Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

Maely with 2000 U.S. Natio nal Spe e d w ay C ha mpi o n Char lie Ve nega s somewhere and figured tha t you'd never see him there, then there he'd be, and he always treated everyone with the same resp ect . It didn 't matter if it was Roger Re iman, Bart Markel or some three -digit Novice . My da d and Ken always got along really good , and whenever he saw me. he always asked after my dad. My dad has been gone was do ing his other stuff - but that always stuck in my m ind, that he would do that, lay dow n o n t he col d conc re te in th a t sleeveless shirt. He worked reall y har d o n t hat e ng ine . He go t a lo t of hel p from everyw he re, but he was also do ing his own thing, and he was proud of it. I reme mbe r tha t he was always showing everybody the ca stings and the fo undry whe re he mad e the castings . He would ta ke peo ple throug h tours of the place a ll the time because he was so proud of it. I remember that he had Mike Bast ride for him for a while. and then Ron Preston , but I actually won my first big championship on a Maely speedway motor cycle. It was in 1977 , and I rem em ber that Ken and J udy se nt me to New York to ride the U.S. Open , and Mike Maely was my mech anic, and we ended up winning the thing. That was pretty s pecial to me, and I know Ken was proud of that . He always treated us like family. My kids gr ew up ridi ng at Maely's . Ken was always somebody that you could co unt on. for quite some time, but recentl y , whenever bend, and he always welde d my initials on the toes. When I got ma rried to Pam , Ken ca me up and took over the whole da mn wedd ing th ing. He ca me up in his truc k, a nd said, "Okay, ge t o ut of the way: and he stayed up all night, cookin g a co uple of pigs in the g rou nd , fed everybody an d th en drove home . That' s just the way Ken was . Nothin g eve r impress ed him. He co uld get on a motorcycle and ride the thing in his c o ve ra lls as good as you co uld in yo ur leathe rs. He was a true motorcyclist, and he cou ld never get that out of his blood. There is never going to be anothe r Ken Maely. K enny Roberts, two-tim e AMA Grand National Champion (19 73, 1974), threetim e 500cc World Road Racing Champion (1 9 78 -1980) we'd be shooting the bull, Ken would say to me, "You know, Gene, I really miss talking to your dad ." That meant a lot to me. It's really hard to imag ine a world without Ken Maely. Gen e Rom ero , former AMA Gran d National Ch ampion (1 9 70) , fo rmer Day t ona 200 win ner (1975) Wh en I was an ama teur and was ridin g for Howard Bam es, it was one of my first times on the road. We ran Springfield, and then we went to a place ca lled Crown Point, Indiana , and I couldn't find a place to sta y. Ken and his wife let me sta y with them . The next moming, all hell broke loose, and it rained. But I just reme mber him as havi ng a big heart and being all for the motorcycle racer. He was the best ambassador for dirt track racing and a perfect example of what is good abo ut this spo rt. He was a fixture, If you went While Ken Maely's legacy spans generations, it also spans the generations of this publication. Maely was very proud of his friendship with our president and cofounder , Sharon Clayton, and he always enjoyed telling the story about how he was one of the first people ever to take out an advertisement in Cycle News and how he helped to distribute the first copies of the newspaper at Daytona in the early '60s. He always made his ranch available to us for any testing that was required , and he was always there to offer a smile or a joke or a great story from the past. His loss is felt as deeply here as anywhere , and we will forever bejust as proud to say that we knew him. If you want to make a lasting impression on an 11-year-old boy, it's really pretty easy. Leave your T-s hirt off, but put on the oldest set of overalls you ca n find. Top it off with a big straw ha t. Then jump on an XR100 and ride aro und in circles just like the other kids. In other words , be Ken Maely. My son Kyle recently met Maely for the first time . And I'd be willing to bet that he won 't forget him . Naturally, the meeting came at Maely's Ranch. Kids and old people don't often hit it off straight away, but Maely wasn 't your typical old guy. For one, he rode motorcycles. For another, he opened the racetrack at his ranch for other kids to go ride. Then he'd make sure the place was per fect . He'd drive the water truck, groo m the trac k. And he did it repeatedly over the course of the day to make things perfeet . Then he'd hang out with the kids, making small talk with them, spraying them with water on a hot day when he drove by in the truck. Kids think you 're cool when you give them the time of day, when you talk to them like they're somebody instead of just another kid. He told Kyle stories of how his wife would run him a dail y bath and gives him pedicures . Kids don 't often hear stories like that. Normally in the truck ride home after a day of riding, Kyle ta lks nonstop about riding. After that first day at Maely's, he did nothing but talk about Maely. "Dad, that guy is cool ." Could there be higher pra ise for a man who was nearly 80 from a kid who has yet to see 12? Kyle was so into Maely's story -telling that when he spent the next weekend with his grandparen ts , he re peated the yams to them . Since the enti re Carruthers clan knew Maely, I rem ember Ken putting a lot of long hours in the workshop, work ing o n that speedway en gine . I remember him telling me tha t in betwee n time , he wou ld just la y down on