Balls of Fire!

Pete and Archie Black­adar were reg­is­ter­ing rac­ers at a track when a sheep­ish-look­ing man approached the win­dow.  “I won­der,” he said, “if I might have two of those dri­ver pins for my chil­dren who are with me.” Archie, field man­ag­er and nice guy, agreed and Pete hand­ed him the two pins. The man start­ed to turn away, but hes­i­tant­ly turned back. “You wouldn’t be able to give me one for all my chil­dren, would you?”

“Well, how many chil­dren do you have?” asked Archie.

“Eight.”

“Balls of fire!” exclaimed Archie. And every­one laughed. “Take all you want,” he said.

“That was one of Archie’s expres­sions,” explained Pete.  “He took his job seri­ous­ly, but he nev­er lost the joy of being part of the rac­ing com­mu­ni­ty.”  Archie’s been gone now since 1993, but in 2010, he was induct­ed into New Eng­land Antique Rac­ers Hall of Fame.

Archie Black­adar grew up for most of his life in West Danville, grad­u­at­ing from Danville High School in 1922. He went to the Boston area to work where he was bit­ten by the rac­ing bug. He drove “midgets,” a small-sized high-pow­ered class of rac­ing cars. “I didn’t win much,” said Archie in a news­pa­per inter­view. “I couldn’t afford to build my own, so I raced clunk­ers.” When WWII broke out, he enlist­ed in the Navy in 1942. In 1944 he became Chief Pet­ty Offi­cer on the USS Alhena, serv­ing in the South Pacific. 

After eight years in the Navy, in 1950, Archie retuned to West Danville to care for his ail­ing moth­er and began work at Ral­ston Puri­na in St. Johns­bury, where he worked until he turned 65 in 1968. His job at Puri­na didn’t slow the rac­er in him, though, and he took a job as flag­ger at the Water­ford, VT, race­track.  The rac­ing com­mu­ni­ty would soon enjoy the acro­bat­ic starter that was his trade­mark.  In 1961, after attend­ing the NASCAR Offi­cials School in Day­tona Beach, he became a licensed NASCAR chief stew­ard. A chief stew­ard has full charge of the offi­cials, and the respon­si­bil­i­ty of the races rests on his shoulders. 

 Three years lat­er, he met a wid­owed wait­ress named Pete work­ing at Brickett’s Din­er in St. Johns­bury. What attract­ed Archie to her was her insis­tence on NOT hav­ing any­thing to do with rac­ing. “I’d been to a race before and it just didn’t appeal to me, “said Pete. “Women threw beer bot­tles around and were curs­ing and things like that,” she said with dis­gust. It real­ly both­ered Archie that some­one didn’t like rac­ing, and he just didn’t give up try­ing to change her mind.

One day, when he had to flag a race in Grove­ton, he called her to ask her to accom­pa­ny him. Since she was tired of him pes­ter­ing her, she grudg­ing­ly said yes. That’s all it took. After that race, they were insep­a­ra­ble, although they didn’t mar­ry for anoth­er 8 ½ years. “Just good friends, “said Pete.  For near­ly thir­ty years, though, they worked “desk by desk,” as she puts it.

Over that lengthy peri­od of time, Archie moved from flag­ger to chief stew­ard to track own­er /partner, to field man­ag­er.  The track they owned was in part­ner­ship with broad­cast­er Ken Squier—Catamount Speed­way in Mil­ton, VT, from 1965 to 1977. When they sold that, Archie became the East Coast field man­ag­er for NASCAR. He worked 48 tracks in the U.S. and Cana­da. Pete worked 38 of them. Every Feb­ru­ary, the two of them found them­selves at the Day­tona race­track where they worked in reg­is­tra­tion, which con­sist­ed of sell­ing NASCAR mem­ber­ships and mak­ing sure all the dri­vers, own­ers, spon­sors, and wives, etc., had signed insur­ance releas­es for admit­tance to the pit area. 

“Every win­ter Archie would say he might like to stay in Flori­da,” said Pete. “I told him, ‘Any­time you want to do that, just put the sign out there in front of the house in West Danville.’” He nev­er asked for the sign and when their big chance came for the cou­ple to work the pres­ti­gious Win­ston Cup cir­cuit reg­is­tra­tion, he lis­tened to the pleas of Lin Kuhlor (Exec­u­tive Vice Pres­i­dent of NASCAR), who begged him to stay as chief stew­ard in the north. “Archie was a man who felt a deep sense of duty,” said Pete. 

Pete tells us the life of a NASCAR offi­cial isn’t as glam­orous as some might think. “It’s a lot of work,” she said. For exam­ple, the pick­up truck they owned and drove to the races was loaded with Pur­ple K (a spe­cial track fire extin­guish­er) for the entire sea­son, along with the Jaws of Life appa­ra­tus and scales. “We parked that in the garage and let our cars sit out,” she said. They would arrive at the tracks ear­ly before each race and set up reg­is­tra­tion.  And as chief stew­ard, Archie would walk and inspect the track before every race to check for debris. After the races, they had to pay the boys and close up shop, some­times get­ting out as late as mid­night.  If there was a post-race inspec­tion, it might be 3:00 or 5:00 a.m.

There was a lit­tle glam­our, though. Pete remem­bers when she met Dale Earn­hardt. “The first time he came to Day­tona, he was dri­ving just a lit­tle pick­up truck pulling an open trail­er with his race car on it.” The last time she saw him, he was late for a race in New Hamp­shire and came into the reg­is­tra­tion booth, put his arm around her and said, “Sign me in, Pete, will you?” The oth­er rac­ers didn’t seem to mind. “That’s as close as we’ll get to him today,” she remem­bers them saying.

“We were priv­i­leged to have Mar­ty Rob­bins and his band enter­tain us at two of our Day­tona ban­quets; he also drove the Win­ston Cup.” Archie tried to get Paul Newman’s west­ern style shirt from him when he was sign­ing in. They also signed in the Car­ra­dine broth­ers: David, Kei­th and Bobby. 

There were tragedies, too. They were there when Richie Evans died at Mar­tinsville, VA, and Don McTavish in Day­tona. “That’s rac­ing, though,” she said with a sigh. She was in Egypt with a church group when she heard of the death of Dale Earn­hardt in 2001. “That’s rac­ing, though,” she said with a sigh.

Archie was diag­nosed with leukemia in 1991. Still, you couldn’t stop him from his duty. On August 22, 1993, they worked reg­is­tra­tion at Loudon Speed­way in New Hamp­shire; he died Sep­tem­ber 6 at the age of 89. Pete cre­at­ed an award in his hon­or that was giv­en every year at Thun­der Road for the top rook­ie finisher—the Jiffy Lube 150 NASCAR Busch North Grand Nation­al Race.