TVR: Okay, let me throw some names at you.
Buck: Fine.

Ray Kable?
Buck: Gentleman, great guy. Couldn't be any better. As I say, he helped me with a lot of stuff. He taught me a lot of stuff about racing. He did a lot of things for me in racing. He was... more or less... I guess you could say if I wanted to lean on somebody, that's who I leaned on was Ray. He would tell me everything that I asked him. He would never lie to me. If I was wrong, he told me I was wrong. If I was right, he told me I was right. He was about one of the best in racing, him and Bob Wallace was about the two best ones. 

Johnny Roberts?
Buck: I could go to Johnny Roberts and sit and talk to him, and he'd tell me anything about racing that I wanted to know. He wouldn't lie to me... If I was having a problem with handling, I'd go talk to Johnny. Johnny would sit down and explain to me. He wouldn't only explain to me what to do, but he'd explain to me why I was doing it, you know. A lot of guys would just say put 2 or 3 degrees of wedge in it, do this, or change a front tire, or do this or do that. Johnny would sit down with you and explain to you why you were doing what you were doing. You just don't forget that, you know. The next time the problem came up, you knew what you were doing it for. That what I say, when Johnny got killed... that was hard on me. I thought a lot of Johnny. I really did. 

Bobby Hersh?
Buck: <laughs> Bobby Hersh was a hell of a good guy. Umm... Bobby was a hellion... as far as I'm concerned. I mean he ran good, he uh... he never knew what it was to back off in a car. He only ran like 10 years, I guess, as far as I can remember. Bobby only ran about 10 years before he got hurt in that accident. I don't know... some people Bobby was close to, some people he wasn't. You know? I always liked Bobby, I always thought he was a great guy. He more or less would keep to himself, or the bunch from Pennsylvania. He would come down and talk to us and stuff. Bobby and I was friends, don't get me wrong. But, I don't know... when he got out on the race track, boy! It was Bobby Hersh and that was it and he went for it. He drove hard races.

I saw what happened in the accident he got hurt in. I was there that day, in the race that day, but I don't know what went on. All I know is when I went through the turn he was, you know... sitting there. Other than that I don't know what caused the accident, or who's fault it was. 

Bob Wallace?
Buck: Bob Wallace was my mentor. He taught me just about everything I know about engines. He would do about anything in the world for me, I think. Bob was a great guy. He was just one of these guys that if he liked you, he took you under his wing. If he didn't like you, you was out in the cold, you know. He built engines and he did a fine job. I mean if he built an engine, you knew it was right. 

That's what he use to tell me. "If you can't do it right, don't do it at all. If it's not worth doing it right, don't do it at all." He use to tell me, when I'd build my own engines, "If you can't build it right, if you gotta take a shortcut, go get a cup of coffee or something and come back to it." 

He taught me something about building race cars too, 'cause he built race cars. He was just a great guy as far as I was concerned. He was like umm... if I needed something, I'd go down and see Bob and talk to him about it.  He would always take his time to help you. 

Bobby Abel?
Buck: Bobby Abel and I became friends through racing in Pennsylvania. We were just real good friends, you know. I use to go up to his garage, he'd come down to our place and all... but, Bobby and I was just real good friends. We did a lot of things together. Him, Ray Kable and I went to Daytona together. Just went down there one year. All I can say about Bobby is he was a good friend, he really was. 

Paul Miller?
Buck: Oh boy! You're starting a feud now! <laughs hard> You're starting a big feud! No, all kidding aside, Paul's a good guy. I kid Paul a lot about a wreck that him and I had. I tell everybody that he caused it, that he tried to run over top of me... he couldn't get around me on the right and he couldn't get around me on the left, so he tried to come over top of me. No... I don't want to tread on them grounds. <laughs>. I don't want to start anything there. I don't know what Paul said about this deal, but... <laughs> 

He's a good guy. It was just a racing accident that we had and it wound up with him sitting on top of me. I've made a lot of fun out of it, you know. Sometimes, I think Paul gets a little mad at me when I do that. <laughs> As far as Paul goes, he's a hell of a good guy. I like Paul. We had a lot of good races together and we ran a lot of races together. We ran on the track into one another, we had other accidents on the track before that too. But, this is just one that the pictures are there and it's something to have some fun about.  

