Hometown Hero Johnny Reick from Kitchener, Ontario at Bridgeport Speedway.
Courtesy of Rich Mills
Johnny Reick’s bright red #3 in 1955. Other drivers noted that Reick’s cars were impeccably maintained, like all stock cars of the time, the doors were welded shut. Towards the end of Johnny Reick’s life he presented this 1951 Guelph Royal City Speedway trophy plaque to a friend who had helped him downsize and move. It represented Johnny’s first big win, almost exactly seven years later to the day, he captured Bridgeport’s season-ending race.
Bridgeport Speedway’s Hometown Champ!
LIVING Mar 21, 2017 by RYCH MILLS / Waterloo Region Record
This Flash from the Past is about a hero. Not today’s fleeting, 15-minute hero of screen, sports, song, politics or bravery: here-today, gone-tomorrow. I want to remember a kid’s hero, one of mine. He died this January at age 92. I didn’t even know he was still alive. I never met him and he would never have heard of me.
But to a 10 year-old Kitchener kid in the mid-1950s, Johnny Reick was a hero. He gained his public persona, and thus my devotion, through stock car racing.
In last week’s Flash from the Past, Cameron Shelley outlined Guelph’s Royal City Speedway which operated for three seasons. I have a very vague memory of being there, probably in 1953 when I turned seven. Stock car racing was a passion of my teenaged aunt and uncle who were just 10 years older than me, more like big brother and sister. My parents had zero interest in such pursuits so for a half-dozen summers I was more than excited to be picked up by Bruce and Dolly on their way to Bridgeport. Sometimes they had other destinations, tracks with mystical-sounding names: Nilestown, Pinecrest, CNE, Brantford-Mohawk, Delaware, Wasaga, all of which I hazily recall. However, my most vivid stock car memories come from Bridgeport Speedway, located just past the bridge where the sports fields are today. That’s where a kid found a hero.
Built on the site of a horse race track closed since the 1920s, Bridgeport Speedway opened for stock cars in 1951 on a dirt quarter-mile oval. Quiet in 1952, it reopened in 1953 after being paved. “Thrills, Chills and Spills” was the motto but “spills” were the prime attraction. This is not a history of Bridgeport Speedway, so I suggest reading Marion Roes’ detailed essay titled, yes, ‘Thrills, Chills and Spills’ in the 2002 annual publication of the Waterloo Historical Society. It’s at local libraries.
Johnny Reick, as readers of last week’s Flash will recall, was one of Guelph Speedway’s top performers, winning several features but Bridgeport was his home track. Drivers from all over southern Ontario converged at Bridgeport: Howie Scannell, Ted Hogan and Norm Morton were my hated Toronto trio; Hamilton’s cigar-smoking Jimmy Howard heard my raspberries every time he passed; London’s Jack Sharpe in Lobo 1; Don Fleming, #66 from Whitby, all those out-of-towners were booed by this must-have-been-annoying kid. In hindsight, I realize that I was probably half-gunned on those sweet-smelling, alcohol-blended gasoline fumes that hung over the site.
When Johnny Reick wasn’t in a race I did cheer one outsider, the elegant #28 car with Ken Fisher from Hamburg, New York. Perhaps I was intrigued because he came from an exotic locale or perhaps it was because his car was always immaculate but I couldn’t settle down until I’d seen the pickup truck hauling #28 pull into the pits. Other local drivers could get my cheers, if they didn’t beat Johnny, Gary and Bob Witter, the Engels from Waterloo, Dixie and Fred, Gene Karley from Linwood, and Preston’s Norm Wheeler. But whatever number was on Johnny’s car that night, #73x, #3, #25, #44, my shouts followed him.
In 1958, Johnny Reick won his only Bridgeport season championship. I missed it! My parents had purchased a summer cottage.
Over the years, I kept one memento from Bridgeport… a 1955 driver snapshot sold at the concession stands. As you can tell by the creases, it spent rather too many years in my wallet.
I dug it out of a drawer again when I read Johnny’s obituary in early January. He left quite a family of children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren and I am sure that to them he was also a hero. But way back when, their dad, granddad, great-granddad was a hero of another sort to a 1950s kid.
Why Johnny? Perhaps this photo hints. The mid-50s was a time of the teenage punk rebel. I doubt he was that, he was married and in his late 20s when I followed him. But those turned-up jeans, the T-shirt (likely with a deck of smokes under the sleeve), the boots, the body language… the imagery spoke to the era’s James Dean/Marlon Brando/Elvis insolence. Was this 10 year-old kid even aware of that 1950s rebel vibe?
During his racing years, Johnny worked at Blau’s Auto Body, his sponsors, on King East. Later in life he ran General Auto Supply in Kitchener and Waterloo. Johnny also had an artistic sense, carving numerous small sculptures for family and friends. I am fortunate to have come in possession of one of these and it, along with this photograph, is a reminder of a time when I had a hero… a more innocent time, a time when a hero never let a kid down.
