Off-road historian, John Elkin, on Episode 274

In this riveting episode of Conversations with Big Rich, host Rich Klein delves into the fascinating world of off-road racing and rallying with the esteemed John Elkin. John, a renowned off-road historian and writer, shares his journey from family adventures in Death Valley to becoming a pivotal figure in off-road motorsports journalism.

Episode Highlights:

• Early Off-Road Influences: John recounts his early exposure to off-road adventures with family trips to Death Valley, setting the stage for his lifelong passion for the sport.
• Racing and Writing Journey: Discover how John transitioned from being an off-road enthusiast to a respected writer and historian in the off-road community. He shares anecdotes about covering iconic races and the people he met along the way.
• Navigating Challenges: John opens up about his battle with melanoma and how it shifted his focus from racing to preserving the history of the sport through writing.
• Impact of the Off-Road Motorsports Hall of Fame: Explore John's contributions to the Hall

Transcript

[00:00:05.100] 

Welcome to Conversations with Big Rich. This is an interview-style podcast. Those interviewed are all involved in the off-road industry. Being involved, like all of my guests are, is a lifestyle, not just a job. I talk to past, present, and future legends, as well as business owners, employees, media, and land use warriors, men and women who have found their way into this exciting and addictive lifestyle we call off-road. We discuss their personal history, struggles, successes, and reboots. We dive into what drives them to stay active and off-road. We all hope to shed some light on how to find a path into this world that we live and love and call off-road.

[00:00:46.400] 

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[00:01:12.460] - Big Rich Klein

My next guest likes to say he was born into off-road, as most of his family vacations happened while exploring Death Valley. Then later got into off-road racing, and then as a rally navigator. But John Elkin has made his lasting legacy as an off-road writer and contributor to the Off-Road Motorsports Hall of Fame.

[00:01:36.300] - Big Rich Klein

John Elkin, it is so good to have you on this podcast. I'm looking forward to this. I know you're an off-road historian, a writer, and you've been a racer, and off-road racer, and rally, and all the things that you've done, and I'm really looking forward to this. So thank you for agreeing to come on.

[00:01:56.260] - John Elkin

Well, thank you, Rich. I've been looking forward to it ever since I heard about it.

[00:02:01.100] - Big Rich Klein

So let's jump right in with both feet and find out where were you born and raised.

[00:02:07.320] - John Elkin

I was born in Pomona, California, in 1963, and I was raised there for quite a while, and I got my start into offroading very quickly after birth. My parents were campers, and they love to go camping, and they love explore. And so in times, even before I can remember, we were out on dirt roads, camping in the wild. But it was somewhere around when I was three that my parents discovered Death Valley.

[00:02:49.060] - Big Rich Klein

Okay.

[00:02:50.140] - John Elkin

And that is where everything started to go very seriously toward the off-road side.

[00:02:58.220] - Big Rich Klein

I can understand that. We had my daughter on the Rubicon at like six, eight months. And that first summer that we had her up there, we actually flopped it. She was in the car seat and well put in, but the vehicle she was riding and flopped on its side. And she just laughed the whole time. She thought it was great.

[00:03:27.860] - John Elkin

Yeah. It's kids. It's bouncing around. It's fantastic.

[00:03:32.420] - Big Rich Klein

Yeah. As long as you protect their neck so that their heads not... The heads the heaviest part of their body at that point.

[00:03:39.820] - John Elkin

Well, we're talking the mid '60s. Safety was definitely a secondary concern.

[00:03:45.190] - Big Rich Klein

Right. I can remember riding on the back, above the back seat, underneath the back window of one of my parents' cars.

[00:03:55.960] - John Elkin

Yeah, no doubt.

[00:03:58.020] - Big Rich Klein

That would be frowned upon today.

[00:04:01.300] - John Elkin

Yeah, definitely. We started off roading in a 1966 Dodge van.

[00:04:08.260] - Big Rich Klein

Nice.

[00:04:09.320] - John Elkin

And so two-wheel drive, had a 318 in it, and my dad could get that thing way back there in Death Valley and other places. And by '73, we upgraded to an International Scout, too. And got out of tents and got into trailers. So a little more civilized on the camping end of that. I'm sure mom had something to do with that. And so around this time, as I look back on it now, it's pivotable, pivotal, excuse me, toward where I've wound up today And today, as many families do, we sit around, we watch TV in primetime, and a new show had come out, and it was called The Waltons. And one of the lead characters was John Boy, and I was a John and a boy. And he was a writer, and I was so enamored of how the actor portrayed John Boy Walton. I immediately he really wanted to be a writer just like him.

[00:05:34.120] - Big Rich Klein

Awesome.

[00:05:35.080] - John Elkin

And so that was the turning point. My very young skullful of mush as it was. But The offroading continued, and the trips to Death Valley continued. And on one of our trips to Death Valley, we were going through Barstow, and we were in the middle of nowhere, but we came to a stop, and there's a bunch of dust around all that. Well, there was an off-road race going on. And looking back on it, and my historian notes, it must have been one of the early California 400s. And so I saw off-road racing for the first time at that point. And that had to be around '75, '06, somewhere in there, possibly even earlier than And I always remembered it. But I didn't do much about it until about 1980, when my dad and I were watching ABC's Wide World Sports, and there was the Baha 1000. And I just locked in on that. And all of a sudden, I remembered the same types of cars that we saw in Barstow, and I just couldn't get enough of I had to know more about this sport. I remembered there was John Baker in this little mini truck pounding down the Peninsula and Frank Vessels and all these wonderful names.

[00:07:22.130] - John Elkin

They're talking about how difficult Baja is and what an adventure it is. I just locked in on that really, really well.

[00:07:34.620] - Big Rich Klein

When were you able to make your first trip to Baja?

[00:07:40.280] - John Elkin

Baja didn't happen for me until about 1982. But I started going to off-road races in '81. And that was a somewhat interesting story that leads on to other things. So my best friend, Marcus Clark, he had purchased a 1979 Chevy Love 4x4. And there was this scene we found out in the off-road magazine that I started reading after I saw Wide World of Sports. It was called Score Show. It was down the road in Anaheim, and we went. Here's these off-road racing machines. There were these buggies and trucks and Baja bugs. It was It's like, we were really close to Disneyland, but this was my Disneyland right there. Well, I'm admiring the McPherson Class 8 Chevy, and I'm just trying to take it in, and I'm backing up to get a better look at it through the crowd, and I nearly knock over this big guy who had some papers in his hand. I turned around and I said, I'm really sorry. I'm eyeball level with his name tag, and it as Mickey Thompson.

[00:09:02.040] - Big Rich Klein

Oh, wow.

[00:09:03.800] - John Elkin

And so I had nearly knocked Mickey Thompson off of his feet. And he was actually very nice to me, pointed to the truck, says, It's pretty nice, isn't it? He goes, Have you seen it racing? I said, I haven't been doing an off-road race yet. Well, he walks over to Joe McPherson's table, grabs a schedule off of it, hands it to me, and says, We're racing next weekend up in Barstow. He goes, And if you come on up, say hi. Well, you can bet we went.

[00:09:38.500] - Big Rich Klein

Right? With an invitation like that.

[00:09:41.100] - John Elkin

Yeah, it was the first SCOR Barstow Classic. Nice. And, oh, my gosh, there were all these people that I'd seen on Wild World Sports. And so there was vessels in the locker ovens and John Baker, and all these people. Everybody was so nice and really welcoming. You tell us, My first race, and they just tell you everything about the course and you name it.

[00:10:16.040] - Big Rich Klein

So you were about- So I got roped in pretty hard. You were about 18 at that point? Yeah. Okay. When you were going to school and you were younger years, and you'd already We've been off-roading and that stuff, in a Dodge van, of course, but eventually in the Scout. Did you know then that being outdoors, was that your love? Did you love that more than being at home?

[00:10:51.260] - John Elkin

Yeah, because it was the way I was raised. My parents and my two older brothers were not much for sitting around. Perfect. And so we were out doing things all the time. Some of my most fond childhood memories are trips to Solving, day trips, and then going to pick apples out in Banning in Beaumont in the Wolkabuth Cherry Orchards, and another place we used to go to for apples. And my mom would can apples. We'd have them all year long. And so everything was always outside. We flew model airplanes, control line model airplanes. We had a little go-cart, and we would go run that around.

[00:11:46.560] - Big Rich Klein

How are you as a student?

[00:11:49.800] - John Elkin

Fair. Okay. I was always advanced in reading and writing. Math was not my thing, but I really loved Earth sciences and in particular, weather. So things that had to do with that was fine. But honestly, I was a low B, high C student for the most part, overall.

[00:12:15.660] - Big Rich Klein

And did you have a chance to work, or were you guys out and about too much?

[00:12:24.440] - John Elkin

Yeah, I was starting in community college by the time I was 18, and that just didn't work for me too well. One of my other loves was baking, so I decided to go to work in donut shops, and I was baking there, and just trying to make a living, trying to make enough money to be able to go to these off-road races. Right. And take pictures, which was is definitely one of my other loves. Photography among baking and reading were some of my most favorite things.

[00:13:10.770] - Big Rich Klein

How did you get into the photography?

[00:13:14.860] - John Elkin

I'd always been into it. My parents always made sure I had a camera from the youngest stage that I can remember. I remember my Instamatic X15 from Kodak and shooting 126 phone cartridges and all that stuff. Then later, I got a 35 millimeter.

