Newspaper clip NYS Drill @ Utica

[fdbuster]

Newspaper Clipping from the NYS Drill @ Utica 1965




daytonadave

[Circusmonkey]

50 Teams !
10 Hour drill !!
10,000 Spectators !!!!!!!!!

[F-Man]

Wow, who would have thought that rain would interfere with a state drill in Utica.......

[fdbuster]

Noted from the contributor, Steve Inglis.

My brief memories of the event; 1965 NYS Drill.

My uncle Bill Inglis who was the Chief Judge for Motorized Drills for many years in the central New York area (Oneida County) so he headed up the local committee in setting up the event from a local level. The event was held in Utica on Whitesboro St. next to the Utica Memorial Auditorium, the event was to be filmed for first time for Wide World of Sports and was hosted by Jim McKay.

Mr. McKay was there and was given a ride down the course at speed in one of the class C rigs (can not remember which team) so that he could do the intro that appeared on Wide World of Sports.

The first issue that came up was some of the teams had trouble finding a place to off load their rigs from the tractor-trailers they shipped them to Utica on.

The next issue was the biggest of the day is that it started to rain……the event Chief Judge called a meeting of all the team Captains that was held inside of the Utica Memorial Auditorium, there was a lot of heated talk on whether to cancel the event or not. The local teams from Central and Northern would run, they had run in the rain and snow showers before (the West Cartage event was traditionally on Memorial day weekend and we could have from sunny skies to snowy skies). My uncle got so frustrated that he told all the team captains they had 30 minutes to get lined up and ready to run the event or they could put their rigs back on their trailers and head for the Thruway entrance a mile down the street……as we were walking out the team captain from Sayville Blue Jays (I believe) put his hand on my uncle’s shoulder and thanked him for making that statement and his team would stay and run regardless of the weather. Once back outside the rain had started to stop, the skies cleared and the event started and ran to completion.

The only other small issue that came up was the water time; the hydrant used to feed the dummy hydrant was fed directly off a very large water main (believe it was 20" main) so on the first water test the time was less than 4 seconds. The Utica Water Board had a service engineer at the event and he adjusted the main pressure to get the time to what was required……strangely enough the service engineer became my father in law 16 years later, it’s a very small world.

Before the event the teams we felt were the ones to watch for the overall championship were Oyster Bay Rough Riders and St. James Wildcats based on what we had heard leading up to the event. The Rough Riders had a terrible day and Wilbur Young was not real happy, St. James had a good day but Islip Wolves had a better day and won.

It was a very long day and I worked at may different things…sweeping water, packing the macadam back down, dragging hose……….etc..

Taken from fdarchive.com