My first ambulance ride!

[Mitch G.]

Been kinda' quiet on here, so I thought it would be time for a new conversation. This is my post for the above topic, here is the photographic documentation of the event that led to my first ambulance ride.
http://autoracingmemories.com/forums/picture.php?albumid=309&pictureid=2680
In this typical crystal clear LeRoy Byers photo, taken at Colorado National Speedway in late August, 1984, we see me, on my way to St. Anthony's North. I don't recall which heat I was in, but I started front row outside of Texas midget champ Ron Hugh's Jr. I should have voluntarily started near the back of the heat, my car just didn't have the h.p. to keep up with Hughs. None the less, off we went I was holding my own in a 4th place transfer spot, (I did not want to run the semi, as there were 45 midgets in the pits and lots of high dollar teams were already in the semi). NASCAR driver and USAC champ J.J. Yely's dad, "Cactus Jack" Yeley in the blue #11 got tired of running behind me and decided to use me as a brake going into turn one. I remember thinking "I hit a deep rut" and lifting my feet up off the brake and throttle pedal's, that's that last thing I remember. Next thing I know it's getting dark and Doc Simpson is asking me if I know my name, and where I am, weird thing was, it was nearly impossible to speak. They strap me to a back board lift me out, and into the ambulance I go. It was cold in the meat wagon, and the EMT guy apologized to me because the siren was broken. A lot of guys have been hurt much worse, and had many worse wrecks than this, I'm not bragging or complaining, looking back on it, some things about it were funny. At the hospital my mom watched as the nurse was cleaning my shins (in a midget the steering gear runs across the cockpit, right at mid shin height) my legs crashed into the steering gear making quarter sized wounds that exopsed the bone, that part hurt. Also the shoulder harnesses cut my skin down to the collar bone, on both collar bones, but did not cut my driver's uniform? The concussion was painful, but the 360 degree neck spasm as worse, and I had to go to SCORE rehab across from the old Mile High Stadium for 2 weeks to remedy that. I will say a hard concussion takes a few weeks to really get over, I'm lucky I didn't hurt my head worse, my helmet hit the top of the tail tank and cracked the Bell XFM-1 helmet, and clear liquid ran out of my ears. So now I can blame all the dumb things I do, on my brain injury, even though it's been 26 years. My right hand flopped around and my wrist landed on the steering wheel, and actually to this day my wrist still gives me trouble. I was lucky, recovered and raced many more times, and learned exactly how to mount seat belts, pad steering gears, wear stiffer neck restraints, and re-mount tail tanks at a better position. So join in, and give us your story about your first ambulance ride, or similar medical experience.

[webby]

I remember that night rather well. That was a USAC race wasn't Mitch?

That was one HARD end over end tumble. I remember coming out onto the track to see if you were OK (clearly you weren't).

While you were still in the car there was a guy (not Doc Simpson) asking you "Mitch do you know where you are? Do you know where you are??"

You responded in a quiet voice.... "no."

And then the guy says... "He's OK, he knows where he is!!"

And I was like... wait.... he said he DIDN'T know where he is!!! He's NOT ok you moron!

You went off to take a nice nap at the hospital while me and the rest of the crew worked all night to take the car apart to see how bad the damage was. What a lazy *** you are! ;)

[webby]

I have some really POOR quality video of that flip...

(note the title on the video says "The WIZARDS trip to the hospital") waaaaay back in the early days of the web me and Mitch had a website called "the Open Wheel WIZARD" where Mitch would answer questions from anyone regarding open wheel racing history or open wheel racing in general. The site became kinda popular but it was very hard to maintain and eventually we gave up on it.

YouTube- Mitch Guttormson midget flip CNS 1984

[webby]

I like the way the commentator on the video calls you "Mitch Gus-stormp-ston". :rotfl:

[Mitch G.]

It wasn't USAC, but it was the Roger Mauro "Mile Hi Classic", all the big boys were there, Sleepy Tripp, Johnny Parsons Jr., Mark Passarelli, Steve Lotshaw, Mike Gregg, Rick Salem, Robby Flock, Dave Strickland Jr., all the guys who had been at Belleville, the weekend before. The front nerf bar was buried into the clay when the car came down nose first during one of the endo's, and was never recovered, note in the photo the right rear wheel is packed with mud! Also in the midget main that night, Ron Hughs Jr was in a real battle with Johnny Parsons jr., for 1st, when they collided, Hughs took a hard flip and was paralized from the chest down. He recovered enough to drive a midget again years later, although confined to a wheel chair, and was killed in 1990 in a midget race at Devil's Bowl Speedway in Dallas, TX.

