Local racing legend to be honored at history center
Blackie Watt drives a school bus the same way he used to race his late model or modified -- hard and flat-out.
No need to become frantic, parents. We're talking a retired school bus that Watt has been driving in novelty races the past few years. The New Alexandria racer wheels the bus around area dirt tracks to keep his hand -- and foot -- in racing.
"I just love to race," Watt said with a smile.
It's something of an odd epilogue to a racing career begun in 1950, one that saw Watt log between 600 and 1,000 feature wins -- he never bothered to keep a close count -- and race a year in NASCAR's top division, Grand National, the forerunner of the current Nextel Cup haunt of Matt Kenseth, Dale Earnhardt, Jr., and friends. Back then, in 1966, a list of Grand National top guns included Richard Petty, David Pearson and Bobby Allison.
At 70 years of age, Watt is a living legend in area racing, one who will be recognized as such by his inclusion in an exhibit on Western Pennsylvania auto racing scheduled to debut this fall at Pittsburgh's Senator John Heinz Regional History Center.
"I feel real good about it," Watt said. "I feel real honored that they would include me."
To have done otherwise would have been to ignore a significant figure in the sport.
Blackie's parents were prescient when they named him William Oliver Watt, monogram W.O.W., following his birth Dec. 6, 1933. That neatly sums up a racing career that began in 1950 at a speedway near Ligonier when the guy supposed to drive Blackie's car didn't show up, so Blackie sat in behind the wheel.
Throughout the decades, Watt drove with his car cocked at an improbable angle, prompting some to describe it as backing into the turns. He often drove modifieds and late models on the same night. Often he took checkered flags with both, too.
"We won 53 features in one year," Watt said.
He was a hard-charging, no-nonsense driver, prompting many to assume that was how he got his nickname, like some villain of a high-octane western. Not so.
It was Blackie's poker prowess that spawned the nickname. Working in his father's garage at age 15, Blackie got a $5 a week allowance. He used that to play in impromptu poker games at the garage, games played while the father was away.
When the call went out, Blackie would dip his hands in a gasoline bucket kept for such purposes, trying to get the grease off his hands, then make a quick swipe on his pants. It never worked completely. And when the young Watt would be reaching out to rake in pots, which he did with some regularity, one of the other players took to observing, "There go the black paws again."
Over time, it was shortened to "Blackie" and the nickname stuck.
Spend a few hours with Watt and you are treated to an oral history of racing, both here and in the early days of NASCAR. The stories flow easily.
Blackie talks with pleasure of his long association with car owner Joe Pitkavish.
"He really was like a father," Watt said. "I drove for him for 25 years. We won 110 races with one car, a '36 Chevy coupe.
"We used the same hemi engine for 22 years, then sold it to a guy whose son was going to use it for drag racing."
Watt and Pitkavish would take the coupe on the road, to places like Langhorne Speedway in eastern Pennsylvania, and up to Syracuse.
"The only thing that ever concerned me was that when we went to a bigger race, I didn't want to disappoint the fans who might have driven a long way to see me," Watt said. "I wanted to make the race and perform, for the fans. I didn't want to let them down. I wanted to do good, too."
It was Harry Neal, owner of a Blairsville trucking company, who funded Watt's foray into NASCAR in 1966.
"He was a friend of mine who was thinking about sponsoring me and he asked which direction I wanted to go, Indianapolis or NASCAR?" Watt recalled. "If I'd have said Indianapolis, we'd have probably gone for sprint cars, that type of racing. Open-wheeled. But we decided to go in the direction of Daytona."
The two bought a car in Chicago in 1966, a 1964 Ford Galaxie, and reworked it for the 1966 season.
Watt had nine top-10 finishes in the 20 races he ran, earning $7,000 and finishing 30th in points.
NASCAR ran more short-track races then, some of them on dirt, and Watt was more competitive there because the massive horsepower advantage of the hemi engines and the aerodynamic disadvantage of his car were minimized. Watt's best NASCAR results were sixth-place finishes in 200-lap events at half-mile dirt tracks in Spartanburg, S.C., and Maryville, Tenn., as well as at the half-mile paved track at Beltsville, Md.
At Daytona for the 500 in February, Watt blew an engine in the qualifying race and had to settle for a 48th starting position. Using the engine A.J. Foyt had run for qualifying, Watt lasted 107 laps of the Daytona 500 before another engine problem forced him out with a 31st-place finish.
"He finished ahead of A.J. Foyt, though," Watt's wife, Mary Lu said. Watt also finished ahead of Mario Andretti, who'd gone out earlier in a crash. Petty won the race.
Back at Daytona for the Firecracker 400 in July, Watt thrilled the crowd by winning a qualifying race as his car slid sideways at the finish line.
"I was in second place and the guy (Roy Maynes) only gave me half a lane, so I put two wheels on the apron and my car went sideways," Watt said. "He was straight ahead and my car was sideways and it was a photo finish. It took them two hours to decide who'd won the race."
It was the greatest finish Mary Lu never saw.
"I was there with our two boys, and I had one of Harry's family with me," Mrs. Watt said. "But she didn't have a pass, so we were sitting there in the parking lot listening to it on the radio because she couldn't get in."
Watt went on to take 20th in the Firecracker 400.
"I feel I could run with the best of them down there because I ran the turns as fast as they did," Blackie said. "But come the straightaway they'd just pull right away from me because they had so much more power than I did and my car was like a big billboard pushing air.
"I wasn't intimidated by the big tracks. I just wanted to go faster. But I didn't have the car to do it."
There were hopes for a more competitive car in a future season, but Neal soured on the idea after having a close-up view of a fatal modified accident.
"He said it was like he was in the war, with shrapnel flying," Watt said. "Harry made his mind up to get out of the racing business. He didn't want anything like that to happen to me."
Watt returned to the area racing scene and continued to run regularly until 1990. The recreation room of his New Alexandria home is a shrine to his racing exploits. From trophy-covered walls, to pictures and assorted other memorabilia, a life in the fast lane is well-documented.
This man of the relatively diminutive 5-foot-71/2 height has cast a long shadow in racing.
