DirtonDirt's Kevin Kovac's 2017 article takes us through his 1997 Dream Retrospective and one of the most controversial moments in Late Model history.

What happens in crown jewel events at Eldora Speedway in Rossburg, Ohio, doesn’t just stay at the famed half-mile oval. What happens at the Big E reverberates through the Dirt Late Model landscape forever.

So it is that as the Dirt Late Model world heads to Eldora this weekend for the $100,000-to-win Dream XXIII presented by Ferris Mowers, the events of The 1997 Dream still resonate 20 years later. That race — the one where Bill Frye of Greenbrier, Ark., was spun out of the lead in the 100-lapper from contact with Scott Bloomquist of Mooresburg, Tenn., and then sent the place into a frenzy by ramming Bloomquist’s car under caution in retaliation — ranks as one of the division’s iconic moments. Arguing otherwise isn’t even making conversation.

The fact that two decades have passed since Frye and Bloomquist had their celebrated showdown — in a Dream that was won by a fresh-faced, 25-year-old Wisconsin boy named Jimmy Mars — seems unfathomable. My, how the years just fly by.

“It doesn’t seem to be that long ago,” Bloomquist admitted recently when asked about the 1997 Dream, “but I can’t believe it’s been 11 years since our daughter was born, so time does go fast. It makes you think about it when you’re in the late stage of your career.”

A lot of things have changed in Dirt Late Model racing since 1997. A lot of participants have come and gone, including Frye, who, now 59 years old, still occasionally races (mostly in an open-wheel modified) but hasn’t run a full season in the Dirt Late Model class since 2010. Yet what happened at Eldora on June 7, 1997, has not faded from the sport’s collective memory.

Ask people who were at Eldora for the ’97 Dream for their recollections of the race and you see an unmistakable twinkle of recognition in their eyes, an unspoken confirmation that the race ranks as one of the most unforgettable nights at a dirt track of their lives.

DirtonDirt.com asked more than a dozen attendees of the ’97 Dream — including the principal antagonists of the story, Frye and Bloomquist — to think back to that sliver of Dirt Late Model history. The results here in this oral history bring the 1997 Dream alive again.

Prelude to an Eldora encounter

Both Bloomquist and Frye entered the 1997 Dream among the favorites for the $100,000 prize. Bloomquist had already won Eldora’s World 100 twice (1988 in his first-ever start at the track and ’90) and captured the second running of the Dream in ’95, and Frye, while not as accomplished nationally as Bloomquist at the time, was traveling extensively in the mid-‘90s and was coming off a ’96 season in which he finished second in the Dream and third in the World 100. That was also the point when Bloomquist, then 33, was developing a new image with the discarding of his trademark No. 18 in favor of a No. 0 accented by the Chinese yin-yang symbol.

Todd Turner, veteran Dirt Late Model reporter and current DirtonDirt.com managing editor: At that time, Frye, he was definitely still on the rise. He appeared in that GRT house car in like ’93 or ’94 and just started going everywhere. In a way, that was right at the height of his touring strength. That car looked great too, pinkish and blue and orange … it was a distinct car. And looking back, it’s like, that is the year he should’ve won Eldora. If you’re on the angle it got taken away from him, it was time for him to win at Eldora. Everything was pointing in that direction as far as his career.

Bill Frye, Dirt Late Model standout: I guess you could say that was when I was in my prime. I think we’d ran second in the Dream and third at the World the year before, so I was pretty confident. I was chasing Moran down (in the ’96 Dream) and it rained out (with 89 of 100 laps complete). I thought I had that one won. I pretty much knew if I could get in the feature (in ’97), I thought I could win it.

Turner: That was the year (Bloomquist) brought out the yin-yang. That car was relatively unadorned … it was definitely not the yin-yang we know today with so much decoration on it. But it was the start of the Scott Bloomquist we know today. He kind of had that period, looking back on it 20 years later, where everything before that was one era and everything after that was another era. So I think if you look back now, he was kind of in the middle of his career. It’s almost like his career was split from that point.

