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Friday, May 18, 2012
Covering Dallas, Monmouth, Independence, Falls City and surrounding areas since 1868
"Critter" Peterson, far left, and Russ Lafontaine want to the see the "01 Special" restored to its former glory. It now sits in a workshop in Falls City.
December 27, 2011
FALLS CITY -- Hidden in a workshop in Falls City is a unique piece of Oregon history.
It's a car -- a race car actually -- built not by an elite racing team, but a group of men serving time in the Oregon State Penitentiary.
They were part of the Highwallers Racing Team, and in 1973 they built a car that took first place in a local NASCAR championship.
The unusual program allowing inmates to seek sponsors and build race cars while in prison and send them out to race was disbanded a decade ago, due to budget restrictions.
Former team member, Charles "Critter" Peterson, who prefers to go by Critter, however, wants the Highwallers legacy to have a more dignified end.
Thus, he and other former Highwallers, along with a number of local and national sponsors, are working to restore the last remaining Highwallers car they could find in hopes of putting it in a museum.
"This right here banded guys together," Critter said, putting his hand on the roof of the bright red "01 Special" sitting outside the shop. "It didn't matter what their crime was. We were all striving to survive and building a car."
Critter, who was 19 when he entered the prison system, said working on the racing team gave him a sense of identity, something he has carried for years after he left prison bars and race cars behind.
Now at age 52, he believes it's time to put that part of his life to rest. But he feels he can't do that until the Highwallers' achievements have been given proper acknowledgment.
"This car doesn't belong in the weeds," he said.
That's exactly where the car was when Critter and fellow team member Russ Lafontaine traveled to Hollywood, Calif., a few years ago to pick it up. The car had spent a decade under a pile of tarps and was in extremely poor condition.
"We started pulling these tarps off," Critter said. "There's layers of dirt, 20 years of dust. The tires had rotted off. It was still on the trailer and it was all busted up. We had to completely restore it."
The car looks better than it did then, but there's still plenty of work needed before it's ready to showcase. Critter, Lafontaine and more than a few new and old sponsors are trying to put the rest of the car together in the same fashion the Highwallers did behind prison walls -- piece by piece.
A pair of Oregon State Penitentiary handcuffs still hang in the rear window of the car, left over from the 1980's.
The Highwallers Car Club -- later changed to Highwallers Racing Team -- began in 1968 in the aftermath of a prison riot. To prevent another violent outbreak, prison officials decided to allow prisoners to participate in clubs. The Highwallers was one of many.
It distinguished itself when, within five years, the club had won a regional NASCAR championship race. Cars built by Highwallers raced around Oregon and occasionally in Washington and California. The team interviewed and hired drivers and lived off its winnings. Eventually, the team had to stop entering local NASCAR races as entry fees became too steep, but its cars continued to race in open competition races.
Critter and Lafontaine, 58, joined the team in the 1980s.
"I had to come over here from the North Dakota prison system," Lafontaine said. "I read an article in Stock Car Racing Magazine in 1984 or 1983 about the Highwallers taking second place at a championship in Lebanon. I said 'man, I've got to go to this Oregon place.'"
Lafontaine requested a transfer and arrived at OSP in 1985. He wasn't allowed to join the team until 1986, when Critter, a team member since 1980, decided he was ready. Lafontaine would later become a team leader.
The Highwallers had no budget for parts, so they had to write letters and make phone calls to sponsors for the parts needed to build a race car. Lafontaine said in some years the team had 300 sponsors for individual parts.
"We had 60 alone for the engine," he said.
Forced to ask for help, team members had to learn to communicate effectively and then honor their hard work by protecting the team.
Critter said they had to ask prison guards to supervise them while they worked in the shop. Other prisoners were suspicious of team members talking to guards and often they would have to have it out with fellow inmates until everyone knew what was going on.
They were also pressured to smuggle contraband into the prison in the car when it went out for races on weekends.
"We wouldn't do it," Critter said.
"We had a reputation to protect," Lafontaine added.
Dudley Janeway, a former Dallas resident who now lives in Salem, was the prison recreational therapist and staff adviser for the Highwallers from mid-1970s until 1991. He said the team was surprisingly successful.
The Highwallers team collected a wide array of trophies over the years, including a local NASCAR championship.
"I'm sure it provided them with a sense of accomplishment," he said. "They had short-term goals and long-term goals. They started with a handful of parts and the next thing you know, in a couple of months, they had a race car."
Janeway said the Highwallers were building cars piece-by-piece that had to match up to cars raced by teams with more resources. That took patience and dedication.
The team also may have rescued more than a few lives.
"It gave me drive and the desire to better myself or I would still be there," Critter said, adding that it provided him with a skill he used after being released.
"It got me a job when I got out," Lafontaine said.
Lafontaine worked with a racing team for eight years, just one of several car-racing related jobs he's held since.
The pair would like to give something back to the program that provided so much for them. Critter said he's talking to the NASCAR museum to see if it will take the NASCAR trophies the team won and automotive museums to find a home for the "01 Special" once it's restored.
"I'm just trying to make sure that this is going somewhere special and those (trophies) go somewhere special," he said.
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