Dr. Rajo Special and the most dangerous sport in the 1920s
C.A. Linebarger Sr., one of the three Linebarger Brothers who opened the Bella Vista Summer Resort over 100 years ago, in June 1917, died on Aug. 4, 1978.
In honor of the upcoming 40th anniversary of his death, we are reprinting an interview of Linebarger that was published in the Dec. 6, 1977, issue of The Weekly Vista, about one of his favorite pastimes, racing cars.
FOR THE RECORD BY MARY NOE
C.A. Linebarger, first land developer in Bella Vista with his brothers, ordered his first car, a Brush, when he lived in Orange, Texas, in 1910. He had to take delivery in Beaumont where six cars were on order…. Linebarger got the third. It differed in that it was cranked on the side, while the others were cranked in front.
Linebarger paid less than $500 for the Brush. It came with the others knocked down in railroad cars. Mechanics assembled them, and instructed the new owners how to drive, which none knew how to do, and how to operate the machine.
“I lost that car in the Sabine River one time when I was showing a guest from town some lots out at Gratis (Texas). I drove him out on a little fill that separated Orange from Louisiana on the highway out in the marsh, five miles long. When I started to turn around, the gear stuck — it only had one gear — and it started into the marsh. We both jumped and got out, but the car kept on going. The newspaper reported, ‘Real Estate Man Loses Automobile in River.’ There were no wreckers at the time, so we got a winch and pulled it out of the river.”
In 1912, Linebarger acquired his first racing car — a Reo Sunbeam — which he rebuilt. It was fast for its day, had bucket seats and a 30-gallon gas tank. He lived in Tomball, Texas, at the time and raced it in Galveston.
The Galveston 500-mile Denver Beach Race was comparable to the present ‘Indy’ races in Indianapolis. His mechanic, Frankie Johns, rode with him to pump the castor oil that was used “and smelled.” There were no pits stops then. Denver Beach went from one end of the island to the other. It was not populated and was used annually for races. When the tide was out, there were about six hours before it came back in. The beach would be at least 200 feet wide when the tide was out. Large barrels were placed at either end of the track which was five miles in a lap, looping the barrels. It was a three-day race.
“I got hurt in that race — had 16 stitches taken in my head. That left only 16 drivers in the race,” Linebarger said.
The tires would burn up if they were not given a chance to cool. Linebarger hit the water line to cool his tires, as was the custom, and got in too far. A tire blew out and he skidded. Part of the tire flew into his head. He was taken to a doctor’s office to get sewed up. Asked how fast he was going, he said, “Barney Oldfield had just won a race at 40-miles an hour, so that was the going speed.”
When Linebarger was in Bella Vista, the Dr. Rajo Special was built in 1920 from parts of three cars. Tony Beck, a blacksmith in Bentonville, helped him build it. It was very fast and sported wire wheels. The special motor was built by Linebarger and the chassis was a Ford.
At the Carthage, Missouri, Fair that August, in the three-day races, Linebarger won second money on a dirt track. Dirt tracks for car racing were termed “the most dangerous sport,” even ahead of bull-fighting at the time, he said. Mrs. Linebarger insisted on riding with Linebarger for his race and did so crouching beneath the cowl.
The first money winner was driving a Maxwell. “He was a dirty driver. He would put a pint of gravel into his three-inch exhaust pipe in which was a cutout. At the strategic moment he would release the gravel into the face of the driver behind him,” Linebarger said, but he remained good friends with this driver.
In Sedalia, Missouri, in 1921, Rajo came in for second money at the fairgrounds. The next race was at Dewey, Oklahoma, but Linebarger was unable to go because of a burned-out bearing. Two drivers were killed in that race. He knew and was friends with them both.
The climax of his racing experience was when he drove the “Indy.” He was in Indianapolis to buy parts for his automobile. “While I was there, I borrowed one of the company cars and drove out to the ‘Indy’, and I wanted to drive it. The gate was open and I drove that car around the track just so I could say I had driven it. When I came out, I got cussed. Somebody didn’t like it a bit,” he concluded.