There was some suggestion that Bloomquist and Frye had a history of run-ins that led to an ultimate explosion at the ’97 Dream. The two drivers themselves brushed off any suggestion of previous on-track problems between them, but it’s clear they didn’t have much mutual connection. While they certainly interacted in the years before the Eldora altercation — Frye said that Bloomquist even personally invited him to attend a secret meeting at Bloomquist’s house after the ’96 Dirt Track World Championship in which Bloomquist put forth plans to form a Dirty Dozen group of star drivers that would run for big money at races featuring professional wrestling-type showmanship (Frye went to the meeting, but no series materialized) — they never developed any real semblance of a friendship. There was seemingly always a chilliness between the two drivers with decidedly different backgrounds and personalities.

Scott Bloomquist, Dirt Late Model Hall of Famer: Nah, we’d never had any real problems.

Frye: We’d show up and we’d race each other hard. Actually, we always pretty much raced each other clean.

Bob Pierce, former driver and current chassis builder from Oakwood, Ill., who didn’t qualify for the ’97 Dream: You gotta back up and think who Frye was. Bill Frye is an Arkansas racer, come out of street stocks, pretty rough — he thinks rubbing’s racing, in a serious way. Everybody had their problems with somebody, and we’ve had a couple of run-ins, me and Bill, but it was all over in one night. He’d race you hard-hard, but I come from the hard-hard ‘70s of racing, so to me that was just racing. Not actually just wrecking a guy, but if he tore your left-front fender off racing you, that was racing. Yeah, you get mad about it, but that was racing.

Pierce: In a way, Frye was fairly new to the deal. GRT was just getting started — and Frye, I feel, got GRT started, not taking anything away from Skip Arp when the spring-behind thing hit and Arp and GRT just wiped everybody out for so long — so it was kind of like he was the new guy in town. Some guys take it, and some guys don’t like the new guy in town … and I think at that time right there there was kind of a rivalry thing going on between the two.

Frye: That all started at Chatham (Louisiana) probably in about ’92 or ’93. We were both down there and in line to time in. This was about the second time I’d ever seen (Bloomquist), and he looks at me … he’s like standing in line three or four cars in front of me and I’m standing beside my car, and he’s just staring at me like he was trying to intimidate me. Of course, he didn’t know me … I was down there in a ramp truck. Of course, I’m about half buck-toothed anyway, so I just made a big buck-toothed face at him. Man, he spun around and wouldn’t even look at me after that.

Frye: We just never spoke a whole lot. It was like we were on two totally different pages. He had that one magazine article and he said the average dirt-track racer listens to Hank Williams Jr. and drives a pickup truck and he said, “I drive a Porsche and listen to new-wave rock-n-roll.” Well, we went to Muskogee, Okla., for that first big $10,000-to-win race west of the Mississippi and we won it, and the next night there was a $3,500-to-win and we were sitting on the pole of it and (Bloomquist) walked over to Terry Phillips … he kind of knew him, and he said, “Who the hell is this kid?” Terry looked at him and laughed and said, “That’s one of them guys who listens to Hank Williams Jr. and drives a pickup truck.” Then he come up to me that night. I was underneath the car working and he crawled underneath there and said, “Where’d you get them brake rotors?” I said, “AFCO or GRT or someplace.” He said, “Do they drill ‘em like that?” I said, “No, I drill ‘em.” He said, “You got a machine shop?” I said, “No, I got a drill press in a barn.” He just kind of shook his head and walked off.

The incident

Bloomquist burst into the lead at the start of the 100-lap Dream feature from the pole, building a full straightaway edge by the 15th lap. Frye moved into second place and, as Bloomquist negotiated lapped traffic, caught the pacesetter and grabbed the top spot with a low-side pass on lap 25. Then, on lap 28, Bloomquist’s bid to retake the lead in turn one produced contact that caused Frye to spin between the corners and stop on the track, bringing out a caution flag and ending Frye’s brief run at the head of the pack.

Frye: I came from 14th to the lead. We was really good.