[00:13:40.360] - Big Rich Klein

You spent a lot of time going through photomat?

[00:13:43.360] - John Elkin

Oh, a lot of times. I knew everybody in that little hut in the parking lot by first name. And in junior high and high school, I was taking photography classes. So not only was I pretty good behind the camera, but I was also pretty good in the dark Mostly black and white in high school and stuff?

[00:14:07.040] - Big Rich Klein

Oh, yeah.

[00:14:07.930] - John Elkin

Yeah, definitely. At least the stuff that I was working on. My early forays in off-road photography were not great as I look back on them now, but I got better. As I got more into the off-road photography, road racing industry, I knew reading all these off-road magazines, and I was reading Stan Parnell's Off-Road Action News, and the off-road advertiser would always be up in the hobby stores and the tire stores, and you could pick it up for a buck and a half. And what I didn't know is that I would soon be writing for those magazines.

[00:14:58.500] - Big Rich Klein

Right.

[00:15:00.000] - John Elkin

Which was just mind-blowing on my end.

[00:15:05.980] - Big Rich Klein

So you had to sell a lot of donut holes?

[00:15:08.400] - John Elkin

I did. I sold a lot of donut holes, a lot of apple fritters. There you go. But it was just wonderful to do. And working at the donut shop at night, I could finagle my schedule pretty easily so that I could get out of town, go to the races.

[00:15:31.900] - Big Rich Klein

And how did the writing come about? The photography, of course, was natural from having the early Instamatics and working your way up to 35 millimeter and through school and stuff. How did the writing come about?

[00:15:51.480] - John Elkin

I had always messed around with writing, and I, of course, come junior high, joined the school paper. Nice. As well as in high school. And so there's where I learned more of how journalism writing goes rather than trying to write the great American novel. Which I still haven't managed to do yet. And, of course, reading all of these legendary old writers, and you got to pardon the old scramble of brain. I don't remember all of their names, but I do remember Spence Murray and Grandville King used to write these off-road columns about his adventures off-road. Absolutely. Sam Willsher. Just wonderful people. And then, of course, I got to read Jean Calvin's stuff, and then I got to meet her very early on. A wonderful lady. Her husband, John, were really great. Even when I was there in competition for a while, they were still always so nice. So my first real job came. I had gone to the Riverside Offer Championships in '81. We were on the public side, which was very wild and loly. It's something what I imagine the infield at the Indy 500 or Daytona is like. But I saw the photographers down on the track, and I wanted to be one of them.

[00:17:36.920] - John Elkin

Through talking to some of the racers, I ran across Stan Parnell. Stan Parnell ran the Parker Pumper distributorship for helmet stuff, but he also published Off-Road Action News. He gave me my first chance to get press credentials to be able to go down and shoot at the 82 Riverside Off-Road World Championships.

[00:18:05.400] - Big Rich Klein

Nice.

[00:18:07.260] - John Elkin

And that is where I first got real published.

[00:18:13.940] - Big Rich Klein

What was that like when you saw your name in print the first time?

[00:18:19.180] - John Elkin

Unbelievable. I couldn't believe it could happen to me. Here I am. I'm 19 at this point. Still, dreams of writing in whatever way that I could. But it just happened that writing about off-roading and getting back of the backcountry and then eventually racing just really seemed to be my thing, my niche as it was. Eventually, I got to write as well as photograph. I'm trying to remember what my first article was that I wrote. I'm coming up blank here. I think it was the Gala Bend Grand Prix. It was an ADRA event. There on the Desert Racing Association.

[00:19:16.820] - Big Rich Klein

I know most riders have a way or have a style. Maybe it's looking for results, and it's more of a result-driven story. Or some, they look at not the first, second, or third place, but they go to the last place, and the guy that came in second to last and third to last, because those are the ones that have a bigger story to tell. Because typically, if you win the race, well, it was a great race. Nothing happened. Where were you at in that? How did you try to set the scene?

[00:19:59.520] - John Elkin

It As far as style goes, I had a wonderful English teacher in high school. Her name was Phoebe Ogetto. She taught me to write like you talk. And that really clicked with me. And so instead of trying to find these words that you thought that Hemingway would use or people like that, just write like you talk. She Especially, you used to tell me, You tell such wonderful story, put it into words. And then when I started going to races, I started looking for the stories. Yes, you're right. I found out very quickly that these people would come in to the finish, and they would just say, It was great. No flats. But you hang around a little bit, and this guy in a Jeep, and I think the goes away again. But anyway, he came across the finish line with the front accel, this Dana 44, just busted in half. Tires all cambered out. He started to tell me this story of how it broke 30 miles back, but he had the lead, and he was going to get it to the end. That's where I learned back further in the pack is where the stories were.

[00:21:26.620] - John Elkin

Finding those, highlighting those, even Even stopping, going from one photography area to the other, you'd see a guy on the side of the road at a road crossing, and he's trying to fix his car, he's waiting for his crew. I learned, Stop, talk to that person. Because inevitably, they all say the same thing, I think I was leading when I broke. And discounting that, though, there's usually a pretty good story somewhere else in the stuff.

[00:21:57.140] - Big Rich Klein

As an event promoter, a race promoter for the last 25 years, I can tell you that every story that I hear back in the pits after the race was, Man, I was leading until I broke. Exactly. I mean, every time. And it could be, I had one person that they started the race in like, fourth place, that every 30 seconds we'd send a car out. And probably the guy broke within the first mile. And he says, I was leading the race. And I was like, how do you know that? Well, I caught the guy in front of me. And I said, you know what? You might have been.

[00:22:43.900] - John Elkin

So Dan took some time to talk to some other people. And so at that particular time, SCOR News was changing hands over to a different publisher, and the publisher really didn't have a writer. And so through Stan, I got to meet a gentleman named Terry Whiteall. And Terry immediately threw me right in the hot seat to be in the head writer for SCOR News.

[00:23:19.620] - Big Rich Klein

Nice.

[00:23:21.540] - John Elkin

Which was quickly followed by a column that I started doing in the Offert Advertiser, which Jean Calvin once she started Dusty Times, she abandoned the checkpoints column. And so from month to month, me or Judy Smith would fill in that column as well. And so here I am, and I'm a lead writer on a pretty major publication, really, because all the SCOR members get SCOR news every single month. By that point, I started to get a little bit of work from some of the mainstream publications, Biddy Truck. Still not really even thinking about racing myself. That just seemed a little too far fetch at the time. But I was having a ball doing that. And eventually, I was doing pretty well writing. I didn't have to make donuts not sending more.

[00:24:31.100] - Big Rich Klein

Nice.

[00:24:32.740] - John Elkin

Yeah. So I would do odd jobs here and there to fill in because writing is great. It's nice being semi-famous in your own little world. But it's a great way to starve death. So you still got to do a little bit of odd jobs here and there.

[00:24:53.300] - Big Rich Klein

Right.

[00:24:55.800] - John Elkin

So I would do whatever I could to get me by.

[00:25:01.530] - Big Rich Klein

So what jobs were those?

[00:25:05.280] - John Elkin

I would hook up with different employment agencies who would just fire me out for a day or a week at certain places. I wound up loading trucks at the Domino's Pizza National Commissary hauling loads of dough, sauce, cheese, 45-pound boxes of pepperoni, things like that onto trucks. I would be farmed out to stores for inventory purposes. One particular job was the worst thing I ever did. It was loading cement onto train cars. Oh, yeah. Actually unloading. Excuse me, unloading. Bags? No, actually, it was via suction out of these huge railroad grain cars. But when they got down to a certain level, you You had to get down into the grain car wearing a respirator and a shovel, and you had to move the hardening agent down toward the vacuum. You had to do this sitting on this very uncomfortable metal V, and you couldn't let your legs dangle too low, or the suction would suck your shoes right off.

[00:26:21.320] - Big Rich Klein

Wow.

[00:26:22.460] - John Elkin

So it was some of the worst nights ever. And the funny thing was my best friend at the time But still, Marcus, he was doing it with me. He was beside me on all of our off-road adventures.

[00:26:38.840] - Big Rich Klein

So that was Marcus Clark?

[00:26:41.460] - John Elkin

Yeah. He's down in Norco, still in Southern California these days. We keep in touch.

[00:26:49.940] - Big Rich Klein

Excellent. It's great having a few friends that you can go way back with. Oh, yeah. I've got Two of those that are from pre high school. Well, heck, from first grade on, actually. So it's cool to be able to hook up with those guys occasionally and and reminisce.

[00:27:16.700] - John Elkin

Yeah, Marcus and I met my first day in a new school in fifth grade. He was assigned to show me the school.

[00:27:25.620] - Big Rich Klein

Nice.

[00:27:26.200] - John Elkin

And friends ever since. Great. That's really good. But back up toward the front of what we were talking about, the jobs were okay, and I was able to do that. But I really started to get a little more interested in what goes on in the vehicle. They can tell you about it. They do it all the time. But I did not have a frame of reference at all. And I had become such good friends with quite a few different racers at this time, one of which was Willy Valdés. He ran a Class VII S Ford Ranger. He ran for, at the time, BF Goodrich. I'm sorry, Bridgestone. My gosh. And The 84 Frontier 500 was coming up, and he offered me a ride. And so I started talking to every one of the co-drivers. I'd gotten to know. Brent Fowes was actually a big help. He was John Baker's co- driver and lead mechanic, who also went on to co-drive for Roger Beers in the Nissan. And lead mechanic there. I caught up with him a while back for an article, and he is building off-road mountain bikes now.

