Clovis and the Stretched Midget

By Primo A. Giusti

Okay, this one is from the tales of my father and those who were there. Any discrepancies are inadvertent, so let me know if you find one!

If anyone reading this remembers, Clovis was a dry, hard and fast 1/2 mile (dirt?) that was as flat as your dining-room table. In fact, I remember Clovis as "black" and as hard as concrete. Anyway, if the modern OUTLAWS like dry-slick they would've loved Clovis! The pits were in the infield, which was nice.

I don't know if I have talked about the stretched midget yet or not, but here's a little background on her: Walt Rieff and dad (partners with Giusti's Automotive on Broadway in Sacramento at the time) got a wild idea one night. They had come up with a brain-fart to out class the competition for the annual "Gold-Cup Race of Champions" on the 1/2 mile at the old West Capitol Raceway and decided to take an old midget they had and put the sprinter engine in it. I believe it's first debut was at "Cap" for a test session where the FIRST 12.505-second lap was the result on the 1/4 mile (the time was unofficial as this was a modified night). The next week in an open show at Dixon a "clean-sweep" ensued and by the time they got back to the shop in Sacramento the phone was ringing. Anyway, the rules gods had deemed that the car was illegal for the Gold-Cup as it didn't have an 86" wheelbase. Not to be out done, these two fools simply "stretched" the poor little car to the proper length and took it to the Gold-Cup.

Well, that's another story, so here goes... As it was told to me, dad qualified for the fourth or fifth row. He had worked his way to third when he came upon a lapped car. Now everyone that has ever told me this story referred to this lapped car as "a squirrel". I suppose I should mention the fact that the two fools (dad and Walt) had left the midget brakes on the beast and they were insufficient for the new configuration. Oh yes, this was a NASCAR sanctioned event, so they had to add a roll-bar, now these fools hated this idea but complied (with exhaust tubing)!

Realizing who he was following, dad decided to use better judgment as the brakes had given out four laps prior to this, so dad proceeded to follow for three laps. Finally feeling confident of the line the other car would use entering turn one, dad dove to the inside and took her in deep. The only problem was that "the squirrel" decided that this was a good time to change his line and dropped right into dad. Let's see, that would lead to dad climbing this guy's LR, right? Right! What followed were thirteen end-over-end flips!

When the dust settled and the safety crews reached the wreckage, dad was conscious and scared to death. He told me that at this point he felt no pain and was scared because he couldn't move his head, he thought he was paralyzed. He asked a friend who had worked his way to the wreck to pick his head up so he could see better. His friend said, "hell Joe, I can't - the roll cage has your head pinned to the tail." Dad said, "no, I'm paralyzed!" Again his friend assured him that this was not the case and reiterated that the roll cage had collapsed and pinned his head to the tail of the car.

Dad said that at that instant he was overcome with a flood of pain and almost passed-out. I suppose it took awhile to cut away the cage and extract him from the car. When they had, they took him via ambulance to a Fresno hospital (which one I don't know). There he was told that his injuries were minor and was released. Another friend (George Piscentini) drove him home to Sacramento. Once there this friend decided that the Fresno hospital was full of it and took him to another hospital. As it happened, he had a broken neck! They told him that they were amazed that not only wasn't he paralyzed, but he was lucky to be alive as only 1/4" of vertebrae stood between life an death.

I have to give credit to NASCAR as they treated dad like a king. He said that they even sent a representative out from Daytona to see if he was happy with his treatment and to check his status. Dad never had a bad word for NASCAR, not even to his death some three decades later, which is ironic considering that he had joined WARA (a rival association in the early/mid 1950's).

The doctors told him that he would never race again... right! One year later dad took a trophy he had just won in the "Travel-On Trailer" sprinter to his doctor's office and invited the doctor to put it somewhere I would rather not mention here. He went on to race USAC for a few years and returned to his roots at Stockton's 99 Speedway and West Capitol, racing well into his sixties. In fact, he last raced at he age of seventy-one (but that's another story).