In the go-kart driver’s seat
The research for your story on go-karting [“Revved Up and Ready to Go, Go, Go,” Calendar Weekend, June 8] fell short. The small-car racing tradition was born 20 years earlier with the Junior Midgets of America.
These half-scale versions of the midget race cars running at tracks such as Ascot and Gilmore Stadium were designed to be driven by boys ages 6 to 12. They were complete race cars with two-cycle engines that would enable straightaway speeds of 60 mph (before the mothers made the fathers add governors). The dads were the real competitors, sending us boys out to push the cars to their limits. We raced on a 1/8 -mile dirt track near the corner of Riverside Drive and Los Feliz. My father sold our cars in 1939 for enough money to purchase a lot and start building our home in Sherman Oaks.
ROBERT MARTIN
Rancho Palos Verdes
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In the 1930s there were regular midget auto races on the Loyola High School field at Venice Boulevard and Normandie Avenue. The midgets were powered by washing machine and other small engines -- power mowers were not yet on the market. With popularity growing, the races moved to Gilmore Stadium on Fairfax, sharing space with the Hollywood Stars. I went to both venues as a teenager.
JAIME MONROY
Monrovia
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I would like to think that I played a small part of the early years of the sport of karting, being an early girl driver. My younger brother and I got involved in the mid-1960s.
Our dad used this activity to keep us out of trouble and as a family activity. Ed Radlar, a teacher and friend of my father, had done a book on karting and sold us his very early Bug Kart. The kart had a McCullough chain saw motor, tuned exhaust and an oil bath clutch. We were able to reach speeds of about 60 mph. There was a track across the street from what is now the Miller Brewery in Irwindale. If memory serves me right, Art Ingels owned the track.
We girls were not allowed to race the boys in the same race -- we had our own Powder Puff division. When girls finally got to race boys in the junior division, the guys hated it, because we would leave them in the dirt.
My dear mother felt that young ladies should not be racing karts, and warned my brother and me that if we got hurt it would be the end of it. But one day, I took a turn wrong at about 40 mph and was pitched out of the kart, suffering a badly bruised knee. In those days, girls were not allowed to wear pants to school, so I couldn’t hide my bruised leg. My dad, brother and I explained away the bruise, and my mother believed the story until months later, when she discovered the medical insurance papers in my dad’s sock drawer.
LINDA GLAUE
Chino
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Your article on go-karting neglected to mention Scott Speed, the young man from Manteca. He used to burn up the go-kart tracks in Southern California and now races on the Red Bull team in Formula One. This is the first time an American has driven in Formula One since Michael Andretti in 1993.
LIZ BOEDER
Santa Monica