[TPF]

Mitch, I was in the pits that night. Man there were some very worried people in the pits that night. and all the guy over the P.A COULD SAY WAS." He got his bell rung!!!!! " TIM

[Jerry Lee]

So join in, and give us your story about your first ambulance ride, or similar medical experience.

Dang Mitch, that was quite a spill! I never got hurt or rode in an ambulance, but seen plenty of action as a spectator. :mock:Of course I only raced for one season and the worse thing that ever happened was getting a bit of food poisioning one race day.:chuckle:

There is one story I remember though that involved Ron Hults, Sr. in the early '90's. He got whacked at the X real hard out at CNS during the Figure 8 main. When they asked him if he knew where he was, he looked around and said "Yeah, Cheyenne Frontier Days." They then asked him what his name was. He replied "Thursday.".

[webby]

Dang Mitch, that was quite a spill!The very last hit on the tail side is just plain brutal. You can see Mitch's head rock back and hit the tail tank, he's lucky he didn't break his neck. Thankfully for Mitch all the impact came on the thickest part of his skeleton.... his skull. :D

[Olen McGuire]

The only thing similar to my first ambulance ride and Mitch's is that the siren didn't work.

I was 12 years old and living in Opa Locka, Florida, which is a suburb of Miami. There was a man living a few houses down that was trying to start a newspaper for that area. He gave me my first job by letting me help him with distributing his paper by riding on the front fender with a sack of his papers on the front bumper and throwing them in front of the houses as he drove by.

One day I was helping him at the printers, filling the back seat with papers. On the way back a car came around the corner and hit us head on. Now, his car was a pre-war auto with no seat belts and no safety glass on the windshield. My head went through the windshield, and was pulled back through.One ear was cut in half and there was a large gash from my jaw bone and underneath my chin.The ambulance came, and on the way to the emergency room one of the medics said "This kid is bad shape and the siren doesn't work so be careful." I was awake when I heard that and I asked the medic if I was going to die. "No kid you're going to be OK and we're almost there."

The doctor said to my folks that I was the best kid that he's had in the emergency room. Being 12 years old and thinking that I might die, I was thinking that I'll be real still so the Doctor might save my life.

So when I got home with bandages around my head and I couldn't open my mouth, I was glad that we lived close to the Drug Store where in those days they had a counter where you could get Chocolate Malted milk shakes.

So it looks like that without a siren working, Mitch and I both made it OK.

[Mitch G.]

Olen, when I hear those stories like yours and some my dad tells, it's a miracle that anybody born in the 30's is alive today.....of course that makes those of us born in the 60's or later kinda wimpy.

[sideways]

One night I was racing a sprint car at Kokomo and while on the first lap starting 7th, the jacobs ladder breaks and I do a slow sideways drift to a stop on the back stretch. The car is pointing toward the in field. Almost every car misses me all except for the very last car screaming up against the cushion and then clobbers me nose first in the cockpit. He hits me so hard that it spins my car all the way back around, so now the nose of my car is pointing toward the outside wall and grandstand.

I knew as soon as he hit me that I had broken my left leg just above my ankle. And as soon as I heard the crack I thought, damn she's going to kill me. She is my wife! As you can imagine one of the support frame braces broke and crashes into my leg and into the torque tube breaking my leg.

The safety people get there and I tell them I broke my left leg. One of them says, "Are ya sure?" I said, "Uh yep." So I then try explain that my leg is pinned between the frame and the torque tube, they said "The what?" I said "the drive shaft." they said, "why is the drive shaft between your legs?" I said, "That's where it's suppose to be." Anyway they pull the frame mount away and then start to lift me out of the top of the car when I yell, "Stop!" and they said, "What?" I said, "Well, someone has to grab the bottom end of my left leg so it won't just dangle." They all said in unison, "Ohhhh."

So finally they get me out and then open the sliding door to the ambulance or if you could call it that. There was nothing in there but a gurney. So I sit on the sliding door opening floor as they get the gurney out. I then, with some help, get on the gurney. They put me in this so called ambulance and take me out the pit gate. Here we meet a real ambulance.

So now they take me off of one gurney and onto another one. The ambulance driver says, "Which hospital do you want to go to?" I said, "I don't know, which ever one is better." Oh they didn't want to answer that so I said how about take me to the closest one?

I get there and they are a bit lost on what to do so I ask to be transferred to Indy. I then had to give them a surgeons name and all I could think of was Terry Trammel at Methodist. So sure enough he says to bring me on down.

Dr. Trammel was awesome. He said "I can do this two ways, dangle your leg off the bed and put it in a cast or do surgery and put a rod down the center of the bone and secure it with screws. If we do surgery I will have you up and walking on it in two weeks and have you in a pool in one." I said that I would go with version 2 and he says "I'm not worth a damn at 4am so I'll see you at 10am for surgery."

