Oh what stories Orville Moe might have wanted to share

Now there’s one less item on the always seemingly endless to-do list.

While I should be happy, the opposite is true and I am kicking myself for being such a procrastinator.

Over the many years in this writing and reporting business I’ve had the opportunities to interview many a memorable individual, and had another on the list.

But Orville Moe, the cantankerous and colorful curmudgeon who raised the money to build, and later operated Spokane Raceway Park for the better part of 40 years, passed away a week ago today, April 9, at age 78.

Not long ago, in answer to an old-fashioned letter I had sent him, Orville left a message on my phone to call him and that he welcomed the opportunity to catch up and chat.

What kept me from making the call was trying to find the time. Recently a similar interview with old time Spokane hockey icon Tom Hodges was cut short of approaching four hours by his wife who was wondering if he was OK.

Knowing what I knew about Orville, and all the controversy that has surrounded him over the years, this was going to easily surpass the Hodges interview.

Plus there was more of a personal side.

Aside from my having dealt with Orville on a professional basis during some 20 years of writing motorsports for the Spokesman Review, we knew each other many years before and in a different arena — literally.

Moe and I first met in 1973 when he drafted me to play hockey for his old Spokane Raceway Park recreation league team. It was the hockey association that probably had a little bit to do with igniting the interest in motorsports I have had ever since.

Orville hired my buddy Dave and I to ride our motorcycles around the newly-opened drag strip in 1976 to try to catch gate crashers. We always came up empty, but got to make a little money and watch the races. What could be better than that for a couple of young 20-somethings?

So it’s fun to look back at some 40 years of what has taken place at the corner of Hayford Road and Sprague Avenue. From piles of crushed gravel inside the gates, to recycled Expo 74 signs and outbuildings throughout the property, what was once a quiet little intersection has changed immensely.

Moe, who had suffered from congestive heart failure, which was his apparent cause of death, was as much a galvanizer as he was a polarizer, but above all he was a visionary.

According to Moe’s obituary, in the 1960s, he and his dad, Clarence, rented an old military airstrip in Deer Park and brought in timing equipment and restrooms and began putting on drag races. Those races also drew many of the big names in the sport at the time, mainly running bragging rights match-races.

But Moe saw that there was a better way to go than portable toilets, splintery grandstands and gut-bomb concessions.

It was that Deer Park involvement which planted the seed for Spokane Raceway Park, which opened in 1974 with the American Hot Rod Association Springnationals. In true Orville leave it to the last minute fashion, the paving crews had hardly left the track when Ed “The Ace” McCulloch christened the new asphalt with his “Revellution” funny car.

Moe raised $2.5 million from investors to fund the project that added a half-mile oval track in 1978 and a 2.25-mile road racing course in the early 1980s.

In the early days of SRP, the place would be packed with drag fans from across the Pacific Northwest and Canada who came to see some of the biggest names in drag racing — Don Garlits, Don Prudhomme, John Force and many others — rocket down that sunken quarter-mile of asphalt, lined by cement grandstands. The track was dubbed by many, “Thunder Valley,” because of the ear-splitting engine noise that reverberated off the concrete.

Ultimately, the several hundred investors rustled up money to hire an attorney and embark on a lengthy legal battle. Citing mismanagement they eventually wrested control of the complex from Moe in 2006. The track was sold to Spokane County in 2008 to satisfy investor claims and has experienced its own share of problems ever since.

Had we connected to talk old times, some of the things I would have wanted to learn include:

• Was there really an aquarium with rattle snakes inside in the basement of the race track office that served as a temporary bank for bags of ticket window cash at the World Finals?

• Having heard stories of many of the stockholders, I’d have asked Orville his side.

•We would have chatted about how he got his love for racing, and hockey.

• What did he see in his future wife, Deonne at age 15, that cemented a 62 year marriage?

• Why did he jump on a dozer and tear up the road near the property he sold to Northern Quest?

And that would have just been for starters.

Paul Delaney can be reached at pdelaney@cheneyfreepress.com.