the shop floo r a nd sleep for an ho ur - he prob ab ly did that a lot a nyway when he Bobby Sch w artz , two-tim e World Pai rs Speedway Cha mpio n (1981, 1982), tw otim e U.S . Na tional Speedway Champion (1986, 1989), two-time U.S. Open Speedw ay Champion (1977, 2003) they got a kick out of Kyle passing on his stories. Ironically, ( was roughly the same age as Kyle when I first met MaeJy. Uke Kyle, I also met him through my father, and I also met him at a racetrack. My memories of him as a kid are the same as my memories of him as an adult - him working away in some capacity in those overalls. At the end of the day he sometimes looked like he'd bee n working in a coalmi ne. As a kid, like Kyle, I thought Maely was cool. As an ad ult wa tching him inte rac t with the kids at the track, I knew he was cool. Pau l Carrut hers The first time that I ever spoke to Ken Maely , boy, was he ever pissed off. "Hey, are you the Johnny -corne-lately editor who called my dirt track boots ' lace -up construction worker boots' in your art icle!?" he growled into the telephone. ( wasn't, but just the sa me , I had to en d ure the wrath of Maely on behalf of the dirt-tra ck editor whose po sition ( had just ass umed. Tha t old fa rt let me have it with both barrels, but he eventua lly calmed down, and we talked it out. And so began both a professional relationship an d a good friendshi p that I will always cherish. There are two golden riding days at the Maely Ran c h that stick out in my mind . The first is the time that I got For years, and ( mean years, all I ever heard was Ken Maely Billy Ham ill and Greg Hancock to teach Carruthers and this and Ken Maely that. The guy's name was constantly Larry Maiers how to ride a speedway bike in front of the coming up in conversations with my fellow Cy cle News ediBike Week cameras, and then just recently, whe n we spent tors and a lot of racers. Whether it be about dirt track, road the aftemoon there doing a Molo Kids story on junior s peedrac ing, '5enny Roberts, you name it, it came up. Everyone I'd way . Yet those days pale in comparison to the enjoyment ever spoken with who had been out to Maely's ranch and rid- that I go t just by dropping in to vis it Mae ly an d ob s erve den his dirt-track oval raved about the experience. These sto - whatever he had going on at the time. See, I have a lways ries just added to the legend that is Ken Maely. respected Maely and guys like him who can dream, des ig n Until rec ently I was kind of left in the dark, I'd neither been and construct just about anything ou t of e a rth, wood or to the ranch nor met the man, but I definitely had a mental metal, and it was neat to see whatever new ag ricultural propicture of what he was all about. I finally got the chance to go ject or piece of equipment or new sh op tha t he had conout to Maely's a couple of months ago to do a story about structed on his property. I always wondered how he fo und speedway for our sist er publicat ion, Molo Kids. What I qu ickl y . en ough hours in a da y to do it a ll. discovered a bo ut him was that he rea lly and tru ly cared While Maely's Chinese cucumbers are the only cucumbers about the sport that he was involved in, and even mo re so , he I would ever eat, to tell you the truth , ( do not own, nor have I cared about the kids . No, he c herished the kids. From my ever owned, a Maely hot shoe. I used another brand - not one day spent observing him, I qu ickly discovered that he because I felt it was better tha n Ken's, and not to sn ub him, wanted nothing more in life than to expos e these kids to the but because I already had it, and you don 't really need two sport that he loves and to watch the m leam. anyway. You would think tha t a man deserving of as much At the end of the day , I sa t down on a hay bale with Ken loyalty as Ken did would have had a lot to sa y about that, yet and just shot the shit. The coo lest thing was that I felt like ( was he'd only rib me about it once in a while. In fact. the last time sitting the re talking to a friend , despite the fact that we'd just that I saw him , he insisted that ( leave that worn-out old sho e met that day . He treated me with the sa me regard as he would with him so tha t he cou ld "fIX it right: he said. He dam nea r someo ne he'd known for years. The other cool thing was that I wouldn 't let me leave the prop erty unless the shoe stayed felt like I was sitting the re ta lking to a peer my sa me ag e, even with him . I told him I'd be back for it whe never, no hurry. I though he was old enou gh to be my gran dfather . Ken wanted gu e s s I j ust ass umed that Ke n wo u ld al ways be th er e , to know about me as much as I wanted to know about him, because he always was. which I found comforting. Maely's Ranch. in my op inion, was I told the story of my non -Maely sho e to s peedway icon as much about riding moto rcycles as it was about socializJng Bobby Schwartz just the other day , and he looked at me and said, "Wow, Ken never worked on steel shoe s that he didn 't with people, and that is what motorcycling Is all about, right? This wee k I was flying back from Dallas into Long Beach, build. He must hav e really liked yo u." and our flight path took us directly over Maely's ranch. All I I didn't know Ken Maely as long o r as well as a lot of peo cou ld think as I looked down was tha t I'm sure glad that I ple, but it felt like I knew him my whole life. I kno w tha t I'm finally got to meet the gu y. going to miss him that way. Blake Conner Scott Rousseau cue I e n e vv s NOVEMBER 5 , 200 3 11

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