Bloomquist: I remember the night very well. It was a deal, we were leading the race. We ended up getting into some heavy traffic. I remember Bill gets by me way on the bottom — no one ever ran that low on that racetrack then. We got through the traffic and I was right on him going into the corner and I wasn’t ready for him to cut back down. I thought he was in the top before that; I didn’t realize he’d been in the bottom the entire race. He just checked up and lifted so early to turn to the bottom and I was nowhere close to braking yet. I was gonna go in 10 cars deeper, really ready to hustle and get the lead back, and then he just checked and I couldn’t stop. I hit the brakes and I got into him.

Frye: He was up in the middle of the racetrack, in the ‘Eldora groove’ I’d call it. I was running the bottom, and I’d passed him. Then I was going into one again. You had to enter so much slower on the bottom than you did up there where he was running. Well, I rolled into the bottom to enter and he just like rolled in there and hit me. Of course, he claimed he didn’t mean to do it, but I could hear his motor running as he turned me around. I could hear his motor still in the gas. So, I don’t know … we was racing for the win, I’ll say that.

Pierce: It wasn’t no slide-job, no little tap. I mean, they wrecked.

Bloomquist: I hated spinning him around.

Jimmy Mars, 1997 Dream winner: I was right there in third at the time. We were still trying to get our feet wet … I’d only run that race like twice before. I watched Frye go in there and pass Bloomquist, but I think he had a little different deal going on there with setup stuff or whatever. He’d come off real hard, but he’d go in slower. Well, he went in slow and Bloomquist tanked him and spun him around. From what I seen it was hard racing and it wasn’t anything intentional by Bloomquist, but I can see why Frye would’ve been mad because it wrecked his car.

Jack Sullivan, veteran driver from Greenbrier, Ark., who was on Frye’s pit crew: That’s kind of what was shocking. It was like Bloomquist was just cruising there, and then Frye got him for the lead and then he wasn’t really driving in hard. In hindsight, you realize that the last thing Bloomquist would want to do was take himself out.

Turner: I was in the lower part of the tower, where we sit now. I was covering the race for DirtNews Digest, my own thing. It’s hard to separate now, but I remember just being so perplexed about why it was happening. It wasn’t like they went into turn one and you were like, “This could be bad.” It was, like, all of sudden, he just ran over him. There was no precursor to get you thinking it might happen. It wasn’t like they had been battling side-by-side for a real long time or hitting each other. And also, Bloomquist, to be honest, how many times have you seen him hit somebody in his career? Not five times. His car control is so unreal, he rarely hits people. No matter what people say about Bloomquist, people who have their problems with Bloomquist or people who aren’t fans of Bloomquist, it’s not because he runs over people. That’s just not his thing, so that was also a little bit jarring. I remember thinking, How in the world did that happen so quickly?

Sullivan: I worked for GRT but I went up there to help (Frye). I think I was on top of somebody’s truck and Frye was coming. He was just killing ‘em right around the bottom and he caught Bloomquist and passed him. Then I think they made a few laps and Bloomquist went in there in one. Frye wasn’t getting in the corner very hard, but that Bloomquist … I don’t think he meant to run him over. It didn’t look like it. But either way, whether he meant to or not, by god, everybody was pissed.

The retaliation

Frye could have restarted at the rear of the field with 72 laps remaining to rally, but being ousted from the lead with a $100,000 first-place prize staring him in the face left him incensed. He ultimately decided to vent his displeasure with Bloomquist. Chasing down the leader under the caution flag, Frye crunched Bloomquist’s left-rear bodywork with a hit between turns three and then banged the passenger door of his No. 66 against the driver’s side of Bloomquist’s black-and-white machine, eventually wedging Bloomquist against the outside wall off turn four.

Larry Boos, long-time Eldora employee and race director: It was like, “Oh, no.” I saw it developing when Frye backed up and waited (for Bloomquist after spinning). In my mind I knew something was going to happen. I am pretty sure this was before RaceCeivers or it could have been thwarted. With no communication with the drivers, it was, wait, see what happens, deal with it as it unfolds and then discipline as needed. The crowd sensed it as well. It was sort of like watching a pot of water slowly begin to boil. You see the steam, you see the water beginning to come to life and then — poof! —it hits the boiling point. That pretty much sums up how the crowd reacted.