[00:29:07.990] - Big Rich Klein

Interesting.

[00:29:08.860] - John Elkin

Doing really well. But anyway, so I got as much advice as I could get. And what I quickly found out on that wonderful Chris morning was that nothing can prepare you for riding in an off-road race.

[00:29:25.400] - Big Rich Klein

Talk is cheap is what you're saying.

[00:29:27.820] - John Elkin

He experiences everything. It really is. I knew that Willy is a very gifted driver, but I had no idea of the things that he could make that truck do in the deepest silt, over the steepest hills. What an experience that was. I wrote an article about it for scoring. And so once that happened, I got my taste. I I rode from the start in Jean, and I made it as far as Bady when another co-driving got in after that. But that 168 miles was a really steep learning curve.

[00:30:17.160] - Big Rich Klein

What was the feeling that you had, say, right off the line up until the first G out or something like that? Was it like, Oh, my Lord, this is going to be crazy? What was going through your mind?

[00:30:39.920] - John Elkin

Well, it was crazy because Walt Watt had devised... We used to just run right alongside I-15, and there were some G-outs and some washouts, but you ran all the way down until you could get under I-15 and head up toward Good Spring. And But what Walt did at this particular time is we made this hard left about a mile and a half off the line, and we went up this really narrow canyon, Sandy Road. I was surprised at the speed we were carrying. I knew Willy was quick, and I knew the trucks were quick. I had no idea how fast they could actually go over this terrain. We had just made the left turn. We're going up this canyon, and I He didn't pre-run. He didn't pre-run either. We had no idea what was coming up. First of all, there's Spencer Lo sitting high-centered on a sand burn. We go right by him, and then there's another vehicle stuck a little bit up the road. And then there's this big silty hill. It's like the canyon just stopped, and the only way out was up this big silty hill. And people were back and down, and not Willy, right up to Sandy Hill.

[00:32:04.780] - John Elkin

So by this time, I had been counting vehicles. We started eighth off the line, and we had passed seven trucks within four miles. The only one ahead of us was Dick Landfield, a man that would actually really be a big plus in my life way, way after this. But we're chasing We're chasing landfill, and we get under the freeway, and we're running up for good stuff, it's up to Paramp, and we're looking for landfill. We cannot find them. What we didn't know until later is Landfield had got Rock up in his timing cover, shredded a belt that had pulled off at the I-15 underpass, and we never saw them. So we were chasing the ghost.

[00:32:54.640] - Big Rich Klein

Right. And you guys were in the first place.

[00:32:57.640] - John Elkin

Yeah, we heard a weird noise in the engine We were just pulling into prompt. There's our pit crew pulled in. They're repairing an air filter that had cracked. And I started asking, and they went, No, you're the first 7S truck through. And so we were there about 10 minutes repairing the thing, and nobody caught us. Nobody passed us.

[00:33:21.400] - Big Rich Klein

Wow.

[00:33:22.880] - John Elkin

Yeah, it was 15 hours and 46 minutes later, Willy got to Reno, and never saw another 7S truck the whole race.

[00:33:33.620] - Big Rich Klein

That's pretty good. So it was basically an E-ticket ride?

[00:33:37.980] - John Elkin

Oh, it was beyond E-ticket. And you're talking to a guy who remembers what E-tickets are actually used for. A big part of growing up was trips to Disneyland. My grandfather did work with the Carnation Company, and they gave him Disney ticket books all the time. And we were the only family members in California, so guess where he sent them.

[00:34:01.560] - Big Rich Klein

Nice.

[00:34:02.980] - John Elkin

And so, yeah. So the term E-ticket was deeply used in our family. We even use that term in Death Valley. It's long, long.

[00:34:16.820] - Big Rich Klein

I use it a lot.

[00:34:19.360] - John Elkin

Yeah, definitely. So now I had an idea of what it's like in the race vehicle.

[00:34:26.260] - Big Rich Klein

Right.

[00:34:27.760] - John Elkin

And I started looking for more rides where I could get them. And I got to ride in a short course event at Arizona Desert Racing Association event at Canyon Speedway. And I ran with Dr. Lundell. He was a dentist, and he had a rotary-powered two-seater. And a very good friend of mine built the rotary engines and had a lot of history and rally and stuff like that, which I still really wasn't that aware of yet at this time. But I got to do that. Then I had become friends with Russ Warnamont because I would arrive in the pits, Russ Warnamont was the chief mechanic for Mike Nesmith and Randy Salmon in the Time Ryder truck. But he normally rode in the truck as well. But he always gave me the best stories. He would seek me out, and I would seek him out. Comes up to me while I was down visiting the shop, and he says, Hey, the Barstow Fireworks 250 is coming up. This was '85. He goes, I can't make it. My sister's getting married. He goes, So would you be willing to ride the last two laps with Randy? He goes, Because Mike needs a mechanic riding with him.

[00:36:01.360] - John Elkin

I said, Yes, of course. Time rider. Nice. One of the top three, four trucks in the class at the time, and that was Class 8. I got to do these two laps around Barstow with Randy Salmon, and we had zero problems. Then we finished third behind Walker and Steve Kelly.

[00:36:29.280] - Big Rich Klein

Yeah, and Class 8s, the heavy metal, that's a precursor to the fire breathing trophy trucks now.

[00:36:38.340] - John Elkin

Oh, absolutely. I mean, it was amazing. We had 12, 12 and a half inches wheel travel in the front, 14 in the rear. In 1985, I mean, that was amazing.

[00:36:52.760] - Big Rich Klein

Right.

[00:36:53.740] - John Elkin

You know, nowadays, that doesn't hardly even make a good pre-runner.

[00:36:58.320] - Big Rich Klein

No, that's a Jeep speed nowadays.

[00:37:00.840] - John Elkin

Oh, yeah, exactly. But at the time, and I remember, they ran a Louis Unzer small block, 550 horsepower build. And that That thing was such a joy to listen to the whole two laps. It was so memorable. And again, Randy, what a gifted driver, as I'm sure everybody knows because of his history that went on to do later. That was something else. I wrote another article about that. I got a couple of rides out testing with some people. I did an interview with Steve Kelly, so I went out and met the crew when they were testing in Barstow. I did the interview with Steve, and then both Marcus and I got to ride with Steve in the Larry Minor-owned GMC truck that had all the Miller colors on it.

[00:38:03.900] - Big Rich Klein

Nice. Yeah, we just lost Larry.

[00:38:07.240] - John Elkin

We did. I became very close with Larry starting in 2019. I mean, I had known him in the mid '80s. Obviously, he had run that truck with Pardale Jones, and so I'd interviewed him. But I didn't know Larry Minor from anybody. He didn't remember me. But when I was writing my first book, we became very good friends.

[00:38:35.200] - Big Rich Klein

Nice.

[00:38:36.740] - John Elkin

I was able to visit, get to know him and his late wife, Sandy. Losing Larry was made for a really bad start to last week because that man was a legend in every single thing he did.

[00:38:57.100] - Big Rich Klein

Exactly. I really enjoyed my interview with that I got to do. I'm glad I got that one done. Yeah.

[00:39:04.720] - John Elkin

Yeah. I would love to talk more about that when we get up to talking about the books and all. But in the meantime, it was just so much fun to be able to ride, even out testing. It was just a kick. And you learn something all the time. You learn something about co-driving. And I started talking to co-drivers Jim Fricker and Bob Bauer and Russ, of course, Warnamont and Brentfose. I started to learn more and more what you wear under your driving suit. And don't just wear the driving suit. Make sure you wear a pretty heavy sweatshirt under the belt, so carry a new one. When to drink, when not to drink, things like that. They were all just amazingly helpful and good people. Anyway, so at the very end of '84, I had an offer from a very good friend of mine, Bill Gutsman. Bill is a mechanic. He was mostly a rally guy. I didn't know that much about rally, but he was the mechanic who fixed my mom's car, my dad's car. And we started talking, and I started running into him because he was pitting for Doc Sauer's and Doc Ingram in the Skull Bandit single-seater.

[00:40:40.940] - John Elkin

So through Bill, I got invited to go to the 1984 Carson City International Rally. He wanted me to come up, and he wanted me to help in the service vehicle, and he told me that there were other things that I could do. I Honestly, there was the Barstow Classic earlier in the month, and then there was a week off, which was Carson City, and then the next week was the Frontier 250, and these were all season-enders and point things on the line. I really, honestly, didn't want to go. But my SCOR news owner said, Well, rally is like the sister sport to off-road racing, why don't you go and do it and then write an article about our sister sport of rallying and how it compares. So Bill and a wonderful gentleman, the late Clint Hearing, a really good rally driver and a master wood Carpenter. I got to sit on some spare tires at the back of a van, and I rode with them all the way up to Reno. They dragged me kicking and screaming the whole way. I had ridden in class 8. I had done all this amazing things. Why did I don't want to watch cars in the dirt?