Okay... Hilly Rife (controversial Lincoln Speedway promoter)?
Buck: Well... I know this is gonna be a sore spot in a lot of people's sides, but I'm sorry... Hilly Rife, as far as I'm concerned, was a good guy. He done things for me for five... for more than five years. He sponsored my race car. For the whole five years I ran the car that I have now, he sponsored it. In fact, Hilly Rife painted it, had it lettered and everything, when we built it. It's got "The Fabulous Lincoln Speedway" on top of it. If I needed anything, I went and talked to Hilly and I got it. 

One time, at Lincoln Speedway, and the back of the quick change rear broke off. He comes walking over and says, "Why are you loaded up? Why are you going home?"  I showed him. Dick Tobias had the parts truck at the race track. He walked down to Dick Tobias and here he come back with a rear in a box. At that time, you got the ring and pinion, jack shaft and everything. He throwed it on the tailgate of the truck and said, "Here, now go home and get it fixed." An, he said, "By the way... you gotta go down and get a set of gears because I didn't know what gears you needed." They gave you a set of gears with a rear back then. 

But, Hilly Rife, he's living in Florida now. I see him every time I go down there. As far as I'm concerned, and this is my opinion and not a lot of other's people's opinion, but he's a great guy. He done everything for me that he could do. And, he went past that at times for me. So, you know, I can't say nothing bad about Hilly. He never did nothing bad to me. That's it. I just will not say nothing bad about him. I mean, I had people really jump on me about that, but I'm sorry. That's the way it is. 

Toby Tobias?
Buck: Toby Tobias... He was a gentleman in racing. He was like Johnny Roberts. He was a gentleman of racing. I've run up on the outside of Toby, I've run down under him... I've done everything, run aside him and never did Toby ever try and take you out of a race. If you got by Toby, he'd let you go and then he'd try and pass you later on in the race. He was gentleman off the speedway, he was a gentleman on the speedway. When he was on the race track, there was no kidding around. I mean, Toby was racing. He was the race. But, he was they type that was a gentleman doing it. 

I use to always say that he and Johnny Roberts were the two gentlemen of racing of my generation. He was just a gentleman of racing and he wanted to race. Unfortunately, both of them lost their lives in a race car. So, maybe I was just one of the fortunate ones. Them two both lost their lives in racing. 

Johnny Mackison?
Buck: Johnny Mackison was a hell of a race car driver. He was, as far as I'm concerned, up here in Pennsylvania, he was one of the best in racing. Johnny was a clean driver. I never seen Johnny put anybody out, just to put them out. Johnny had accidents, but they were racing accidents. I mean, I never seen Johnny have a problem with anybody... I never had a problem with Johnny, at all, and Johnny and I seemed to be good friends. But, he was one of those guys who just loved racing and just like that... he was gone from racing. I guess he made a good decision, I don't know. I think Johnny could have gone somewhere in racing, if he'd of stayed in there. He could drive anything you put him in. Put him in a Late Model, he could drive it. Put him in a bug, he could drive it. Whatever you put him in, he could drive it and he was competitive in it. Johnny's a good guy. I never had a problem with him on the race track, or off the race track.

Any other names from NASCAR come to mind?
Buck: Well, from NASCAR... Rex White and them guys, they were good guys. They were there to race and they raced. And umm... Johnny Dodd, Sr., he ran for a while... Gus Wilson, there was a lot of different people. See, I drove against so many different people down through the south. They were running like I was running. You know? They just ran when they could run. To run with these other guys, like when we came up to Lincoln, or someplace like that, where we could run with them... we went and ran with them. I never really ran with Lee Petty and that bunch that much. I ran with them some, but they ran the big tracks. I couldn't go there and run. I just didn't have the... well, the guy I ran for said he had the funds, but it wasn't there. We would go run the smaller tracks, the fairground dates and stuff like that. 