Michael Rigsby, DirtonDirt.com CEO who was a 15-year-old spectator: You could see it coming — Frye sized him up the whole backstretch before he hit him. You know how before somebody’s gonna hit somebody there’s that audible sound coming from the crowd?

Greg Stephens, veteran racing videographer: I was directing the show (taping of the race) in my trailer on the outside of turn four. I had two (cameras) up top (on the grandstand roof), one in turn four and one in turn three. I was just telling my guys, “Stay on Frye. Watch out what’s going on out there.” You knew there was gonna be some kind of aftermath. I mean, Frye was just pissed.

Sullivan: I was like, “What in the hell just happened here?” Then the next thing I know, I looked around there, and Frye, he’s mad, he’s parked over there after spinning, and I told somebody sitting up there on the truck, “Ah, hell, shit is about to hit the fan.” Sure enough, he went after (Bloomquist) and he just monstered over the top of his hood. Frye was trying to take his carburetor off. He hit him with the car and just kept hitting him. We ain’t seen nothing like that since.

Terry Phillips, Springfield, Mo., driver who finished fifth in the ’97 Dream: I just remember when I rolled around under caution, I’m watching it as I go by, and Frye made a right and just stopped him up against the wall. Knowing Bill, I was really surprised he didn’t just wipe him out. He’s got a bit of a temper … me and Bill had our differences throughout the years, and I said, “This ought to be good.”

Turner: You realize everything’s happening, and you’re like, “Oh my goodness, he’s gonna retaliate.” And that was like in slow motion. What I remember most about it is when Frye kind of got hung together with Bloomquist, Frye still kind of was gassing it, and it made his car kind of go up and down a little bit while he was wedged against Bloomquist’s car. I’ll never forget that.

Mars: I think there was some personality clash there, and a lot of things happen in the heat of the moment. Right or wrong, things like that happen. I think there’s just frustration. We’ve all had heat-of-the-moment frustrations with different people, and sometimes you regret doing what you do and sometimes you wish you could’ve done more.

James Essex, long-time Dirt Late Model announcer who was watching the ’97 from Eldora’s lower press box: I knew he was gonna try to do something, but at Eldora, you don’t usually see that because everybody’s afraid they’re gonna get suspended or, back then, get the wrath of (track founder) Earl (Baltes) and maybe be kicked out forever. But Bill, he just felt like that was intentional and he was gonna prove a point to Bloomquist.

Bloomquist: I really … I didn’t know what would happen. I expected him to be very upset. I would’ve been, too. It didn’t surprise me. I think everybody handled themselves as good as can be expected.

Frye: Well, I pulled in the pits after the caution. I run through to make sure everything’s all right, and Rodney Combs (who had already dropped out of the race for a 23rd-place finish) was there. I knew Rodney a little bit, not real good. Combs runs over to me as I’m fixing to pull up in the truck, and he stops me. He said, “Get your ass back out there and kill him.” I said, “No, nah, I’m done. We’re at Eldora.” He said, “No, man, kill ‘em. Go out there and take him out!” He’s there screaming at me and he said, “Go!” So I just put it in reverse and started backing up. Dean Miracle, the chief steward, was standing behind the car and I ran over him. I went clean to the rear end on top of Dean Miracle, and of course he was mad … it skinned him up pretty good. He was standing at the back of the car telling me to go to the truck and Combs was screaming go back out there … you know how the adrenaline’s running and all that. So I’m gonna blame Rodney Combs for this — but don’t say that to anyone (Frye laughs). I went the hell out on the racetrack after that and it went all downhill from there.

Phillips: I remember at the time, I didn’t blame Bill at all. I didn’t see all of what happened, but I kind of saw it out of the corner of my eye and it wasn’t pretty. It was kind of a bad deal. I really thought he’d wipe him out because of it.

Frye: My only regret then was when I had him pinned down on the racetrack I didn’t get out and whip his ass. I should’ve drug him out of the car on the racetrack right there and done it, and been done.

Bloomquist: That’s one thing I’ve managed to avoid. I grew up fighting, and I try to avoid that. I’ve never been in a fight at a racetrack. I don’t think it’s necessary. I’ve had people come to my pits, and I’ve kind of got a rule: I walk in my trailer, and if they come in, I tell my boys to make sure they can’t get out.

As Frye and Bloomquist ended up stopped together against the outside wall, Eldora’s fans roared. Hundreds ran to the catch fence to get an up-close look at the two drivers and jeer the racer whom they opposed.

Turner: You see in the video how everybody ran to the fence, and I do remember seeing that and thinking, Oh my goodness, this place is gonna go bonkers!

Stephens: The place was going nuts. They were all for Frye because they thought Bloomquist just took him out intentionally … which it probably wasn’t really intentional, but that’s what everybody determined.

Sullivan: The crowd went crazy. They were, like, climbing the fence.

Phillips: I just remember looking up and seeing them all going crazy. People were climbing the fence and standing up and hollering stuff. I knew we had some excitement going on, but hell, that’s Eldora. There’s always something going on. The only rule there is no fighting in the pits.

Frye: I seen ‘em climbing the fence. It was quite a deal.

Mars: Oh, you could hear the crowd. It was pretty wild what was going on.

Barry Rigsby, Illinois race fan and father of DirtonDirt.com's Michael Rigsby: People were throwing beer cans, pop cans. Even people with sandwiches in their hands were throwing them at the fence.

Pierce: Oh, man, the crowd was just going nuts. Of course, Scott wasn’t quite the Scott he is right now, so there wasn’t near the booers for sure. He wasn’t that far off from being that long-haired young kid who come in with an open trailer and a dually and won the World (in ’88). He was still building up to who he was. It wasn’t all just towards him, but more because of the crashing and banging that happened. I hate to say it, but people come to see that kind of stuff, and that really had them fired up.

Randall Edwards, long-time Dirt Late Model crew chief who was working for GVS Racing and Billy Moyer: I was in the infield. Actually, I didn’t see (Frye) hit Scott under caution, but I heard the crowd go crazy. Then I looked and they were still trying to hit each other or whatever. When something like happens at Eldora, even when you’re on the back straightaway and signaling, you hear all the fans.

Turner: It was almost surreal. Like, how in the world could that have happened? Of course, even back then, Bloomquist was the same as today — there’s people who boo him and don’t like him. I don’t necessarily think Frye was any great beloved figure; in fact, at Eldora, he was probably relatively unknown because he hadn’t been running there too many years. But obviously, he became the white knight and Bloomquist the evil one who took him out of the race. Bedlam is probably an exaggeration, but it was hard to fathom because it was unanticipated. It was so hard to process what was going on. Everything was heightened, and this was also the early years of the Dream where people still were like, “Well, surely, on the last lap, somebody will take somebody out.”

Boos: It was wild. Bloomquist fans vs. non-Bloomquist fans, cheering and booing.

Bloomquist: People expect a lot out of us I guess. I think they overreact when we do stuff and something like that happens. I’ve never claimed to be perfect, and that was a mistake. I just wasn’t prepared for him to stop.

Frye: Earl Baltes said afterward, “Son, what was you thinking when you run over him?” I said, “I was thinking if I could get him out of the car I would’ve whipped his ass.” He said, “Oh, son, that would’ve been a mistake.” I said, “Why’s that?” He said, “Didn’t you see the crowd? We’d have had a riot if you’d have gotten him out of the car.”

Bloomquist: It reminded me of a test match in Australia that got way out of hand and it was more of a free-for-all with guys running into each other when they were sitting parked on the racetrack and fans throwing full beer bottles over the fence and the whole track was covered with beer bottles. It was pretty bizarre and pretty wild. This got a little bit escalated — not quite as much as that did (in Australia), but I wasn’t sure quite what was gonna happen. Everybody expressed themselves quite well.

Essex: When he did that, I had never heard a crowd that loud — ever, up until that point. I was just amazed. People were climbing the fence, and I’m sure Bill Frye sold a lot of T-shirts after that day.

