Despite Age, He’s Still at Full Throttle

All his life, Bob Nordskog has worked hard. At the age of 11, he was walking eight miles to work. Once there, he was sweeping out the hangar, running out for sandwiches, greasing airplanes and making wake-up calls to barnstorming pilots with hangovers.

At 13, he was an airplane pilot himself, a wing-walker, stunt flyer and parachute jumper. He was too young to drive a car, but he was flying a plane.

He went to work repairing wrecked planes for Howard Hughes and designing new ones, then decided to go into business for himself.

He borrowed $7,500 from the banks and, within three years, was the biggest manufacturer of in-flight food equipment in the world. If you ever had a rare steak on an airplane, Nordskog’s galleys kept it hot for you. If you ever had a hot cup of coffee, his equipment heated it for you.

Naturally, when he got to be 70 years old, he wanted to take it easy, to enjoy life. Naturally, he got a boat. Lots of people do that. Get a nice sloop with a radio, a cabin with curtains on the portholes, and cruise the Caribbean or anchor off the French Lido or party through the Greek Isles. Invite opera singers aboard. Moor it off Palm Beach or Oyster Bay.

Only Nordskog’s boat is not one of your weekend downwind sailers and, even though he could afford it, not something you’d need a crew of 10 and Liberian registry for. In fact, you can’t even sit down in it, never mind hold a dance.

What it is, is a seagoing bullet. About as much fun to sail in as a U-boat in the North Atlantic, or a PT-boat cutting through the Japanese fleet at Manila.

There are no frills about Nordskog’s vessel, no cocktail flag, nobody wearing a brass-button, double-breasted blazer and a yar cap. You buckle on a helmet and a life-preserver, open the throttle and hang on. Then, you start slapping the waves at 80 m.p.h. If you don’t own a boat, you can get the same effect by falling down a flight of cellar stairs and standing under a cold shower for five or six hours.

It’s hardly the retirement septuagenarians dream of. There are areas of the world where they use more humane methods than this to get spies to talk.

When Nordskog checks in with the doctors, they are hard put to tell what he does for a living. If it’s the day after a powerboat race, they might guess that he’s a linebacker for the Chicago Bears. Or, maybe Larry Holmes has been practicing body shots on him in a gym.

First of all, there’s that blood in the urine. Then, there are the body bruises, the soreness in the joints, the palm burns on the hands. He comes out of a race in about the same condition as a guy who just came out of a 24-hour bombardment or was pinned down all night by machine gun fire.

Nordskog is proud of every lesion, every blood clot and compound fracture. He’s having the time of his life.

It all goes back to when he was a kid. He was having a swell time then, too, walking wings, diving into cornfields, looping-the-loop. Lots of people change planes in mid-airport. Nordskog changed then in mid-air.

He gave all that up because his mother wanted him to. In those days--1926--kids did what their mothers told them.

He gave up car-racing when he met the pretty brunette, Ellie, who was to become his wife. But, when he got to the age when most men were thinking of putting up the toys of youth and the recklessness of young manhood, Nordskog had some unfinished challenges to face. He began to buy powerboats at an age when most men are lucky to man golf carts.

This is a sport where a simple ripple on a bay can snap an ankle and a broach can mangle a lung. The Japanese racer, Rocky Aoki, injured his heart, no less, in an overturn. It is a sport only for those who heal rapidly. But, at 71, Nordskog is the holder of more offshore powerboat championships, world records and racing trophies than anyone who ever went to sea. He has had more than 140 firsts in his career and 34 world speed records.

Some athletes boast of a high threshold of pain. Nordskog apparently has no threshold. He has had, by actual count: 1) a broken ankle, 2) three broken ribs, 3) a shattered elbow, 4) a punctured lung, 5) a ruptured kidney, 6) a ruptured spleen, and, 7) two brain concussions. Also, he has pulled both arms out of the sockets and once he broke his hip from socket to thigh and walked around on it for 30 months.

Nordskog intends to race boats. His body just has to do the best it can.

Nordskog and his boat, the cigarette-hull in which he broke the Canada-to-Mexico time record, will be on display at the Southern California Boat Show at the L.A. Convention Center for the next 10 days. It may be your last chance to see him. Since he is in the business of fulfilling childhood dreams at this time of life, he may next be the only 71-year-old in history to run away and join the circus.