NASCAR had I don't know how many races they ran a year back then. These guys holler about running 37 races a year. We use to run almost that many in a month sometimes. We'd sometimes run 4 nights a week. We'd run Friday, Saturday, Sunday and sometimes on a Tuesday. 

We built our own cars, we did everything ourselves, we worked on them ourselves and this was just something that... these guys today, half of them don't know what the hell's going on as far as building a car or doing anything to it. It's like Dave Marcis. I mean, he ran good, but Dave always built his own cars, worked on his own cars, did everything himself. Dave's in a category there like we were when we were running. We built our own cars and all. We didn't have factory teams, we didn't have this, we didn't have that. We had somebody's money we was putting into the cars, but nothing like what, you know, like these guys are doing. 

We would go run a track somewhere... <long pause> When we first started racing, this is when we were running the Modifieds with NASCAR, we'd go down south somewhere and we'd run. Well, we'd run like on a Friday night. When we got done running that track, we'd go out in the parking lot. There'd be 3, 4, or 5 of us go out into the parking lot... Well, we have enough money to eat tonight. We have enough money for gas to get to the next race track. Well, I guess we sleep in the truck tonight. The front seat of our truck was out motel many nights. We would go down in the back, all the way in the back of the race track somewhere, where nobody could see us or anything. I use to carry two 5 gallon cans of water on the truck. We'd put it up on top of the truck and had a spout on it, you know, a thing on it and that's how we'd take showers. We didn't have no motel to go to. They didn't have showers at the racetracks then. So, that's how we'd take showers and get clean. 

Then, we'd pack up and go on to the next race track. And, it would be the same thing all over again. We never made that much money. If we made $150, we were millionaires, you know. Back then, man! We got a motel, eats and everything else! It was so much different in racing, than it is today. These guys today got these $150,000 motor homes and all this kind of stuff. We never had none of that. We slept in the trucks, in cars... a bunch of gypsies is all it was, really. But, we had a lot of fun. We enjoyed ourselves back then. That's what we wanted to do and we did it. For 7 or 8 years there, that's all I did, was run race cars. I didn't do nothing else. Didn't work nowhere... nothing. I just drove race cars. 

I never regretted it. We really didn't start making money until the middle sixties, then we started making some money. Then we could start saving some money. Other than that, we never made a big amount of money. We use to go south because it was more money down there than it was up here. We'd go down there because the purses down there were $500 to $600 sometimes. Up here, we were running for $150. Some tracks up here you ran for $35! 

We went to Condon Speedway one night. It was Ray Kable, Gus Wilson and myself. Ray Kable won it, I run 2nd and Gus Wilson ran 3rd. Between all 3 of us, we got like $14.70. <big grin> 

TVR: How many different types of race cars did you compete in during your career?
Buck: I started in midgets, then I went to the modifieds, and then late models, and then Grand Nationals. I tried a couple sprint cars, but I didn't like them. There wasn't enough metal around me in a sprint car. So, I only drove a couple races in sprint cars and that was it. 

TVR: Of all the cars you drove, which was your favorite?
Buck: The Modifieds, the big cars like I got now. I liked them better than any of them. They were more fun, the people were more fun and it was really good racing. 

But, today, as I said earlier, it's just too much money. You gotta satisfy your sponsor, you gotta do this and you gotta do that... Maybe I did things my way, right or wrong, I did 'em my way and I don't regret it one bit. I did what I wanted to do. Maybe if I'd of had somebody putting a lot of money into my car and a bunch of stuff like that, I could have won a lot more races. I could have done a lot more things. But, no. I wanted to do it my way and that's what I did. Right or wrong, as I said, you know... I did it my way and I don't regret it one little bit. I think I had a good racing career and I did what I wanted to do and that was it.

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