In the end, it all worked out, but I did miss the majority of the 1994 season. I came back in 1995 and won the sprint car championship at Paragon Speedway.

I've got one more, but I'll tell that later.

[sideways]

By way Mitch, that was a hell of a ride!

[Mitch G.]

OUCH! That story makes me queesy, at least I was knocked out, None of my injuries caused me any pain for a day or two, till' my brain started firing up again, then holy crap everything hurt like hell, so I kinda' skated on that part. Get a load of this, the attending Dr. at the emergency room was an asian guy, as he's looking me over and filling out paper work he asks my dad what happened, my dad says "he had an auto racing accident", the Dr. says "Oh..., who was driving?" At least I didn't need any surgery, got lucky. George, I got T-boned like that at Buffalo Park Speedway in Carrollton, TX, same deal, running 3rd in a semi maybe 18 car field, I spin, sit sideways between 3 and 4, everyone misses me....except the guy running dead last, BAM! No broken bones, did break the midget's frame, but not nearly as hard a hit as yours, however it stretched the day lights our of my already stretched neck, and made me really dizzy and goofy for a couple of hours (this was in 1986 I think). Fun though, eh?

[webby]

The safety people get there and I tell them I broke my left leg. One of them says, "Are ya sure?" I said, "Uh yep." So I then try explain that my leg is pinned between the frame and the torque tube, they said "The what?" I said "the drive shaft." they said, "why is the drive shaft between your legs?" I said, "That's where it's suppose to be." Anyway they pull the frame mount away and then start to lift me out of the top of the car when I yell, "Stop!" and they said, "What?" I said, "Well, someone has to grab the bottom end of my left leg so it won't just dangle." They all said in unison, "Ohhhh.":rotfl:

Your story is brutal... yet hilariously written. :up:

[sideways]

Ok, here's another one... (well heck if you race long enough you are going to crash and eventually get hurt, but this time not so bad. ) When I first got started racing I was at Blake Hollingsworth's shop and they are giving me a hard time cause I had not been on my head yet, when here comes walking in but Warren Mockler. He's a real funny guy... anyway we are talking about crashing and he says, "George, have you taken a ride in the meat wagon yet?" At this point, I hadn't so i said, "no not yet." Well he says, "Oh a virgin, well here's what ya do after gettin' on your head, if the ambulance guys come up and say how many fingers and ya can't see them say "two," because they always hold up two. The next thing they want to know is where are you, well that's on you to figure out, but say the track name not the town, the track name is easier. Now if they say "anything hurt?", lie unless you really do want to go to the crash house."

Ok, so one night I'm racing with USAC up at Hiinsdale Illinois on the half mile and we are struggling with the car. The fuel needs a different pill, etc. (Mitch you know those VWs) So I'm starting in the back of the semi with Rich Vogler who is having similar issues. So I start to make my way up through there following Rich when we get to the back of a guy by the name of Larry Hoppes. Well, he's everywhere but straight... he's up high then down low, then does some tail tank slappers, then up high and down low, etc., but of course Vogler just blasts by him. Well, I get to him going into turn one and he goes up high, so I go down low. Sure enough, he hooks a rut and comes after me with his left front. He catches my right rear and off I go end over end.

My very first thought, (no lie,) is Thank god I can finally get this off my list so Blake will stop teasing me. Then during the second or third endo everything gets real quiet and dark and I think, hell that wasn't so bad... when BAM! I hit on the tail and then start to go side over side before it finally stops doing it's dance and I'm up side down. So I'm hanging upside down and I was hanging on the steering wheel so tight that when everything finally comes to a stop I let my arms drop. Well I guess my Dad thought I died or passed out, but I was tired of holding on to the wheel.

Anyway, the first safety guy gets to me and says, "There's fuel, there's fuel!" and I say, "Roll me over and it will stop leaking fuel" He says "What ya mean?' I said, "It's coming out the breather on top of the tank, just roll me over and it will stop." and he says "Just un-buckle" and I said, "Nope I don't want to hit my head again, those endos were hard on the back of my head, so just roll me over." About that time Larry Hoppes walks up and says."George are ya OK?" I said, "Well not really Larry, how bad is my race car?" He says "Uh well ummmm, not too good George, man I'm sorry." I said, "By the way Larry? Roll this car over and they will stop worrying about the damn fuel."

Well they finally do and I climb out and immediately remember what Warren Mockler said. Sure enough the safety guy says, "How many fingers?" and I could barely see so I said, "Two." and he says "Good, now where are you?" I said, "Santa Fe Speedway." He says good now come over here and sit down." He then begins to squeeze my legs when he gets down to my ankles which were really sore from beat'en and bang'n on the torque tube... that damn torque tube.. I winced but tried to keep a straight face as he checked me over. Sure enough he said I could go home. Whew! In the end I was just fine and raced another day.

