Decoration Day Races - 1906

The future of oval track racing in the United States was never more tenuous than when 1906 was a New Year. The specter of deaths and career-ending injuries to two of the sport’s biggest stars, Webb Jay and Earl Kiser, cast a long, haunting shadow of doubt. 
 
The industry trades, for the most part located in the northeastern corner of America, called for an end to the barbarism. They embraced road racing which, at the time, was conducted on public roads Europe and America. There was but one race of consequence here, and that was the Vanderbilt Cup, easily the most important auto race in the United States in 1905. Only the winter speed tournament on the sands between Ormond and Daytona Beach came close for prestige. 
 
It’s not that death had not trolled these events as well with riding mechanic Carl Mensel paying the ultimate price in the first Vanderbilt Cup in 1904. Driver Frank Croker tumbled into the Atlantic surf off Ormond in ’05 and passed away hours later. Just weeks later spectator Curt Gruner would be mowed down during the 1906 Vanderbilt Cup.
 
Dozens of oval track races - maybe hundreds - were conducted across America at state and county fairgrounds and death was occasionally part of the scene. The most visible, best known and most marketable driver of the genre, Barney Oldfield, had his share. The first was in 1903 at Grosse Pointe, Michigan when his Winton Motor Carriage Company machine burst a tire and sent him through the railing. Perched there were not birds, but two brothers, one of which, Frank Shearer, was crushed in the onslaught of the 2,000 pound juggernaut racer.
 
The following year on August 29, 1904 another Oldfield accident collected two spectators, both dying immediately when struck by his Green Dragon. Barney swore he was through with the sport but the lure of lucrative financial rewards unavailable through any other channel and the adulation of people were too tempting to fend off. 
 
Still, 1905 brought more pain and evidence of his compassion came when he staged a benefit for his gravely injured colleague Earl Kiser. Kiser, too, with Carl Fisher, had been involved in a spectator death accident, eerily enough on the same day as Oldfield’s September 1903 tragedy. Kiser and Fisher were across the lake from Oldfield at a small track at Zanesville, Ohio. Now Kiser missed his left leg after it was crushed during a mishap at the Glenville, Ohio track.
 
On one tour through the far West - in Wyoming, I think - Barney was approached by genuine cow punchers wanting to know where the notches were on his car. Team manager Ernie Moross sneaked back to the barn where the famous Green Dragon was stalled and used a file to scape in the tally that would fuel local enthusiasm for ticket purchases.
 
This was the backstory to the context of the times when Carl Fisher, still three years from opening the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, organized what local newspapers called the fifth annual Decoration Day auto races at the Indiana State Fairgrounds. Decoration Day was what they called Memorial Day back then.
 
The burgeoning event was finding a foothold as an annual Hoosier spring rite. The capital city’s nascent auto industry saw it as one of several events around the calendar to give market demand a nudge in the right direction, especially at a time of the year when people were thinking about getting outdoors. The early cars did not fare so well in winter’s cold as fluids, especially water, froze and could even bust a block. Spring and the promise of adventure was the time to sell cars.
 
Fisher, who owned the biggest, best established auto dealership and service garage in town led the charge in pulling together the Indianapolis Motor Association to organize the event. This he did despite the constant criticism from the trade press who either derided dirt ovals or ignored them as offering less than sport but more a carnival of gore and hucksterism - a cross between the macabre entertainment of ancient Rome and sleight-of-hand of Barnum & Bailey. 
 
Even Oldfield brought criticism to the proceedings, saying, "We are living in a fast age and the man who is willing to sacrifice his bones and gore on the altar of a highly seasoned sport is the man of the hour. It is not enough that Americans bring forth beautiful specimens of inventive genius and mechanical skill, but they must be raced around a circular track where there is a chance of killing a driver or two."
 
It may be splitting hairs but Oldfield’s commentary was directed more at the audience than the participants. For him the trick was to walk the fine line between denying them what they craved and cashing in on their desire to be there for the chance of seeing it happen.
 
Culturally, the distinction the Eastern establishment made between their giant road and beach races and the tinkering of Westerners at their “pumpkin festivals” may have been more a matter of social standing than material distinction. Events like the upcoming Decoration Day races at the backwater Hoosier Capital were unrefined and involved the products of inferior “Western” auto companies with virtually no evidence of anything of quality from Europe. The European factories only saw value in entering the elite events of millionaires who could afford grand marques such as Panhard, Benz, Fiat, Mercedes, Clement-Bayard or Itala.
 
The thing about the Westerners was that they believed they were not wasting their time. They had a spirit of self-reliance and unbounded optimism that buoyed them to the surface like a cork. Or maybe they didn’t have any other options. Doing nothing wasn’t a choice. No matter how many times facts got in the way they would rummage through reality to come up with something they could point to as evidence that what they had to offer was exactly what the buying public needed.
 
Carl Fisher was one of them. He walked among them. He understood what people craved and lived by the teachings of his spiritual mentor, the Great Agnostic, Colonel Robert Ingersoll who said, “The time to be happy is now. The place to be happy is here. The best way to be happy is to make others so.”
 
Fisher also did not understand risk - or at least not why everyone did not just accept it as part of life. He didn’t ask others to do anything he wouldn’t do. In most cases, he had already done it. He also understood the magic of Barney Oldfield. If any man understood what Barney meant to the Western folk as much as Barney himself, it was Carl.
 
Barney Oldfield, the first man to circle a closed circuit course faster than a mile-a-minute and the holder of every American speed record for one to 50 miles, was coming to town. He was the world champion - whatever that meant. It certainly sounded good.
 
To face him would be a host of incredibles. There was hometown hero “Jap” Clemens, the holder of the world distance record for 24 hours. Another was Paul Kaiser, the great German champion (conveniently enough named Kaiser), who had mastered the circular genre better than any of his European brethren. Kaiser had been sent from his home country “for Oldfield’s scalp.” Will T. Muir, the great Kentucky champion had announced he would follow Oldfield around the country until he at last defeated him on the track. Charles “C.A.” Coey, the millionaire “crack” driver from Chicago had brought his Vanderbilt Cup Thomas Tornado (that never raced in the Vanderbilt Cup) down to Indianapolis to show up Oldfield and his Green Dragon.
 
This was the lot of the oval tracks in America for the next few years. The stubborn fact that promoters could contain a crowd at a track to better account for gate receipts while allowing spectators to see the entire race instead of one corner the critics persisted was irresistible. The local newspapers gave them space while always playing the danger card. 
 
Begrudgingly the American Automobile Association played along. Their big concern was maintaining control of anything and everything. The last thing they needed was to create a market vacuum a rival organization could fill. The low-brow shows had to go on for the weed benders marveling at Oldfield and the like.
 
Meanwhile the national press shined the events on as inconsequential. Still, the legend of Oldfield prevailed among his people. His reputation sagged among the knowing, the intelligencia. His venue of choice was largely kept in play by his willingness to persist - or, perhaps more accurately, the willingness of his public to invest.
 
Now’s your chance to read a pretty thorough accounting of the plans leading up to the much ballyhooed Decoration Day Races of 1906 at the Indiana State Fairgrounds - and the results. In ways so few understand this is very much a part of Indianapolis Motor Speedway and Indianapolis 500 history.