Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

eCOLUMN lime Forgotten victory in the manner of Kretz, he went h e great Ed Kretz retired from and Scout model ~n~ians, an ast.onishing down National after National to galling motorcycle racing in 1954, leaving Manx No~ton ~ngmally consigned t~ defeat. At Springfield, for example, he'd behind no racing descendants: even the Canadian Billy Mathew, and fermibeen clearly getting the better of Bill his son Eddie repudiated the damn-thedable KR. Harley-Davidsons from the Tuman, yet lost. At Syracuse, Bobby Hill torpedoes, full-speed-ahead fury of his Jo~y Gibson stabl.e as well as several p inned on him a bewildering loss. At , addltion?1 ~otent Tnumphs: By the ve~ parent, expousing instead tactics, strate- . Milwaukee, Paul Goldsmith and Ernie gy, and technique. A drowsy decade end of his hfe Hawley v:as In cruel s~tBeckman got him on the last comer. elapsed. And then, with racing falling box race cars, one of w~lch ?ttacked him Losing a close race didn't make asleep with cool thinkers and dull styland caused a vertebra in his neck to be Hawley angry, and everybody enjoyed fused. ... ists instead of bullyboys and merciless him when he was joking and his laughr l hard-chargers like old Kretz, Bart Hawley, much like Kretz, had no N Markel arrived and gave things a fierce ;>., kick. Markel, throughout the '60s, was Kretz all over again: pulverizing, over-.. whelming, absolutely unstoppable when he stayed on his wheels. Bested by wear and tear, Markel, too, finally abdicated. That wa s decades ago, and racing still awaits the next Kretz avatar. Yet back in the hot years when the name Don Hawley was a byword of intimidation -and fear, it appeared that Hawley, too, was Kretzian. These are some of those years: • 1951: In speedway competition on the British Isles, an international match at a 375-yard sand track pits an Englishman, an Australian, an Irishman, a Norweigian, and an American, Hawley. Hawley wins. • 1952: In season dirt track point standings maintained by the American Motorcycle Association, Buck Brigance is third, Chuck Basney is second, and Hawley is first. • 1956: At Gardena Stadium in Los Angeles, jus t prior to a celebration intending to honor Basney for his exploit of capturing 15 main events in succession, Basney, Brad Andres, and Hawley crash in a heap, leaving Hawley unwounded, Andres with a smashed leg, and Basney dead. • 1958: Encroaching on Sammy Tanner and Carroll Resweber locked in combat ahead of him, Hawley runs out of race track; as a means of egress, he knocks Tanner wide, then caroms into and off Resweber, fracturing Resweber's clutch lever and finger. • 1962: After seasons away from flat tracking, Hawley makes a classic but damaged appearance at Ascot Park's SMile National by buzzing [ody Nicholas and shaving his front wheel after Nicholas defeats him in a bitter heat race. • 1972: Radically reinvented as a 44year-old rookie campaigning on the state fairgrounds of the Indianapolis-ear tournament, Hawley meets A .J. Foyt who simultaneously praises his wheelmanship and then bawls him out for coming to race cars so late. • 1974: Hawley'S heart arrests at home; a victim of depression, delusion, and alcoholic poisoning, Hawley dies aged 46. His rambling valediction, delivered During his racing years, the name Don Hawley was a byword of intimidation and fear. unintentionally two months earlier, had reminisced poignantly, "Racing is the only thing I've done in my life and I mechancial sense or faculty. He simply ter echoing across the pits. But nobody don't think I'll ever be able to stop - I liked Don Hawley when he wanted to raced at the limit. No tuner was capable live, eat, and breathe racing...I've always fight. The trouble was, it was impossible of making a' motorcycle strong enough had bad luck from racing, and never to predict when he might get in that for all he gave it, and there was a good luck, it's been a struggle all my frame of mind. "You'd go with Don for famous Hawley story from the '60s at life, and I don't know why...! just get Ascot Park, where he had just won the beers at the 190 Dub after a Friday night out there on a track, I'm still SO damn at Ascot, " a friend recalled, "and he'd be right to race Howard Barnes' coveted enthused..." calm. And the next thing he'd have Triumph, an outrageously fast motorcyExactly like the nonpareil Kretz, Don cle. But Hawley arrived unexpectedly in jumped on top of a table and be yelling, Hawley was short and block-like, with the pits, furiously revving the misfiring 'I can kick the crap out of everybody no stomach. He stood on stubby legs here!' And, of course, he could." Triumph and filling the air with shrieks and his thick arms advertised a weakfor Barnes to make it run on more than