EARL AND BERNICE BALTES...OCTOBER 2004
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Eldora Article In Sunday Dayton, Oh Paper
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Legendary Eldora promoter retiring
By Tom Archdeacon
Dayton Daily News
ROSSBURG | As it turns out, mothers don't always know best.
Yet, if you had been there for that first race at Eldora Speedway in 1954, you, too, would have thought Ella Baltes was right on the mark.
Her son Earl — a popular saxophone player in the family's orchestra, The Melody Makers — had come up with what many thought was a hair-brained idea. He'd decided to turn some of Darke County's rich, black farm land just north of Rossburg along Ohio 118 into a race track.
He knew nothing about the sport — he remembers many neighbors proclaiming he'd "go broke in nothing flat" — and the debut was nearly a disaster.
"We had a $700 purse, but we had a tough time organizing things," Baltes said. "We had 36 cars in the consolation and no idea who finished where, so we ended up paying everybody the same. ? We didn't have a guard rail and people stood right next to the track until a car came sliding and they had to jump behind the trees."
He said his brother was a good square-dance caller and ended up the race announcer: "We pulled a farm wagon next to the track and he and the scorers and everybody stood on it. But some guy fell off the thing and ended up suing us. Once we went to court, we found his injuries were from an auto accident he'd been in, but it still was a mess.
"Everybody was growling and griping and that's when my mother says, 'Earl, get out of this damned racing business and get back to the dance business where you belong.' "
And now — 51 racing seasons after the fact — Baltes is finally taking Mom's advice. He will get out of the racing business after this weekend's UMP National Championships at Eldora. The 83-year-old promoter — who a few years ago underwent heart surgery, as did Berneice, his beloved wife of 57 years — is begrudgingly set to retire and is in the process of selling his fabled speedway and the vacant Eldora Ballroom next door.
He's giving up a track that has become the Yankee Stadium of dirt ovals. And that makes him a little bit of Babe Ruth, plenty of P.T. Barnum and — with that bill of his ball cap forever turned upward — some Lil' Abner, too.
"He's one of a kind," said Larry Boos, Baltes' right-hand man. "He's a real living legend."
From $700 paydays, he's gone on to promote a pair of $1 million races at Eldora. Over the years, he's attracted a who's-who of horsepower heroes, from A.J. Foyt and Mario Andretti to Al and Bobby Unser, Steve Kinser and Johnny Rutherford, whose sprint car flipped out of the speedway and into the nearby Wabash River. Rutherford got two broken arms, his photo in Life magazine and folk hero status at Eldora.
Last weekend, NASCAR young gun Kasey Kahne raced at Eldora and flipped his car. A couple of weeks earlier, racing superstar Tony Stewart — who's won big events here in the past — was at the speedway with several of the sprint cars he owns.
Jeff Gordon was thrown out of Eldora by Baltes.
"He won a sprint car race here when he was 13, but I didn't know how old he was," Baltes laughed. "When I saw the write-up in the paper I made him quit till he turned 16. They tried to go to court, but that's how it was ? and later he came back."
Everybody who's into short-track racing makes a pilgrimage to this Mecca in the mud. Last month, Eldora had another crowd of over 20,000 for the World 100. The place is so revered that several people over the years — many without the knowledge of Baltes, who shutters at the idea — have had their ashes spread around the track.
The fact that people have not only been drawn, but forever want to stay at Eldora makes Baltes shake his head: "There's nothing along the roads directing people out here, nothing 'cept a sign tacked on one side of a building in North Star."
He won't say who the potential buyers are, but said negotiations are almost 75 percent complete. Rumors have circulated around the racing world that Stewart is part of the group.
Baltes said he's trying to work it so the new owners keep his workers, especially Boos: "It would be stupid to change a lot of things when everything's going so well."
Boos said the track's success is due to Baltes: "This place is built on Earl's blood, sweat and tears. There's not a piece of construction, an idea here that he didn't have a hand in creating. And the thing is, it's all been done in his head. No blueprints. No formal training. Here's a guy with a fifth-grade education who sees things nobody else does."
Baltes said he always was a dreamer: "I remember when I was a kid, I'd see farmers put their corn stalks into shocks and to me they were Indian teepees."
His sense of showmanship was honed when he and his brothers were an integral part of the family orchestra, which played local clubs and dances in the St. Henry, Versailles and Greenville area, as well as several places in Dayton.
"We didn't even have to carry our instruments, the girls who followed us did," Baltes beamed.
He took off his cap and pointed to his nearly bald head.
"Back then my hair was parted in the middle and I always wore a suit. My sister would press the pants before I left home and I'd take them on a hanger to the dance, change in the rest room and never sit down. I wanted to keep that razor-sharp crease."
It was at a dance in St. Henry that he spotted 17-year-old Berneice Moeller.
"She had on a short skirt that showed them legs and she had long, dark hair that used to blow in the wind," he grinned. "She danced past real shy a couple of times and finally I put down my sax and said, 'Play a slow one, boys.' "
Eventually, he wooed Berneice from her Indiana boyfriend and, after serving in the South Pacific in World War II, he returned home, got married and eventually they had two children, Terry and Starr. He kept up with his music, ran nearby clubs like Eldora and the Crystal Ballroom — which featured the likes of Louie Armstrong, Harry James and Guy Lombardo — and then, after visiting New Bremen Speedway in the early '50s, he decided to try his hand in racing.
"Don't ever tell Earl he can't do something, because then he'll work non-stop to prove you wrong," Boos said.
And that's what makes retiring so tough.
"I had the idea I was going to live forever," Baltes said quietly. "But my son said it best: 'You sell the place and drive past, it's gonna kill you, but if you stay, it'll kill you, too.' It's terrible to slow down, but I'm burned out.
"I know when we sold the Crystal Ballroom, I'd come down the road in the car and start crying and have to turn around. It took six months till I could pass the place."
That won't happen here, he said: "I'm gonna make the new owner give me a lifetime pass. Then I'll just sit up in the corner, drink some beers and watch. I could never just give up racing. It's my life."
And Mom would appreciate that. She wanted him to end up where he belonged.
Contact Tom Archdeacon at 225-2156 or tarchdeacon@daytondailynews.com
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