[Mitch G.]

George, me and my wife and two kids are reading all your posts, they are damn funny, even though the subject matter is somewhat scary. Keep em coming!! Oh by the way give me an idea of which tracks you got to race on, must be a sizable list there in Indiana. Did you race at Terre Haute, Lawrenceburg, Bloomington, I read about all these places, would love to hear stories about them, when you get a chance. Here's a kind of bleak racing story. We had a 2 day show at Norton, KS a long 1/2 mile dirt, old, dark no guardrail on the back chute, this is 1984. The feature was rough, dusty, kind of scary but I finished in the top 10, lead lap, pretty damn happy to survive, we take the checker, go down the back chute at idle, lift up my visor for some fresh air, BANG!! from behind I get whacked, surprised the C#%P out of me. In a flash a guy comes snap rolling over the top of me, lands within inches of the front of my car, and launches into a bone jarring series of side over side snap rolls, into the darkness. As I pull into the infield, flat right rear tire, the director of competition runs up to me, slaps me on the helmet saying "Hell of a race, nice job" I scream at him, "Get an ambulance out to the back chute some guy just took a horrible flip" no one had seen it happen, everyone starts running out there to help the guy. Turns out the guy ran out of tear offs, and never saw the checkered flag, and didn't see me either, hit me going full tilt, and it cost him an eye!(we heard the next morning from someone who went to the hospital with the guy) Felt bad for the guy as he showed up by himself, and just recruited volunteers in the pits to help him out, I remember seeing his busted up car on the trailer, just sitting in the motel parking lot as we pulled out of town heading for home. Not a funny story, but one of those weird racing memories.

[thpracing]

if you're squemish---do not read this-----I've been hurt 3 times at the races---had a car fall on my chest, had a trailer run over my foot, and have had my rite elbow opened to the bone---in all 3 cases---drove myself to the docs--my first amulance ride did not occur until 4-13-06---34 years after I started racing---I was coming home from the bank on my 02 Harley when a truck and myself tried to occupy the same space in time---didn't work---I ran out of road trying to miss him---and hit the left rear of the truck at 45mph+---launching me into low earth orbit (20 feet---personal best) and about 50 feet downrange---my rite leg took the brunt of the hit---here's the list of injuries---rite leg shattered into 100+ pcs---5 compound fractues, including losing 6 inches of femur (landed in the bed of the truck)---full floating 3a injury to rite knee(not attached to either femur or tibia)3 knuckles on rite hand(bird finger knuckle moved 1 inch back) broken left shoulder (when I landed) 2 ribs (same side as shoulder) 4 teeth, cracked jaw and 14 stitches to head (I don't know how these happened) my friend who was on his bike---stopped and pulled out his cell just as the fire dept ran up--happened in front of the fire station--lucky for me--they worked on me in the street for 12 minutes until my ambulance ride showed up--I lost oil pressure once in the street, once on the ride to the hospital, and once in surgery---I'm still here---I was in and out for 4 days---the wanted to cut the leg off twice, but my wife wouldn't let them until I was awake---Kaiser found me a Major in the army who had just returned from Iraq (started Bagdad Hospital)---who convinced us that he had an experimental surgery in mind to fix injuries such as mine---he saw alot of them over there ---after 1 year of surgeries---5 on leg---one on hand (total of 40+ hours under the knife)---and alot of rehab---I was able to keep it (frankenleg)---it's 1 inch shorter and full of titanium--but I can walk (kinda)--with a cane---but sure beats being 6 ft under----my surgeon is on my xmas list for life!---so for those of you who have seen me at CNS or at CARC meetings--and wondered WTF!!---thats the story---ps---NO pins, NO screws---my leg from just above the ankle to just below the hip---has no bone , but 2 pcs of titanium ---1 making up the tibia and bottom half of knee jt, and 1 pc for my femur and top of my knee---I'm grateful to the amb. guys, the fire guys, and my surgeon--for keeping me here!!!! The ambulance ride cost over 7000 dollars to go 2 miles----the swabs they used cost 5 dollars each!!! too bad about the bike--total loss---I ripped off the forward controls, carb and pipes---plus blew the motor up, as the bike continued to go across 3 lanes of traffic, hit 2 cars, and came back and landed by me---and hydraliced the motor---OUCH--pppsssHey, Sideways---I'm from Hinsdale Ill---off of 31st street--kt

[Jerry Lee]

Man, I forgot what a great old thread this was, so I bumped it back to the top.

With Holloween just around the corner, I thought these "scary" racing stories were worth another read. :jawdrop: