DWIGHT and MAC BALE MEMORIAL PAGES / CONQUEST

Bale was also his own chief mechanic, and the motor he used in his boats came out of Purple Haze, his "digger," a AAFD blown fuel dragster, with a chassis built by Jim "The Whip" Davis. Bale bought the motor in the Summer of 1966 from Cliff Zinc, out in Chicago. Dwight and his wife Helga had been touring the 1/4 mile drag racing circuit as "The Wiz Kids," sleeping in the back of his hot rod orange '55 Ford Pickup (molded and slightly lowered, with chrome rims, moon hubcaps, a 283 Chevy under the hood, and '56 Corvette taillights set in the rear fenders). While they were in Chicago, Cliff was good enough to let Dwight and Helga lay their sleeping bags on the floor of his garage.

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"That sounds just about right."

Dwight 'Hey' Bale, dialin' in the 1,800 horses of a blown fuel 392 chrysler hemi. I also recognize Claudia Covert (virtually our sister, since high school at Hemet Union High School) barely distinguishable in the lower right hand corner.

Running a mixture of 98% nitro, diluted with 2% alcohol, a 392 c.i. blown fuel Chrysler can produce between 1,500 and 2,000 raw horsepower. So you've got about 1,800 horsepower in a 16 to 18 foot wood & fiberglass boat. . . . I remember that when Bale was pushing the 200 mph envelope, he was proud and somewhat amazed of the fact that he was still using most of the same pieces from the motor Zinc had sold him.

*Conquest*
full tilt and straight as a string

But ya know, Bale hardly had enough money to buy the B&H racing slicks needed to run his race car. Up to the end of his racing career — as with all true racers, it was more like an obsession, or 'a fine madness' — he really did know what people meant by down 'n out. Then, one Saturday afternoon, like "out-of-the-blue," yet another racer from "the Creek" (Walnut Creek, CA) showed up at Bale's front porch, and proposed a partnership. Bale's idled motor and Ron Torte's 16 foot Sanger, which somebody named Conquest.

The above version of the story of how Bale got into racing boats is more legend than fact. Probably something Torte told me. Actually, Bale was introduced to drag boats when he and his wife Helga went and watched Dennis Baca race at Kingman Lake near Sanger, CA. Baca set it up with Mr. Ed for Dwight to go down and test drive Mr. Ed's new boat. Then, after Bale and Helga both took a day off from work to go down there and "audition," Bale never even got to sit in the boat. Larry Schwabanland did all the testing and got the ride.

When Dwight and Helga got back home they went to Baca's and told him the story, he called Ed, and Ed said that Bale just didn't look like a driver. That got Dennis fired up — Dwight too. It was Baca who told Bale he knew of a guy named Ron Torte who had a Sanger hull. So they called Torte up to see if he'd be willing to use Bale's dragster engine, as long as Bale could drive, the rest, of course, is history.

Bale would be the driver, because he wanted to . . . and because Torte always maintained, "you have to be crazy to sit in one of those things." Now, all this transpired over 30 years ago, but as I remember the story, the third time Bale raced Conquest, he broke the world's DRAG BOAT record, and the fifth time he "sat in the boat," he shattered the world's record. He was a natural!

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