Morrison’s Arnie Beswick recalls earliest driving days in town

MORRISON — It’s impossible to mention famous people from Morrison without mentioning Arnie Beswick.

Sure, the city has been home to other people who’ve made their mark in the world — in acting, entertainment, science, women’s rights — but there’s only one who’s made his mark like Beswick: on asphalt.

His roots run deep in this area. He was born and raised here and he found his passion for racing here, on the highways and country roads of the county that’s been his home for nearly a century, and even after nearly 70 years since finding national fame in the sport of drag racing, the racer known as “The Farmer” continues to be revered by generations of locals, whether they’re racing fans or simply proud to know a hometown boy who made a name for himself.

Beswick, 94, grew up on a farm a few miles west of Morrison, where he still lives. It’s there that he first developed a penchant for horsepower, a talent that would take him from PTOs to Pontiacs, fixing Case tractors as a kid to becoming an iconic part of Pontiac’s history. To this day, he remains a popular presence in the sport, with drag racing fans lining up to meet him at many national events. His accomplishments in cars such as the Tameless Tiger, Mystery Tornado, Super Judge, the Grocery Getter and several others, led to a wealth of trophies and recognition in many halls of fame.

Beswick was born May 7, 1930, to Raymond and Marie Beswick, the older brother to Jim, and he still lives on the farm he was raised on. Though he’s more hands-off these days, hiring out the farm work, “The Farmer” says the operation still produces excellent corn yields.

It was on that farm that a young Arnie would learn the value of hard work. A childhood injury limited the kind of work that Raymond could do on the farm, so Arnie and his mother had to help support the family early on, doing chores beyond his years, including hopping on the orange Case tractor that Raymond shared with his brother Taylor, who farmed nearby, and doing field and farm work.

“When the tractor was over at our house, I would use it to haul manure, and in those days we used to plow our ground with a furrow plow, and I did do that at a pretty young age using that old four-wheel tractor when I was about 10, 11, 12 years old,” Beswick said. “Dad didn’t let me run it unless I was in wide open spaces. He wouldn’t let me run it close to any buildings or anything like that, he figured I might not get a turn quick enough.”

Sometimes the tractor needed work, and in the days before the horsepower was high-tech, farmers like the Beswicks could tackle their own tune-ups. Arnie and his dad would do the repairs, with Arnie doing the hands-on part while his father, whose mobility was limited, would tell him what to do.

“If there was any way he could describe what had to be done to me, he would be right there with me,” Beswick said. “He wasn’t holding my hand, but was close to it, telling me, ‘This bolt has to come out, and then this bolt has to come out.’ He was pretty good, mind-wise, mechanically.

The mechanical skills he picked up on the farm would serve him well later in life.

“I think that’s what kind of got me into the car thing.”

Though race fans would one day call him “Mr. Pontiac,” Beswick first drove around his corner of the USA in a Chevrolet. His first car was a black 1936 Chevrolet that he got from a neighbor friend; it came with a “Knee Action” front end, an early independent front suspension system designed to give drivers a smoother ride — but the car itself had had a rough ride before Arnie got it

“It had been beat up. He just drove the [hell] out of that car,” Arnie said, and he ended up keeping it for only a couple years.

Their son having a car was important to the Beswicks, who needed him to come home right away from high school to work on the farm. “The minute school was out, they wanted me,” he said. Because of that, he didn’t participate in extracurricular activities in high school, and only attended one Mustangs basketball game during that time.

During his early years behind the wheel, Arnie started to develop his need for speed. Though he never raced side-by-side with his friends on roads during school days, he often took to the stretch of U.S. Route 30 from Morrison to the bluff near Fulton to see just how far he could move the needle.

His dark green 1937 Plymouth, which had belonged to his parents, was a popular ride with his fellow students at Morrison High School in the late 1940s, zipping around curves and barreling over bumps — no seatbelts back then, just passengers bouncing up and down and sliding from side to side.

Wall Street in Morrison was a favorite spot for Arnie and his friends; it went from the former General Electric plant to Jackson Street and drivers would go over small humps on its cross streets — it was a lesson in gravity that many of his friends would learn first hand.

“As the north-south streets crossed Wall Street, there was quite a big raise in the street,” Beswick said. “If you could get up to a pretty good speed, which I was usually able to do, and if I had anybody in the front, or especially the back seat, they’d fly up high enough to hit the ceiling of the car.”

The hoots and hollers after the bonks of heads were something Beswick got a kick out of, he said.

“That kind of tripped my trigger,” he said. “The guys in the front seat didn’t bounce much because there was much to hold on, and usually whoever rode in the front seat had rode with me before and so they were a little more aware. So in my high school days, for grins or whatever you want to call it, I’d go up and down Wall Street just to make the guys in the back seat have something to talk about.”

Another local spot that Arnie wouldn’t forget — and that he would learn from, the hard way — was a curve along a hill on Prairie Center Road, southwest of Morrison. Arnie was riding with a friend who didn’t take the curve and rolled the car.

“I had a friend who was kind of lead foot, and I can remember riding with him and I guess he wanted to show us how fast he could make the curve, but he didn’t make it and the car slid and went into the ditch and rolled over a couple of times,” Beswick said. “We never got any broken bones or anything, but I’ll never forget rolling over in that car of his. He was over his head, and he hadn’t driven that much yet.”