The tuner Tim Witham's first meeting ness for tattoos; the ham-size fists which with Hawley might have been anyone one cylinder. Indeed it was firing on clutched and gassed and blew up many else's last. It was on Catalina after the only one cylinder. And the reason was a flat track bike could also layout an island Grand Prix, when Witham visited that the connecting rod on the other was enemy with one stroke. one of the Avalon taverns and noticed flailing the air through the jagged hole it Kretz attained his bulk by offIoading had just punched through the side of the Hawley, wearing army combat boots hay from wagons. Don Hawley, growand with his head shaved bald for the engine. ing up on the tough and mean streets of occasion, arm-wrestling on top of the bar Hawley was obsessed. He was the Los Angeles inner city, first exposed and destroying two opponents at the speeding like a bullet to the mark; himself to a life of weight lifting; and same time. Hawley and his war-like seemed prepared to annihilate himself later, upqn reconsidering the matter, to associate Kenny Clark had warmed up racing if necessary. But during the '50s, an amazing existence spent manhanfor the action, it turned out, by sharing a instead of accumulating victory after dling volatile JAP speedway burners T ~ '"3 30 .... motorcycle. all day in the Grand Prix, where whoever wasn't riding occupied himself by draining six-packs of beer. Witham hired Hawley as his rider nonetheless. That summer they took in the National tour together. One of their first stops was at Sturgis, and the night before the race Hawley drove them into Deadwood, the cowboy village where Wild Bill Hickok was dealt a poker hand of aces and eights. Quickly taking the measure of the locals, Hawley entered a saloon and provoked panic among all the cowboys by jamming a finger into their backs and demanding "Stick 'ern up!" Just then additional racers stormed the bar: Bugs Mann, Sliding Al Gunter, and Gentleman Joe Leonard, all passengers in Charlie West's celebrated eyesore of a 1949 model six-cylinder Nash which shed a fender, hood and front bumper making an epic journey from Sturgis. West, yet another hard-bitten individual wi th a confrontational style, saw Hawley and immediately decided that they .should engage in fisticuffs, which they proceeded to do. This was somehow intense for Tim Witham. And the tension mounted; with Don Hawley, it always did. Not long afterward in Pennsylvania, at Langhorne, best known as the citadel of Kretz, Hawley reacted with belligerence when three burly coal miners wouldn't cede the highway right-of-way. "Stop the car," ,he ordered Witham. "Well get 'em." "We?" shrieked Witham, rolling up the 'window and bolting the door. "Wh o is 'We?' You got a mouse in your pocket?" Working and living with Hawley for a summer helped reduce Witham from a state of robust health into the meek, frail, wizened vegetarian he remained for all the rest of life. Witham was proud of himself for becoming the wizard tuner who could construct motorcycles strong enough for Don Hawley. But he'd also discovered why Don Hawley wasn't Ed Kretz. "When Hawley was riding my bike," Witham later reported, frustration in is voice, "I could tell jus t from the kind of dirt track we went to if we'd do well or not. If it was a fas t, deep ki nd of dirt that you could run hard. on all day, and the kind that took a lot of guts, Hawley would win. But if it was a track that became dry or slick or got holes in it, Hawley would not do well." The frustration became exasperation. "The reason Don Hawley never won a single National race, not one, was because he refused to change, to adapt," Witham mourned. "You know that Syracuse race he lost to Bobby Hill? Well, Hawley was leading and Bobby had given up, literally given up, trying to ca tch him. Excep t th a t there was a hole in the first comer, and Hawley was hitting it square every single lap. To avoid that hole, all he'd needed to do was change his line a few inches - even Kretz would have done that. But Hawley just wouldn't do it. It never . occurred to him. lt was him against the hole. Macho, I suppose. And that gave Bobby Hill an opening, and he passed us and won." Hawley probably never got to actually compete against Ed Kretz. But Hawley did experience combat with Eddie Kretz, whom he defeated on the horse track at Del Mar, and also caused to spend a cold night in the Daytona Beach slammer for mischief that Hawley initiated but that constables blamed Eddie for. Hawley also emulated the elder Kretz by embarking on automobile racing. Kretz's own four-wheel racing had involved, mostly, sports cars . Upon discovering that he could overtake great clumps of traffic by goosing the hand

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