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BEEN THERE, DONE THAT

Dave Tatom also has the T-shirt and a picture of him wearing it!!

 

          Dave Tatom reminds me of Joe Doaks. If you're not  familiar with either fellow,   let me start by telling you  about Joe Doaks. Joe was the featured character in a wonderful old shaggy dog story.   As the story went, Joe had been everywhere, done everything, and knew everybody.  Mention any fellow's name and Joe knew him, no matter how famous or obscure the personage. In time,  Joe's cronies were driven to distraction by this, to the point of challenging him to put an end to his one-upping ways once and for all. "We're bettin' you don't know the Pope," one friend   taunted, laying down what the group had  conceived as the ultimate challenge.  "The Pope? Oh sure, heck of a guy,"  Joe  replied without so much as the briefest of pauses.  "We're bettin' a thousand  dollars you don't know him," chimed in  another, putting some serious teeth in the anticipated showdown. (This is a very old story.) 

 "Save your money, lads, and take my word for it. I know the Pope," Joe came  back, calm as could be. The antagonists were not to be denied, and within a couple of weeks Joe and one of the challengers, selected to be the witness by having drawn the shortest straw, were standing in St. Peters Square in a throng of tens of thousands of the faithful, waiting for a scheduled appearance by the Pope.  With just a few minutes to go before the appointed time, Joe hastily excused himself and disappeared into  the crowd.  While the "witness" was trying to decide what to do next a great  roar went up from the huge assembly as  the doors to the balcony opened and  the Papal entourage stepped out.  Unable to see clearly what was going on, the fellow turned to an excited, cheering stranger and asked him who was on the balcony. "I'm not sure who the fellow is in the beanie and white dress, but the guy standing next to him is Joe Doaks!"  

If Dave Tatom told me he knew the  Pope I wouldn't doubt him for a second. Dave has lived the moments, done the work, and known the people he  talks about in remembrances from what  amounts to several full and very interesting lives in racing and aviation.  In his early teens, the proprietor of Dave  Tatom Custom Engines was a bona fide  pit crewman for a winning Kurtis  midget, handling the clean-and-shiny  chores well enough that by the time he  was 16 he was employed part time as a  mechanic in the British car business owned by one of the partners in the  Kurtis operation. He became a full-time' journeyman wrench at 18, at the same time earning an FAA  mechanic's  ticket  along with a private pilots license.  At  age 22, Dave opened his own shop specializing in Porsche, Ferrari, Mercedes,  and racing sports cars, and gave a good  enough account of himself on the track  to snag some SCCA championships and  set track records at some of the better  venues in the West.     Dave speaks of racing at long-gone  tracks like Torrey Pines, Santa Barbara,  Paramount Ranch, and Riverside with  the easy familiarity of one who paid his  dues during countless laps, occasionally  describing the action of a particular  moment in photographic detail - and  then whips out an actual photo or two  to illustrate the reverie. Dave talks of  old racing pals and rivals - major figures with whom he's bent and rubbed  either elbows or fenders or both.    In 1956, early in Dave's engine-building career and before he was old  enough to hold a racing license, a flathead Ford he'd authored for a home built special driven by Ray Hansen, was  pitted against a pair of V12 Ferraris driven by Carroll Shelby and Phil Hill at a  race in Bremerton, Washington.  As  Dave describes the car and the day,  we're looking at pictures of the crisp little special, perched on its Kelsey-Hayes  wheels, on the starting grid amid expensive, sophisticated sports cars, holding  its own visually as it would do during  the race. "The car placed third behind  Shelby and Hill," Dave says, then adds,  sort of "by the way," "It led 18 of the 20  laps and then retired to third because of  a blown head gasket."  

When the narrative turns to Jim Hall,  Dave's admiration for the Texan as both  clever innovative engineer and all-  around good guy is revealed in a story  about the Chaparral 2B - the sportsracer with an automatic transmission.     'I got to drive it around Rattlesnake  Raceway (Hall's private track and a  turn-for-turn replica of the old Riverside  International Raceway) when I was  down there testing and setting up my  car (a Lotus 19). I asked Jim 'How  does it drive with that automatic?'  and he said 'Get in and drive it.' So  I did." Dave knew he was in special  company  because other than Hall,  only Hap Sharp - Hall's teammate -  and a handful of top drivers had  driven the 2B.     Toward the end of a three-day show-and-tell session at Dave's shop in Mount  Vernon, Washington, as he flips through  one of his many scrapbooks, he tosses a  small photo on the table and asks 'How  about this?"  What looks like a single-engine airplane, its propeller not turning, being towed on a long rope by  another plane from which the photo was taken, turns out to be exactly that!  "Whatever for?" we ask. "When you've got a good airplane with a dead engine stranded on the beach and the tide's  coming in you get creative," he answers.  He picks up the photo and studies it, then laughs, "The FAA probably wouldn't appreciate that one, would they?"     Maybe not, but Joe Doaks sure would.                    -Mike- Bishop