[00:42:04.180] - John Elkin

Isn't that roundy-round racing type of stuff? When I got there, Bill told me, Go find the media, whoever, and go to the press stage. And I went press stage. Okay, so I go and I found the media people, and I got a ride in a van out to the press stage. And what I found out was I thought I was going out to take pictures, which I did. But they also put me into cars to ride on the press stage as well. So you shop for a little bit, and then you come back and get in cars. So I get into this first car, and guy gets in the driver, shakes my hand, and he goes, Hi. He goes, My name's John Buffham. And I went, Oh, I've heard of you. I went, Yeah, you're like a four or five-time national champion, something like that. And he goes, Yeah, who are you? And I told him who I was. And we're about to go off the line. He looks at me, he goes, I don't know what experience you have doing this. I said, I've rid and offered races, so go ahead and scare me.

[00:43:18.140] - John Elkin

Wrong thing to tell John Buffon.

[00:43:19.760] - Big Rich Klein

That's a triple E ticket.

[00:43:23.900] - John Elkin

Oh, my God. All five cylinders came alive, took off, shifted gears. I heard the turbo let off and that noise, and, oh, good God, and we're heading toward the first corner, and he's not lifting. I'm thinking, Well, it'll be a short ride. I watch his left foot dab the break just a little bit. The whole car pivots, and we shoot around the corner like it wouldn't hardly even there. I'm trying to fathom what is going on? The noise, the wheel spin, and that beautiful Audi motor. And so we get to the end, we turn around and we buzz back. And I got out of the car, press guy grasped me, goes, Hey, how was it? I can't even form words at this point. But I knew it was fun. Throw me in another car, belt up, driver turns around, he goes, Hi, my name's Rod Millen. And then I was yet to know that Rod Millen and I would cross paths many times. I rode with Rod Millen. Totally different feeling because of the rotary, but no less thrilling. I rode in a VW with Guy Light and another VW Rabbit with somebody from Vermont.

[00:44:55.360] - John Elkin

I don't remember the name. I came out of that week the end with a really deep appreciation for what this rally thing was about. So I started doing both. I was taking photos at local events in the California Rally series. I went to a couple of nationals with Bill and things like that. But I was still primarily an off-road racing guy for a couple of more years. So all of a sudden, I have these two things that I like. But I hadn't ridden in a rally. I hadn't done it. I knew I wasn't much of a driver, but the navigating looked really interesting. And so that's what I started thinking, maybe I'll try to do. And an opportunity came up in Late '85, I think.

[00:46:02.480] - Big Rich Klein

Okay.

[00:46:02.870] - John Elkin

Maybe '86. Carl Azevito, another off-road racer who had built the Stotson 510 for stock class, and his co- driver bailed out on him at the last minute, and I'm standing around and Bill comes over and goes, This guy needs a co- driver. Get in. I've already told you how to navigate. You know what to do. I did. But it still was the shock of, We're leaving in 30 minutes. Here's a route book.

[00:46:37.400] - Big Rich Klein

Right. Because navigating in an off-road race or in a rally, I would imagine, are two different things.

[00:46:46.120] - John Elkin

Back then, yes, very much so. Now, it's a little more the same in some ways, but not exactly. Rally is It's still far more precise. But if you were to write a route book for the bottom thousand, it would probably look like two Manhattan phone books. But, yeah. And back then, there were no pace notes. All we had on the divisional level was a route book. So there was this little mileage counter in front of me, little digital mileage counter. And I just started calling out these things in the route book when we got about two-tenths of a mile away from them.

[00:47:40.960] - Big Rich Klein

Which at those speeds, you cover pretty quickly.

[00:47:43.600] - John Elkin

Yeah, you do. And even though this was a stock class DASM 510, I mean, anybody, even with a stock carburator, can get a good 160 horsepower out of a L16 motor, especially if you have the triple S head. On it, which was legal in the class at the time. Yeah, it was very quick, and it was amazing. Because Carl had been an off-road racer, he could get me to understand things in an off-road way. It was a real adventure. We finished. I don't remember where, but it wasn't terribly impressive. But he had just started rallying, so he hadn't I haven't gotten his driving style down yet either. But, hey, we got to the end. And all of a sudden, it was like, this is so much different than co-driving in off-road. So I'm still riding, I'm still shooting off-road. But frankly, by '87, things started turning in the writing in off-road. And I don't want to badmouth anybody about anything, but I lost my taste for it a little bit. I started going back into rally more and more and more. And by '87, I was mostly competing in rally in the right seating different cars.

[00:49:23.980] - John Elkin

I was hopping around different cars. The writing sat on the side for just a little bit until I started writing, getting well known enough to write for some rally publications and very, very early websites.

[00:49:41.720] - Big Rich Klein

With that transition, how did you get known for the writing so that from off road to rally, the rally magazines or publications would pick you up? I mean, was it, Hey, I can write this, too, or how did that For the most part, most of the people had already known that I had been writing for off-road.

[00:50:09.940] - John Elkin

And by the time I had five, six rallies under my belt, I had all the terminology down, and I was learning about the history of the sport. And so more and more people were trying to get me to do things for them, mostly the SCCA publication Sports Car. I was writing about the divisional rallies on that level. There was another smaller publication that was called Stage Times that I did a little work for. And then a little later, the more I was doing a rally, Jean Calvin started covering more Rally in Dusty Times. I started doing more things for Jean, but strictly in Rally. I was still going to off-road races and following it because it was a deep love of mine. But I was having less and less professional to do with it, and I was become a more of a spectator. But I never stopped following it. And so for the next almost 30 years, I'm based out of Southern California, and I'm I went to work in auto parts stores, and I started working in the automotive aftermarket about that time because all of a sudden the writing money fell off quite a bit.

[00:51:40.400] - John Elkin

And about 1996, things started not going too well. My father passed away, and there just wasn't that much left in Southern California. And a rally friend of mine got me to come up to Portland, Oregon. Told me where to find a job. I found a job in a a nicely, nicely owned family auto parts store, Baxter Auto Parts. I moved up here. Again, Portland, big, huge rally fraternity, area between Seattle and that. We had 40 cars up here. With me being up here, Jean Calvin had me doing more and more work there. I was still going back to California for some of the California Rally series events, and I would cover those as well. At that point, by 1999, I had met my wife, Mary. While I was still rallying, I was working harder, and I got away from writing for a little bit. But I was still co-driving, and I steady rides at this point, still watching everything on TV about off-road racing, still reading all the magazines because I still wanted to keep up on the sport that I love. But the riding took a back seat for a while. Had a kid in 2005 and did the dad thing, still co-driving.

[00:53:27.300] - John Elkin

And not that long ago, about 2010, things started happening again in life, and I started to get the itch to write again. And so I just started doing that. And the co-driving was getting a little long on the tooth. The politics and the hoops we were having to jump through as Rally went from SCCA to Rally America and then switched over to another sanctioning. We started to get multiple sanctioning bodies in the sport through USAC and all. I was getting a little tired. I knew I had to make a little bit more money. We had a kid now. By 2014, I stepped out of the Rally car and I stopped co-driving. And I thought I would just be out for just a little bit, get myself set up in a different job. And the next year in 2015 is when I got my first cancer diagnosis.

[00:54:43.480] - Big Rich Klein

Oh, okay.

[00:54:44.720] - John Elkin

And I had melanoma on the bottom of my right heel. It was deeper than they thought. They did surgery, and it turns out they had to go wait way deeper than they thought to get it all, to get clean margins. That resulted in me living on a knee scooter for about 14 months. And they literally dug out over 55 % of my heel. You could see the bone at the bottom of the wound. But over time, through a lot of wound care people and all that, it filled in. But I had lost the The fat pad between the heel bone and the skin. I didn't have that anymore. I still don't. The idea of co-driving, again, was not going to happen. If I had to get out and push the car, if I had to get out and dive on to my knees to make a minute and a half tire change, it wasn't going to happen. I was risking hurting myself quite a bit.

[00:55:59.280] - Big Rich Klein

Right.

[00:56:00.000] - John Elkin

All of a sudden, I'm out of a rally car completely. I cannot race. I was very lost. I started to seek out more work for writing about it. The cancer progressed. It went to stage four. Eventually, I wasn't able to work anymore. I couldn't even work in parts. And the aftermarket, the immunotherapies had scramble the brain just enough, and things weren't looking good at that time. So I got on to disability. And disability is okay, but you need to do something to earn a little bit extra money. So I turned back to writing at that point. This was about 2018, roughly.

[00:57:02.220] - Big Rich Klein

Okay.

[00:57:03.320] - John Elkin

And so I started writing about off-roading, just in general, rally still. And I was doing some writing for digital trends. I was doing writing for a couple of off-road sites, Off-Road Extreme, Diesel Army. And so it was nice to be back it. I was driving vehicles, doing vehicle reports because we had press outlets here in the Portland area, so I could get a brand new Ford F150 and be able to drive it to some event and do a write-up about it. So I was just doing general journalistic things.

[00:57:49.760] - Big Rich Klein

Can I ask you... I'm familiar with melanomas. I've had some benign ones taken off of my body, but on the heel of your foot? I mean, I always think of melanomas coming from the sun. I mean, did you sunbathe standing on your head or how did that- No.

[00:58:16.180] - John Elkin

When they first told me, I actually remember looking at the doctor going, I'm not in the habit of tanning my heels.

[00:58:24.010] - Big Rich Klein

Right, exactly.

