part. She stood on the other side of the fence and cussed him up one side and down the other, while he stood up on his platform watching the race, paying no attention to her. Finally, she stopped to draw breath. Dad turned and yelled, "Kiss me, Ida!" Everybody in earshot fell out laughing, and Ida was so mad she was speechless. Which, of course, was the idea.
Happily, Ralph and Ida, and most other racing people, were good friends and great people. Racing does bring out a lot of strong emotions, but Dad had a gift for not taking a lot of things personally that other people might have. And, he didn't let his liking or disliking of anyone color his decisions. He tried his level best to be fair.

Frankie Hall, Dad, and meThis came out one night at the Loudon track. For a couple weeks it was plain to see that somebody was slipping on studded snow tires, which was illegal as hell. It tore up the track, and gave a car much better grip. Try as they may, they couldn't catch the perpetrator. One night before the feature race, Dad was walking through the back row of the pit, where it was really dark. He stopped at the car of a good friend, Cy Colby of Bristol. Cy was a great driver, and had a well-earned reputation for being an honest and clean driver. Imagine how Dad felt when he saw that Cy was in the process of putting a pair of studded snows on his race car. It broke his heart to do it, but he sent Cy home for two weeks. Rules is rules.

Around 1968, the team got an offer to help open yet another new track. This time, it was in Bradford, Vt. The Bear Ridge Speedway. By that time, Loudon was becoming Bryar Motorsport Park, and the McLain Brothers were in the process of selling the Riverside, so they took the offer. After three or four years there, Gram and Ted called it quits, so Mom and Dad did the same. For a few years they didn't work the tracks, or even go to the races. They had gotten to the point that they knew so much about how a racetrack is run, it was no fun to go. I grew up, went in the Navy, and drifted away from racing myself.

Eventually, they started going to the old Legion Bowl, which had been leased and reopened by Wayne Weeks and Norman Roulx. It was now the Nor-Way Pines Speedway. Mom would sit in the stands with a pad of paper, checking the races, but Dad did what he always did; cruised around the place chewing the fat with everybody. After a while Wayne talked him into taking over as the announcer, a job he held until he retired in the early '90's. By that time I was working part-time as a DJ at a local radio station. I would go to the races with Dad and sit with him in the judges stand. The summer that he retired we were up there one night. Between races, he gave me this look that I'll never forget. He passed me the mic for a 4-cylinder class qualifying race and said, "Let's see how the hot-shot DJ does." I called the race, and when I turned around, he was gone. He'd gone down to the stands to chat with fans he knew, and never called another race.

That fall, he and Mom retired to Florida. A few years later Wayne Weeks also retired and moved down as well, about ten miles from where my folks lived. Dad would sometimes go to the races at a small track in Inverness. He passed away in 1998.

Although I've been going to the races from a very young age, the only job I've ever held at a track is that of announcer. In that, I still hold fast to Dad's number one rule; be everybody's fan. The job of track announcer is especially blessed. You're an official, but you don't have to make any decisions. No one has any reason to hate you, unless you say something bad about their favorite driver. The thing I always try and remember is that every driver on that track has friends and family in the stands. It doesn't matter if they're the track champion, or running dead last. They are worthy of respect. I learned that from Dad.