Fifty-four years ago, Joan Gilbert and our son Jack stood next to our Boss 302 Mustang, parked at Bridgehampton race track on Long Island, where Parnelli Jones pulled off one of his miracles. Photos by John Gilbert.

My wife, Joan, has a big birthday this week, and I promised her I wouldn’t mention it. So I won’t. But it is acceptable to look back into our past for a time of great significance in our relationship — back 54 years to a time when we were starting our family and expanding our love of road-racing.

We were enthralled with the Sports Car Club of America’s Trans-Am sedan series, where factory-back ponycars – including Ford Mustangs, Chevrolet Camaros, Dodge Challengers, Plymouth Barracudas, Pontiac Firebirds and, later, American Motors Javelins – all competed and attracted some of the best race drivers in the country.

I was working at the Minneapolis Tribune and attempting to capture the emotion and excitement of road-racing, and apparently I did a good enough job to interest some of the Tribune’s top executives in the newsroom as well as in the marketing and advertising departments. They had made a corporate decision that the new Donnybrooke Speedway near Brainerd would be host to the 1970 “Tribune Can-Am,” with the powerful open cockpit two-seaters capable of 200 miles per hour even then. 

The Tribune sponsored the Can-Am two years in a row, and in the process, they scheduled me to travel to places like Mosport Park in Toronto for the first Can-Am of the season, and to St. Jovite, near Montreal, two weeks later for the second one,

We were about to purchase a new family car, and we were so captivated by those Trans-Am cars, I found a way to test drive all of them, and came away choosing the Mustang Boss 302 — the closest thing to a race car ever built by Ford, and driven by the matching Mustangs of Parnelli Jones and George Follmer. 

All of them were impressive, from Mark Donohue’s Camaro to Swede Savage’s Barracuda, the Challengers of Dan Gurney and Sam Posey. 

But when you hit the gas on the Boss 302, the high-revving engine whistled as you exceeded any speed limit in the country.

We also purchased a low, flat tent-trailer that would be light enough to tow with the Boss 302, and could allow us to turn our trip into an expedition right out of fantasyland. 

We helped unload the car from the factory off the railroad car, and Shakopee Ford serviced it and fitted the trailer hitch. We hooked up the tent-trailer and we were off — Joan, and our older of two sons, Jack, who was 5 at the time, and me. I plugged two weeks of vacation around three weekends, so we could haul to Toronto, then take off and drive to Long Island for the Trans-Am race, then back up to the Laurentian Mountains for the second Can-Am, and then home.

At Bridgehampton, Ford introduced its new electronic timing gear, in protest for SCCA’s archaic equipment often challenged by the race teams. But the SCCA turned Ford down, and stuck with the hand timers. 

The result was that Mark Donohue won pole position in his Camaro, and Parnelli Jones was third, right behind him. 

As the cars roared past the starting line, the course made a sharp right curve down a hill and then onward. So they went out of our view in the curve, and when they came out of it, Parnelli Jones was in the lead. He went on to win the race, and in the post-race interview, I asked him what he had done to get ahead of Donohue in such a tight turn.

“Well, they cheated us out of the pole,” Parnelli said, with a shrug, “so I decided I’d take my rightful spot back.”

That was it. He decided to make a world-class pass of a world-class opponent, and he pulled it off. I watched Parnelli closely before and after that weekend, in Indianapolis 500 races, and on televised stock car races, and I saw him win the Mint 400 off-road race in the Las Vegas desert. 

I also was impressed at him as a team owner, later on. He was, according to everyone who ever raced against him, the greatest American race car driver ever.

All of that ties together this week, because Rufus Parnelli Jones died last week at age 90 at his California home, and I realized that a couple of generations of motorsports fans might have missed the news, and just as many might not realize how great he truly was. It would be ideal if we could pull off an actual flashback 54 years ago and we could all be in a Ford Mustang Boss 302 and sleeping in a tent trailer that never leaked unless it rained. Rest in peace, Parnelli.

Grandma’s weekend

This is the week that runners of all shapes, sizes and skill levels make Duluth and Canal Park their focal point, as Grandma’s Marathon puts on its annual show, running Saturday morning from Two Harbors, down Hwy. 61 and finishing at Canal Park, about a block from Grandma’s Restaurant. As usual, former champions will lead a herd of prominent professionally-trained runners from Kenya and other East African nations will lead the way.

There is also the Garry Bjorklund Half-Marathon, which will feature not only former winners but the addition of Minnesotan Dakotah Lindwurm, a 2-time winner of the women’s segment of the marathon. She is running the half-marathon this year as a part of her training build-up to represent the U.S. at the Paris Olympics.

The whole weekend kicks off with the Essentia Health Fitness Expo inside the DECC’s Pioneer Hall, which is free to all and will run from 4-8 pm Thursday, and 10 am-8 pm Friday. And the annual Michelin’s Spaghetti feed Friday, from 11 am-9 pm, featuring all-you-can-eat spaghetti for $18, with kids $9. 

Also, the expansion of popular entertainment continues, with the Rock the Bayfront Festival at Bayfront Festival Park, with live bands and all sorts of food concessions from 6:30-8:30 pm Friday, and from 9 am-11:30 pm Saturday.

Shortstop Jake Downing held his poise as he fired a double-play relay against the Wausau Woodchucks.

The Duluth Huskies are hitting the road this week and will clear the stage for Grandma’s after a hectic week of playing at Wade Stadium. The Huskies played the LaCrosse Loggers and Wausau Woodchucks this past week at Wade, and late-arriving fans might have been a bit confused when the Huskies left town for a Saturday game in Eau Claire. The game was postponed by rain in the last of the first inning, so when the Huskies and Eau Claire Express came back to Wade Stadium, they finished the suspended game as the first game of a doubleheader.

If you came in late and glanced at the scoreboard, you saw the visitors scored 3 in the first and 2 in the second for a 5-0 lead. But when the Huskies scored again, the run went up for the visitors, then you realized the Huskies had to be the “visitor” in the ultimate 7-4 victory, and then could return to the home slot for the nightcap.

The Huskies continue to put on a good show, and return home next Tuesday to face Eau Claire and then Waterloo. Just don’t mention Joan’s birthday.

Wade Stadium scoreboard fooled some fans by having the Huskies listed as the visiting team in the first game of a doubleheader.