[00:58:26.340] - John Elkin

But we talked about my history, and of course, all those years in the desert, didn't exactly use sunblock as religiously as I should have. And the doctor explained to me that that is just where the poisons settled. And as it turns out, as I've been involved in the cancer community and some support groups. There's a lady here in my town, here in Vancouver, Washington. She had the same cancer start in the same heel. And then through her, I bet several Well, other people. So it's not that uncommon to have it show up there.

[00:59:06.120] - Big Rich Klein

And what made you think to go to the doctors? Was it pain or Well, not right off.

[00:59:18.960] - John Elkin

I have battled my whole life with psoriasis.

[00:59:22.820] - Big Rich Klein

Okay.

[00:59:23.360] - John Elkin

One day I'm looking at my foot and I noticed this little tiny white dot on the bottom of my heel. I'm like, Oh, my Lord, now the psoriasis is going to be on my foot? And so I didn't think much about it. But as time went on, I noticed that it didn't just come off sometimes, like psoriasis flakes will, and that it seemed to be locked in a little deeper, and it stayed small. Soriasis spreads, usually. I was getting a toenail that was ingrown, worked on, I asked the doctor to look at this thing on the bottom of my foot, and his face went a little white. And then he went, I'll be right back.

[01:00:14.770] - Big Rich Klein

No, that's never a good sign.

[01:00:17.410] - John Elkin

No, no, no, no, no. He goes, I want to do a punch biopsy. Well, you just got done working on my toe, and you know when they do an ingrown toenail, they shoot the lidocaine, dovacaine, whatever, into your toe. That's not a pleasant experience at all. Not at all. The doctor goes, I'm going to have to numb you up on your heel. I said, Okay. I said, Well, it can't be any worse than what you did to my toe. He looks at me and he goes, It's a hell of a lot worse. He goes, I want you to grab- Bearer of good news. Yeah. I want you to grab the arms of the chair and really bear down and don't move your foot. Yeah, he was right. That was a horrible experience. But he got the punch biopsy, and a couple of days And then a few months later, it came back, and it was not just melanoma, it was BRAF negative melanoma, which wasn't the most aggressive type, but it's right up there toward the top. And so all of a sudden, I'm talking to surgeons. They're talking about lymph nodes. And at this point, you feel like you're in a rally car with a really bad driver.

[01:01:46.460] - John Elkin

You have no control, and you're just going wherever the car is going to go. And trust me, I've had my share of really bad drivers. So next thing I know, I'm waking up after the first surgery. The surgeon's telling me we had to go a lot deeper than we had to. And life just changed right there. And then I was clear for a very little bit, but then it came back one lung and the other lung, kidney, a lymph node, and then on my right flank, I got something. And we're using immunotherapy. I'm using laser treatments, radiation at all. And it just changes you enough that I was... At that point, I was an auto parts buyer for a auto body chain, and I couldn't even do it anymore. I mean, I knew what to do. I couldn't put the things in motion to get it done. My doctor, my wife, gained up on me and said, you need to retire.

[01:02:59.360] - Big Rich Klein

So a chemo fog?

[01:03:02.540] - John Elkin

Immunotherapy. Chemo does not react well to melanoma that well. But immunotherapy does. But immunotherapy also changes a lot of things in your brain and things like that. That's why sometimes I have a really hard time coming up with names and things like that. It's horrible. But in the long run, I But I never would have got back to this writing if I didn't have to retire at a young age.

[01:03:38.140] - Big Rich Klein

Right.

[01:03:39.100] - John Elkin

So flash forward to 2019, just before COVID hits, and I'm writing for... Oh, gosh, I don't even remember who it was now. But anyway, they want me to go to the CEMA show. Well, I had gone to the CEMA show for almost 20 years straight. No, not 20, but a lot of years. I knew the CEMA show really well, but I hadn't been for 20 years. I was excited to get back there. I had a room, had a plane ticket. I went back to the scene of show. I'm walking around. Here's all these people I'm getting to re-me, get reacquainted with. Walker Evans is there. Steve Kelly is there. I'm running into people around every corner, and I'm having a ball. As I'm walking past this one booth, it was a booth for car tech books. Now, everybody knows CarTech Books. They're in every auto parts store. How to rebuild your Chevy 350, all sorts of stuff, plus historical things. Well, a very good friend of mine, wonderful automotive journalist named Jeff Jersmead, had written a couple of books them already at that point. So I was looking at one of his books, and I'm talking to the guy behind the counter, and he sees my badge.

[01:05:10.020] - John Elkin

He sees I'm a writer for digital trends, and I had one of the badge on. And he goes, Oh, so you're a writer? And I started talking about my history as a writer. He just looks at me, he goes, What are you going to write me a book? And I'm just scared of the guy like, I'm a magazine magazine writer. I don't write books that much. He goes, Well, you sure seem to be good with history and all that. So at this point, Ford had just announced the Bronco was coming back. And so the Bronco was hot. A matter of fact, the Bronco was the lead vehicle for that particular scene of show. And so there are Broncos all over the place, historical ones, big olies there, Gail Pike This old truck is there, things like that. The guy goes, Would you be interested in writing a book about the history of the Ford Bronco in off-road competition? I loosely agreed to it. After the show, he sent me a contract. But at the show, I had enough time to where I started looking at the Broncos. I got some pictures of some of I knew I had pictures of Broncos from years that I offered racing before that.

[01:06:36.060] - John Elkin

I thought it'd be a pretty easy thing to do, really. Just chronological, and I already knew how the Bronco came to life back in 64, five, six. So all of a sudden, I'm a bookwriter. And that became really where the historian moniker came in to effect, because I thought I knew a lot, and I thought that there would be a lot of off-road racing history around on the Internet, and I started looking, and I was shocked at how little information was really out there. I mean, deep information. I started to think to myself, I'm in trouble. Because I thought there would be more of this available on the Internet. And I thought, well, if the Internet fails you, you could always turn to people.

[01:07:40.560] - Big Rich Klein

Right. Go right to the source.

[01:07:42.960] - John Elkin

Go right to the source. So I remembered hanging around Bill Strope's shop. He had actually signed his book over to me way back in about '85 and still have it to this day. And so I thought, Well, I know Bill's passed by this point, but Pardeli is still around, Willy Strope is still around. And I thought to myself, well, I'm Larry Minor. I know Hedro, all these. So I started compiling names and having to do a really deep research. Right about this time, I'm getting ready to head down to the Nora 1,000 because the Bronco was one of the vehicles for that year as well, and COVID hits. And So the Nora's canceled. I still haven't made it to one yet. But if there was any one good thing that came out of COVID was when I had to call somebody, I knew that they were already home. Right.

[01:09:03.660] - Big Rich Klein

That's true.

[01:09:05.460] - John Elkin

So through Steve Kelly, he got me Larry Minor's phone number. And then I called Larry Minor, and he was one of the first people that I really interviewed. And I'm asking him questions. He's telling me some stories. But I can almost tell that I'm ticking him off a little bit. I'm trying to figure out what I'm doing wrong. But the thing is, is that he's trying to tell me all the stories. Does he remember them? And so as I'm trying to key in on other points, he tells me this statement. It is, to this day, the single greatest statement I've ever gathered from somebody in an interview. I've interviewed a lot of people. He said, Listen. He goes, We were just racing. We were just doing what we do. Had we known we were making history at the time, we might have paid more attention.

[01:10:04.560] - Big Rich Klein

Right.

[01:10:06.560] - John Elkin

And once he told me that, it totally changed the way how I dealt with people about how I interviewed them and how I tried to jog their memories. Because all of a sudden now, I'm dealing with guys in their mid-70s and early 80s who might not be able to tell you what they had for breakfast, but they can tell you about that one rock at the Mint 400 in great detail. But you just had to coax it out of them a little bit.

[01:10:38.540] - Big Rich Klein

True. Very true.

[01:10:39.760] - John Elkin

So all of a sudden, Larry Minor sends me this box filled with photos and memorabilia and a book, his family put together for him and all sorts of personal stuff. I scan everything out and I send Larry back the box, and all And all of a sudden, Larry Minor just keeps calling me because he keeps remembering stuff. And it got to a point where I actually found myself going, Oh, my God, it's Larry Minor again. What does he want? How do you tell yourself, You talk to Larry Minor when he calls you. But he kept giving me just really wonderful insights that I hadn't had before. And through him, I got through to Carl Jackson. And through Carl, I got to some other people, Don Barlow, who had driven the Crazy Horse, Bronco. And all of a sudden, I'm talking to all these folks, and they're giving me all these stories. They're sending me photos and constantly calling me. Again, COVID, what else you got to do? But sit around and remember stuff. And the book It's starting to come together. I'm real happy with the way it turned out. But COVID delayed it because a bunch of the photos I needed were through Peterson because there was some stuff that was before Jim Ober started shooting Trackside.

[01:12:22.140] - John Elkin

Jim helped me a lot. Jim was remarkable. As much as we were actually competitors in the photography market from day one. We never really liked each other a ton, but we were nice to each other. Once the book came out and we started talking, and I was telling Jim how remarkable he was and stuff like that, he really busted a hump to work with me and work within my budget for photos. But Peterson really got hit hard. They didn't have a lot of people that were coming back. Took a long time to get the photos out of Peterson. It actually delayed the Bronco book almost a year.

[01:13:05.260] - Big Rich Klein

Wow.

[01:13:07.040] - John Elkin

But I needed those photos. And I still never found any photos from the '67 Mexican one as in the very first one.

[01:13:18.840] - Big Rich Klein

I would imagine that there wasn't probably a whole lot of photographers down there, because like you said, like Minor said, they were drivers. If they knew they were making history, they may have done things differently.

[01:13:34.520] - John Elkin

Yeah, and the people that the Perlman and Francisco had put together, they were busy driving fuel trucks down, working check at points, they didn't have time to take pictures either.

[01:13:47.220] - Big Rich Klein

Exactly. Yeah.

[01:13:49.100] - John Elkin

And so in Todd Zercher's book on the history of the Ford Bronco, but just the vehicle as a whole, he actually did find a couple of photos of '67, but I could never secure the permission to use them. So I had to do with that. In both of my books, I had to do without 1967 pictures, which was funny because Larry and Rod Hall, Larry Minor and Rod Hall, won the four-wheel drive class at the very first Mexican 1,000. And while it was Rodney's Jeep that they used, Larry was the driver of record. And so it was a real team thing. And I kept bugging Larry, you had to have taken a picture at the finish next to the Jeep. Something, nothing. Larry couldn't find nothing as wife, Sandy, wonderful woman, couldn't even find anything. The Halls couldn't find anything.

[01:14:53.260] - Big Rich Klein

Wow.

[01:14:53.800] - John Elkin

So, yeah, still, '67 remains an enigma.

[01:14:59.480] - Big Rich Klein

Interesting.

[01:15:00.980] - John Elkin

Yeah, it was amazing. But it was so much fun to write the Bronco book because so many people started in Broncos or went from Jeeps to Broncos to other things. So my hero, one of the first guys that I really admired in off-raceing, John Baker, he started in the Bronco in '72. And I found him. He's a real estate agent out in West LA, so he's still doing competitive things. I contacted him and rekindled a bit of a friendship there, which was great. He gave me a lot of information as well and a lot of memories of the Bronco. And so through him, I ran into other people who helped as well. The Rice's and the... See, here it goes in my memory again. But quite a few people who went on to do other things. So and famous Broncos. I got to talk to some of these people. That's awesome. Those are great. And now I have all these new friends. So the book came out. It did well. It's still doing well. People still talk to me about it all the time. And not long after that book came out, CAR Tech Books and my editor, Wes Eisenshank, came back to me again going, You know, Bronco was great.

[01:16:47.170] - John Elkin

He goes, But it'd be bad if we didn't follow it up with Jeeps. And I thought, Well, you know what? I've got all these people, and a lot of these people started in Jeeps, and or went on to Jeep from Bronco. And I go, I'm pretty much already set up, and I've got photo people I can contact. So I started into the Jeep book about six, eight months after the Bronco book came out. And I thought it'd be really quick, really easy. And it turns out it was anything but. It was so much harder to pull up information and to get a lot of people with memories from that era. But there were some that were amazing. J. M. Bragg in particular and his wife, Peggy, have become wonderful friends. I've been to their house. They send me walnuts occasionally because J. M. Is a donut farmer. And through them, I got to meet Brad Russell, who is Ray Russell's son. Ray, unfortunately, passed away in an 18 Wheeler accident some years ago. And Sandy Cohn, who's still around and doing great. And so I got to put a Jeep book together. The Jeep book only covers from about '65 to '89, because Jeep performance fell off after '89.

[01:18:32.520] - John Elkin

You still had Don Adams, and you still had Mike Swellinger out there. But Swellinger switched over to a Ford truck. Don Adams stopped racing, and it It was laborious to try to come up with things to write about. There were things, but they weren't as legendary, they weren't as historical. The book was getting long, so the car tech made the decision to end the book in 1989. But I really think that that covers the historical impact that Jeep really had on the sport of off-road racing.

[01:19:12.060] - Big Rich Klein

I would agree.

[01:19:12.660] - John Elkin

And throughout the writing, the both of these books, the Offer Motor Sports Hall of Fame was so helpful to me. Opening up Judy Smith's photo archive to me and Being able to get in touch with people, if they knew how to get in touch, they would let me know. I really got interested in the Hall of Fame. I got interested in getting more people into the Hall of Fame, some of the older folks.

[01:19:49.400] - Big Rich Klein

Which is important.

[01:19:51.440] - John Elkin

Which is super important. I mean, we're losing the history of our sport. We have lost Larry Minor. Now, thank God Larry is already in Ormhoff. And obviously, Rodney was in it and all this. But there's so many other people. So up to date, the Jeep book has been my last book, I'm looking to try to switch over to autobiographical books, trying to work with people that race that want to do books. I have a lot of irons in the fire, but I don't have anything solid solid coming up. But what I would love to talk about is my involvement with the Hall of Fame.

[01:20:37.180] - Big Rich Klein

Absolutely.

[01:20:38.480] - John Elkin

And how important the Hall of Fame is. And it started with Carl Jackson. Now, a lot of people don't remember Carl Jackson. He started in a Jeep in the old Brian Chichua River bottom races outside of Riverside. He was a terror in an old CJ5 with a four-cylinder engine, a vehicle he still has, by the way, in his garage in beautiful condition.

[01:21:07.620] - Big Rich Klein

Wow.

[01:21:08.740] - John Elkin

He beat everybody, including Larry Minor, in some real high-powered stuff. That stock Jeep, he was able to win several overall titles, which got him noticed, which got him to the James Garner AMC, which got him to Bill Straub and for a long time, and then eventually to Jim Connor and some 7. 4 by 4 stuff. And he's done a lot of other things. One of the greatest things Carl Jackson ever did, though, was at the 70? Pardon my memory. 70, 71 Baha 500. Bill Strapp got asked by a trailer company, Sprite Trailers, to get a Baha Bronco, one of Strapp's Baha Broncos, rigged up, put a Sprite trailer on the back of it, run it through the Baha 500, and make it finish and finish within the time limit so it's official. So right away, Bill knew that his best driver was Carl Jackson. Carl could get anything to the finish. And Carl had brought a gentleman to the sport named Jim Fricker. So Carl and Jim were a pair. And later, when Carl got moved over to the courier program, Jim Fricker could not fit in a Ford courier. Jim Fricker was very tall and lanky, and there was no way he was going to make it into that little truck.

[01:22:52.160] - John Elkin

So Carl, quote, loaned Jim to Rodney Hall And then, obviously, the rest is history, right? Right. From there, Jim Fricker could, and I got to quote something that Bob Bauer told me. It was that Jim Fricker was able to move his side of the truck every bit as fast as Rodney could drive his side of the truck. But I had become enamored with Carl. Carl had these great stories. He's in great shape. I'm so honored and privileged to have him as a friend. And he wasn't in the Hall of Fame. I approached him and I said, Carl, I would really like to put your name up for the Hall of Fame. And he took a minute on the phone and he says, that's great, because I refuse to be in the Hall of Fame until Jim Fricker gets in.

[01:24:00.900] - Big Rich Klein

Oh, wow.

[01:24:02.080] - John Elkin

He tells me this story about how several people in the sport used to... Because Rodney had bought the Hall of Fame, and Jim had joking said, Maybe one day I'll be in your Hall of Fame, Rodney. And several people said, You're a co- driver. You don't drive. You're never going to be in the Hall of Fame. And so Carl said, Until Jim Fricker gets in, I'm not going to want to be considered. So I looked up how to nominate, and everything's there on the Ormhoff website. It's laid out. I'm not going to say it's easy because As a writer, I love having unlimited words to be able to describe what I need. But in Ormhoff, you have to come up with 200 words about the person's impact on the sport. Maybe 500 words for their resume. So you got to know your words. You got to know how to use them. And so I started to learn that the letters that you can submit with the packet are a big key.

[01:25:16.940] - Big Rich Klein

Bingo. Yes.

[01:25:17.900] - John Elkin

Tours getting somebody into the Hall of Fame. So I labored and labored and labored over this thing, and I came up with what I thought was a really good packet. Bob Bauer helped me tremendously. There were, obviously, Carl Jackson did. Now, here's the thing, though. One of the things that I was looking forward to doing from the time I got the Bronco book was I wanted to talk to Jim, because talking to Jim Fricker is such a fun thing to do. Hardly anybody can tell a story like Jim Fricker can. I was really looking forward to it. So when I actually got in touch with Carl Jackson the first I said, Can I get in touch with Jim Fricker? And he then told me that Jim has dementia and that he doesn't have as good days as he used to. And he goes, And he can talk to you, he goes, But if he can't remember something, he gets very upset and it becomes hard to manage him. And he didn't want to see Linda, Jim's wife, have to go through that. Immediately, I decided I cannot talk to Jim Fricker. I won't do that to a family.

[01:26:36.660] - John Elkin

But it's a lost. I mean, what we've lost with the things that Jim cannot remember now. He's still around, but his good days are getting fewer and fewer. I had to pull this off without talking to Jim himself. But I put it together and I put it in. And wouldn't you know, Jim Fricker made it in on the first year.

[01:27:02.220] - Big Rich Klein

And that's tough to do.

[01:27:05.300] - John Elkin

That is insanely hard to do, as I found out, because there's other people that I put up for nomination that I have not gotten in yet.

[01:27:14.700] - Big Rich Klein

It's not an easy process. And one of the things that I try to educate people when they say, well, so and so needs to be in the Hall of Fame. And I'm like, you're more than likely correct. But somebody has to put that application together because it's not the board of directors. All we do is facilitate the application process and the voting process, bringing in the voting committee, which changes yearly from, those people are brought in from the off-road industry, whether it be advocates and land use people and media and drivers and business owners. It's a wide range of people that are on the committee, and it changes all the time. So there's a lot of deserving people that may have not made it yet, but I always encourage people to keep trying.

[01:28:21.340] - John Elkin

And I have. I got a little spoiled because my first time, and I got a guy in, and I didn't realize what a fluke that was until a little bit later. But I made it down to the induction ceremony, and I got to talk to Jim, and he was having a good day, so I actually got to talk to him for a little bit, and he was remembering some things, which was awesome. But you could tell this meant something to him because he had been told he would never get in. And as I did my research, I realized there were no co-drivers that had been put into the Hall of Fame yet. Now, you might want to jump in my face and say, What about Bill Strapp? Well, yeah, he was a co- driver, but guess what? Bill Strapp was put into the Hall of Fame as a pioneer of the sport, of the industry. He was not recognized at all for co-driving with the madman that is Parnelly Jones.

[01:29:27.580] - Big Rich Klein

How was Bob Bauer? I should know this. How Bob Bauer put in?

[01:29:34.460] - John Elkin

Bob got in after Jim?

[01:29:36.960] - Big Rich Klein

Okay, that makes sense. Yes.

[01:29:39.780] - John Elkin

I believe. I remember Bob even telling me that Jim was the first. But Bob might have went in as an industry guy because of his work with B. F. Goodrich.

[01:29:52.990] - Big Rich Klein

True.

[01:29:53.840] - John Elkin

I don't think he went in as a competitor. So one of the most important things that you have to ask yourself, when you want to put your dad, your grandpa, or whatever, up for the Hall of Fame, is what was his impact on the sport? And heavy emphasis on impact.

[01:30:15.260] - Big Rich Klein

Correct.

[01:30:15.900] - John Elkin

I've helped some guys, a wonderful gentleman, who's trying to get his father into the Hall of Fame, and he keeps talking about what a great dad he was. I said, That's great. And it's important that he was a great dad. I said, But the of Fame, it's not what it's about. You've got to find his impact on the sport. Yeah, mentioned he was a great father. That was great. But don't make it your whole thing.

[01:30:41.240] - Big Rich Klein

Yeah, we see that a lot.

[01:30:43.220] - John Elkin

Yeah, you have to find the impact. So next, I'm working with the Hall of Fame, and I cannot believe that I'm not pulling the name up. I blame immunotherapy. Who preceded Barbra Raine. Barbra. Yes, Barbra. Sorry. My apologies, Barbra. Barbra, who knew my rally history, said, We need more rally people in the Hall of Fame. At that point, there were only two other rally people in the Hall of Fame, John Buffam and David Higgins. I started thinking, and I thought, Well, the best chance I have is Rod He's got national titles. He did a lot for the sport, and he had an impact. So I put him in, but I was shocked when I didn't get him in the first year. Just shocked. I came up with some letters. I rewrote a couple of things. I tried again, and he got in on the second year. And that taught me a lesson.

[01:32:00.500] - Big Rich Klein

One of the things that people need to understand is when that three-year process that the application is there is that first year, it may be that there are a lot of third-year people that are really deserving, and the voting committee may weigh that in. There may be other first or second years that are people that are just slam dunks, that they've made such a huge impact Act, because the hall will see somewhere in the neighborhood of 50 plus applications a year. And so every voting committee is going through 50 plus applications and trying to determine who to vote for, and they need two-thirds vote of the voting committee to get in.

[01:33:00.000] - John Elkin

So there's only eight or a dozen spots a year open.

[01:33:05.520] - Big Rich Klein

Yeah. Mathematically, we'd like to see anywhere from five to nine, I think it is. But there's been years where it's as low as three. And then last year, the 2024 Inducting Class, we had twelve, which there were so many slam dunks on that. It was pretty incredible.

[01:33:39.860] - John Elkin

At some point, you have a backlog, and you have a backlog of people that really do need to be in, and maybe the pack, it wasn't strong enough. And that's really all you have to go by, from what I'm understanding. Right. Talking with Josh Hall and Frank R. Sierra Jr. The people that really know their stuff and have been on the Hall selection committee.

[01:34:07.480] - Big Rich Klein

Right. It's that application is... I mean, that's all that anybody has to go by, the voting committee, is what that application is and then the research that is available to them. And they've got 50 applicants to go through or more. And so when you're sitting at home and you have to go through these packets and do some research yourself. If it's terribly difficult to research, it's not going to get done. I mean, if it's not on the first page or two of Google, it's going to be very difficult to find any additional information that may have been lacking in the application. So that application, and like you said, the letters that are involved with it are extremely important.

[01:34:58.820] - John Elkin

Now, if you allow me to go off on a deeply unused tool that Ormhoff provides. There is the registry. The registry is in with the Collections tab on the Ormhoff website. Before you even consider putting your loved one, your coworker, your old racing partner up for the hall, get a registry into the Hall of Fame. I have been proud and honored to have put in registries for some other people. I put my book in as media, or both my books, in just as media. I'm not looking to get into the Hall of Fame myself, but it's history. This is where you can put in the history. This is where you don't need to be inducted into the Hall of Fame. I put in a couple of rally drivers. I have a couple of more to go. I put Lon Peterson in, who's an amazing rally driver. I've put in Eva Star-Balabana. I did work for their family to get her registry in. And I know that she's up for impact awards from time to time. The Hall of Fame, even though you're very limited on your packet and how many words that you can use, they could still read the registry, and you can make a lot of headway utilizing that.

[01:36:32.460] - John Elkin

And again, it's all online, and it's easy to do.

[01:36:36.140] - Big Rich Klein

Right.

[01:36:37.580] - John Elkin

Yeah. So everybody who's listening, everybody who has somebody, something, you can put them in under so many different categories, industry, media, competition, motorcycles, clubs, four-wheel drive clubs you can put into the registry. I'm going to be putting in the California Rally series here not too long. Nice. Because they've been around since there was rallying since '73. That history needs to be saved as well. I have been talking with the current owner of Trackside, who has a bunch of Rally photos that have never been scanned in before, and I've been offering to help do the scanning if need be. Oremhoff is such a great area where We can save all of this history, not just off-road, rally, hill climbs, rock events, we rock, all that. Here's your other thing that you can find a lot of things at, racedesert. Com. They've started a results area, and I spent hours and hours and hours uploading all the results that I've come across in my research, putting it into this results thing at racedesert. Com. Desert has a Z in it instead of an S. This is where our history is being saved. We're talking about it in their community area, in there as well.

[01:38:15.540] - John Elkin

Old photos. We need to get this out there. We need to save our history. I'm looking forward to a very long friendship with the Hall of Fame. I would love to be considered eventually to help select people in the Hall of Fame. I think the people that are handling it right now, Josh Hall and Mark McVillan and everybody that is doing a wonderful job. But this particular year, it just seemed like there were a lot of younger people who maybe didn't know as much about the history. I would love to get more history-minded people onto that board so we can clear out this massive backlog of people.

[01:38:56.900] - Big Rich Klein

Right.

[01:38:58.520] - John Elkin

Did you It was my third year for J. M. Bragg, and I did not get him in. I have to wait another year before I can put him in again. I love J. M. Bragg, and he's a wonderful man. I love his family. But the man is in his mid-80s, and you just hope he's still here to get the accolade that he deserves.

[01:39:20.920] - Big Rich Klein

Well, did you know that today was the day that we announced the new class for 2025?

[01:39:27.980] - John Elkin

I have not seen the new class yet.

[01:39:31.380] - Big Rich Klein

Would you like me to read the names to you?

[01:39:34.700] - John Elkin

I would love that.

[01:39:36.160] - Big Rich Klein

Okay. Frank Curry. From Curry enterprises. Oh, excellent choice.

[01:39:41.560] - John Elkin

Excellent choice.

[01:39:43.160] - Big Rich Klein

Bob Fox. Fox Shox.

[01:39:46.700] - John Elkin

Excellent choice.

[01:39:48.360] - Big Rich Klein

Nate Hunt from Jackson Dawson Racing and BFG. Mike Jolson.

[01:39:56.640] - John Elkin

Oh, excellent.

[01:39:57.860] - Big Rich Klein

Jim Co.

[01:39:59.380] - John Elkin

Yep.

[01:40:00.000] - Big Rich Klein

Lonnie McCurry, senior, from Skyjacker, in the four-wheel drive side of the industry.

[01:40:06.180] - John Elkin

Oh, wonderful. I sold a lot of their stuff in my auto parts case.

[01:40:10.110] - Big Rich Klein

Right. Keith Permel. And he was the voice of desert racing for the States with safety and all that, like the weatherman, like Bob. Yeah. For up here, for like best in the desert and different groups. And then Clyde Stacey.

[01:40:37.280] - John Elkin

Oh, excellent choice again. Yes.

[01:40:39.680] - Big Rich Klein

And then Van, or Dan Van der Huvle.

[01:40:45.020] - John Elkin

Another excellent choice. Right.