Beswick, who graduated from high school in 1948, also recalls the long flat stretch of state Route 88 (now 40) south of Rock Falls being a place during the mid-1950s where local car enthusiasts would race. It was a short burst of speed — about an eighth-mile — near the current Cady Landing Strip near Bell Road.

Not everyone was a fan of the races. By that time, the term “hot-rodder” had entered the public conversation, and it wasn’t a term of endearment. The older generation looked at teens and their hot rods as trouble-makers, an image not helped by Hollywood and TV at the time, with their tales of teen terrorrs tearing up the streets.

“It was definitely looked at as taboo,” Beswick said, but for many “hot-rodders,” it wasn’t about causing trouble, it was simply trying to find a place where they could put their rides to the test.

Dirt and gravel roads wouldn’t cut it if you wanted to pick up some speed.

“It was getting a chance to compare your car against your friends’ cars,” Beswick said. “Who’s got the best car, and who’s going to beat who. You had to have some sort of blacktop surface or concrete.”

While racers could count on a few friends behind the badge in Whiteside County, who would look the other way if they knew about a race, that wasn’t always the case when they crossed the county line. Beswick recalled one time when he and some fellow members of the Mississippi Modifieds auto club were racing north on state Route 78 into Carroll County and stopped at Argo Fay Road east of Argo Fay to do their thing.

“There was a very limited amount of travel out on that highway back then,” Beswick said. “As a group, we were known to go up there. After three or four times of doing that, word got out by the farmers in the area that there would be some racing going on out there.”

That’s when Mount Carroll police decided to put the brakes on the race, but Arnie wasn’t there to see things screech to a halt; he had been running an errand at the time, which saved him a good chunk of money.

“Someone needed something for their car, and I had it at home,” Beswick said. “I went home when they were doing some racing up there, and while I was home, the cops came out there and managed to pick up several of them. A lot of them got away, because there were probably 20 to 30 of them out there, but some of them didn’t. Some of them got pretty good fines out of that deal.”

Beswick’s skills on the local roads eventually led him to deciding to go pro, and he launched his professional racing career in a Rocket, driving the first car he had bought with his own money: a 1950 dark blue Oldsmobile Rocket 88 purchased from McEleney Motors in Clinton.

By that time, the sport of drag racing had made its way from the West Coast to the Midwest, its popularity arriving in Illinois in 1951 with early races taking place at the Half Day Naval Outlying Landing Field in present-day Vernon Hills, a suburb of Chicago. Beswick competed in the event and came away a winner in his class with his Rocket 88. From there, he just kept on going, and a racing career was born. After successes at the first World Series of Drag Racing in 1954 in Lawrenceville, and in 1955 at the first NHRA Nationals at Great Bend, Kansas, Beswick solidified himself as a top name in a growing sport. He began to race Pontiacs exclusively starting in 1958, and collected win after win at the most prestigious drag racing events in the nation for the next 14 years.

Beswick’s racing days were detoured for nearly a decade after a fire on his farm in 1972 destroyed many of his cars and much of his equipment. That may have slowed him down, but it didn’t stop him and he would return to racing competitively, showing off his talents for a new generation of drag racing enthusiasts. His comeback led to several honors and hall of fame inductions.

Beswick’s racing days out on the strips have come to a close, but he continues to make appearances nationwide at major race events and car shows. Many fans flock to him wherever he’s at, whether it’s far from home or close to it, for an autograph, a T-shirt, or to ask questions and hear stories from seven decade of racing. Next year will mark the 75th anniversary since Illinois’ first official drag race at Half Day.

As the calendar rolls around to spring, Beswick’s putting together his schedule of appearances for yet another race season, one that will see him turn 95 years young come May. One event he’s sure to include is the 71st World Series of Drag Racing on Aug. 21-24 in Cordova at Cordova Dragway, a strip he competed at when it first opened on Labor Day weekend of 1956.

One recent honor bestowed upon Beswick was a mayoral proclamation on Nov. 9 as “Arnie Beswick Day” by Morrison Mayor Scott Vandermyde during a well-attended public celebration in his honor at Ebenezer Reformed Church. Friends and colleagues paid tribute to Beswick, and he shared a few memories of his own from his career. Beswick brought his Tameless Tiger II car, as well as one of his vintage International Harvester Farmall H tractors.

“I was highly impressed with the number of people who showed up,” Beswick said. “The questions I was asked when it was over, the amount of people that were waiting in line for an autograph, the amount of people who showed and the conversations, and how they thanked me for being there and doing it, I can’t thank the ladies enough who came up with the idea and put it all together.”

Beswick meets fans of all ages during his appearances, some of whom weren’t around to have ever seen him race, but turn to the seasoned veteran of the strips for tips and tricks of the trade. He tells them the best place to start is under the hood, advice that mirrors the same road he took. Just start tinkering around with an older car. Get to know what makes them go — and what makes them go faster.

“It would be an education for someone to get their start, and then if they think they have the desire to learn the later motors and technology, you can make a more intelligent decision if you wanted to or not after you work with the old antique stuff,” Beswick said. “I would highly encourage them to work on the older antique stuff to start with, just to get a feel a little bit for what the challenges are.”

Who knows, maybe the next person to make a name on the drag strip could get their start on a tractor or under the hood, just like Beswick did nearly 85 years ago.

Who knows, maybe the next person to make a name for themselves on the drag strip will start their motor running just like Beswick did nearly 85 years ago, on a farm somewhere outside Morrison, tinkering with a tractor and warming up to hot rods on country roads that will pave the way for bigger and better — and faster — things to come.