[01:40:47.320] - Big Rich Klein

So a lot of history in those eight names.

[01:40:54.540] - John Elkin

That's excellent. I'm surprised the people that aren't in. I'm so happy for everybody that gets in. My son asked me, Are you upset at the people that got in? And I'm like, No, because everybody gets in and deserves it. But there's other people that I haven't even written anything for. I'm working with their families right now, and I'm warning you right now, I am putting together an amazing packet for Grant Randall and the impact that he had on early Jeep racing.

[01:41:28.280] - Big Rich Klein

Nice.

[01:41:28.860] - John Elkin

Perfect. Things like that. Things that I would do. But to be on the selection committee, I would shove all that in a minute. To be able to help the hall with whatever they need.

[01:41:40.320] - Big Rich Klein

Well, I'll forward your name to the committee that selects the voting committee.

[01:41:47.720] - John Elkin

Excellent.

[01:41:49.100] - Big Rich Klein

Yeah.

[01:41:50.000] - John Elkin

I even ran into some people that were alternates when I was at the UTV takeover in Coos Bay, Oregon this last weekend. I got to drive some of Robbie Gordon's speed UTV vehicles. Nice. I'm writing articles about the takeover, and it was so nice to be able to work with Robbie Gordon again. I've covered his stadium trucks at Portland before. And of course, I remember Robbie from way back. Blue is mine because I told him I was at the Frontier 250 in 1984, when he first drove his dad's two-seater. And he goes, Oh, you do go back aways. But it's amazing when you run into it because I was wearing a Normhoff shirt in the Coos Bay Sand Dunes, and people knew what it was, and they were coming up to me.

[01:42:51.520] - Big Rich Klein

Excellent.

[01:42:52.960] - John Elkin

We're making headway. We're getting there. I know I'm using we, and I'm not really involved, but I'm a big fan.

[01:43:01.100] - Big Rich Klein

You are definitely involved. The work that you've done to try to get the registry, all the work that you've done to put things into the registry, that is very, very important. Gary Hogley has been really pushing that as well. He's on the board of directors, and I've been trying to do the same thing with the four-wheel drive side of the industry. And it's always great when we see new stuff pop up on the registry.

[01:43:30.320] - John Elkin

Well, keep an eye out. I've got more coming. Excellent. And hopefully, people will find it interesting. Some good people, some clubs, some really good stuff coming up. So that's good. And I'm hoping to be able to be able to help some people that have amazing stories with autobiographies. Probably not able to talk about that quite yet with who, but amazing stories that are out there. I just can't even fathom all the stories that I don't even know about yet that I'm yet to learn.

[01:44:05.900] - Big Rich Klein

Oh, there's so many. That's the exciting part.

[01:44:09.620] - John Elkin

But we're losing. The Larry Minor's death really brought it home even harder. Don Barlow just passed away a few months ago as well. These are guys who had stories and all. Luckily, I was able to capture some of Don Barlow's in the Bronco book and Larry's, of course, in both books. I have to tell you, one of Don's stories is my second favorite story in the whole book. That was He worked with Coco Corral, and they built the Bronco, and eventually, Coco went on to bring Ivan Stewart along. The history is amazing. But Dawn wanted to be able to get fiber glass molds of everything, and Coco would not let him take a brand new one-off the lot to do that, too, even though Dawn knew that it wouldn't hurt it. Well, Coco was gone on vacation, so guess what Dawn did? And, yeah, he stole one right off the lot and took it over to his shop and did the molds on it and had it back over there before anybody knew it was gone.

[01:45:26.840] - Big Rich Klein

Nice.

[01:45:30.320] - John Elkin

My other favorite story is the Moss Brothers.

[01:45:33.340] - Big Rich Klein

Oh, yeah. Dawn. Dawn is a good friend.

[01:45:36.740] - John Elkin

Dawn Moss. His story about the first Baja that they did, which was the Baja 2000, is amazing. But he has another story about another peninsula run, where they're just ripping down the road, and this one turkey vulture decides to lift off and fly away, but flew toward the bronco, and they hit it and it came back and entered the cabin with them. And so it was pretty much gone on impact, but his co- driver was trying to stuff this turkey vulture out of a window net. While doing over 80 miles an hour down the road, he did not pull over.

[01:46:20.660] - Big Rich Klein

No, you're not stopping.

[01:46:23.200] - John Elkin

That's one of my favorite things to do down in Baja is to watch the turkey vultures here and there. They're amazing critters, but to have one enter the cab with you at 80, there's a story.

[01:46:37.500] - Big Rich Klein

There's so many stories like that that haven't been told.

[01:46:41.960] - John Elkin

Well, a lot of them that I could gather are in Bronco Racing, America's legendary 4x4 and off-road competition, and in Jeep Racing, America's toughest 4x4 in off-road competition, which are available through CarTech Books on their website and through Amazon, and quite a few other places if you just put it into Google.

[01:47:08.680] - Big Rich Klein

Excellent. Well, John, I want to say thank you so much for spending nearly two hours of your day. And I know we've just grazed the surface.

[01:47:25.580] - John Elkin

Oh, yeah. There's so much history that I've learned about, finally, Jones and Walker Evans. It could be a whole other show on that.

[01:47:35.040] - Big Rich Klein

But that stuff is we need a spot in the registry just for your stories on the individuals. And I don't know how we do that, but we'll start your own registry page, and then you can just add stories on the individuals as you as you think of them, like the turkey vulture type thing. Oh, yeah. That would be awesome. Those are great reads.

[01:48:06.520] - John Elkin

I'll tell you, a lot of the best stories I get, they weren't always from the race, but pre-running.

[01:48:14.020] - Big Rich Klein

True.

[01:48:14.700] - John Elkin

Because really, the race isn't that much fun all the time. The pre-running, however, that's where the big fun is.

[01:48:22.880] - Big Rich Klein

Yes. Oh, yeah. I got some stories I can't even tell from pre-running.

[01:48:27.160] - John Elkin

Exactly.

[01:48:29.000] - Big Rich Klein

Or I can't tell in mass. I can tell them one-on-one instances. Because I ran with Pistol Pete for a couple of years, and that was pretty fun times.

[01:48:44.780] - John Elkin

Got I'll give you stories. There were rally drivers that I rode with, and you knew it was always going to be a rough one. They were winner crash guys. But you just tell yourself, well, it gives you something to talk about after the race.

[01:48:58.460] - Big Rich Klein

Exactly. You know, we were hanging 15 feet up in the air in this tree.

[01:49:07.560] - John Elkin

Yeah, there's still a tree out there in the Shelton forest in Washington that has marks from our vendor about eight foot up the tree. So, yeah, there's a lot of those.

[01:49:21.960] - Big Rich Klein

Well, you were able to walk away from them all, so that's good.

[01:49:25.820] - John Elkin

Totally was. Even though I did carry the moniker the Human turtle, for a while because I had so many rollovers and rally. That was bestowed upon me by Matt Sweeney, who we recently lost as well. A Hollywood special effects artist who was a rally and off-room guy. Nice. And that follows me to this day.

[01:49:52.160] - Big Rich Klein

Well, John, thank you so much for your time. I look forward to releasing this, and people are going to enjoy this interview, and I really appreciate your help with the interview, but also everything you've done with the Off-Road Motorsports Hall of Fame and the induction process that you've gone through with a number of people, and then also adding to the registry. It's so important to preserve that history.

[01:50:21.180] - John Elkin

I'd like to say I'm just getting warmed up.

[01:50:24.220] - Big Rich Klein

Perfect.

[01:50:25.600] - John Elkin

But hopefully, hopefully I can get a bunch of this out. However, right now I've got four articles I have to finish for utvoffroad.

[01:50:33.300] - Big Rich Klein

Com. There you go.

[01:50:34.860] - John Elkin

All right. Then I can get back to other stuff.

[01:50:37.260] - Big Rich Klein

All right. Well, enjoy the rest of your day writing. Thank you. And I hope we get to meet in person, maybe at the gala this year or the next time you come to the gala?

[01:50:50.020] - John Elkin

I'm hoping. I'm not sure, but hopefully, if I can get Carl in, that's really a driving need. Carl has to get in. There should be a category. If you've ever towed a trailer through a 500-mile off road race, you should automatically get in because you're a legend right there.

[01:51:11.200] - Big Rich Klein

Very true.

[01:51:12.180] - John Elkin

Sprite Trailers, the trailer that beat Parnelly Jones.

[01:51:15.760] - Big Rich Klein

There you go. Of course, he broke. Maybe I'll bring that up to the board of directors at our next meeting. That would be great.

[01:51:21.330] - John Elkin

I'd appreciate that.

[01:51:22.800] - Big Rich Klein

All right.

[01:51:23.120] - John Elkin

Get the board to get off their butts.

[01:51:26.820] - Big Rich Klein

All right. John, thank you so much. You have a great day. You bet. Have a good one. Okay. Bye. Bye-bye. Well, that's another episode of Conversations with Big Rich. I'd like to thank you all for listening. If you could do us a favor and leave us a review on any podcast service that you happen to be listening on, or send us an email or a text message or a Facebook message, and let me know any ideas that you have, or if there's anybody that you have that you think would be a great guest, please forward the contact information to me so that we can try to get them on. And always remember, live life to the fullest. Enjoying life is a must. Follow your dreams and live life with all the gusto you can. Thank you.