Frye: We got back to the pits and sold $5,000 worth of T-shirts. Sold out of ‘em. And after that we’d go eat at that one bar downtown and one guy would buy all of our dinner.

The level of excitement that ran through the fans was demonstrated quite well by one Barry Rigsby, a long-time central Illinois race fan who watched the ’97 Dream from midway up Section C of Eldora’s covered grandstand with his then 15-year-old son Michael, who a decade later would launch DirtonDirt.com. In video of the extracurricular Frye-Bloomquist activity, the elder Rigsby can be seen running toward the catch fence off turn four as the two cars stopped together.

Michael Rigsby: The first time (Frye) hit (Bloomquist) was in three, and that’s when I turned to my dad. By the time I turned to him he was already gone. I just see him, I’d say, already 12 to 14 steps down. I remember thinking, “Look at him, he’s running down!” And then Frye hit Scott again in three and four, and again on the frontstretch to drive him into the fence, and dad was already down on the fence. It’s the fastest I’ve ever seen him run in my entire life, I can say that.

Barry Rigsby: I don’t really know what propelled me to the fence … unless it was Busch Lite. But I wasn’t the only one. I got caught up in the moment I guess. I didn’t see where Bill Frye was out of line at all from what had been going on in the race. I thought what Bloomer did was beyond what should’ve been.

Michael Rigsby: Dad liked (Frye) at that time. He was traveling to Fairbury and Farmer City and he would do the Running of the Blankets with the fans at Fairbury, so he was becoming a favorite around our way. He’s an easy guy to like, too.

Barry Rigsby: I wasn’t anti-Scott, I wasn’t. I’ve told Michael a hundred times, I’m not a Scott fan — I wasn’t before, and I’m not after. But I’ve raced long enough to know that, in my lifetime, when he’s hooked up, he’s the best I’ve seen. That was just a bad deal. I did not like the move at all.

Michael Rigsby: He ran down right on the fence, and Frye drove Scott in and, like, stopped right there.

Barry Rigsby: I was right on the fence. I was screaming at Bloomer. It was probably nothing you could print.

Michael Rigsby: When he came back up I just remember asking him what he saw. What did Frye say? What did Scott say? I don’t even remember him giving me a description. He was just frothing from the mouth.

Barry Rigsby: That would probably go in the column of not-one-of-my-prouder-moments … being 64, 65 years old now, I can say that. I’d never done anything before like that, and I’ve never done anything after like that.

Michael Rigsby: I actually sat next to him the night (Brian) Birkhofer passed Bloomquist on the last lap (to win the 2002 World 100) and I don’t remember him having nearly the reaction that he did to Frye. It actually might be the most excited I’ve seen him about anything in the 35 years I’ve known him.

Barry Rigsby: It was just, the way they were racing, I thought Bloomer got out of line, and I loved what Frye did. Frye was my hero. He’s still my hero today. I bought Frye shirts for 15 years after that. Even after he quit selling them I would see if I could find them. He did what 10,000 people wanted him to do.

Michael Rigsby: That’s a perfect description. I don’t think I’ve ever heard it put exactly like that. It’s not often that you have an entire crowd compelling someone to do something and that person does exactly what you want them to do. I think even if you liked Scott, you wanted to see it in a weird sort of way … and he said he screwed up.

The aftermath

Frye was summarily banished to the pit area by officials for his retaliatory actions. He didn’t put up any more protest and there was no confrontation between him and Bloomquist in the pit area later after the departure of Bloomquist, who moved back into the lead with Frye’s DQ and built a commanding advantage until dropping out on lap 69 and finishing 14th. (Frye was credited with 20th.) Jimmy Mars went on capture the 100-lapper, turning back repeated challenges from Indiana’s Steve Barnett over the final 30 circuits to claim his first-ever Dream win and second career crown jewel at the age of 25.

Boos: Earl was in the infield and it didn’t take him long to react and get down there to “lay down the iron fist.” It was, “Get back to your pits now and I don’t want to hear another word from either one of you. This will be settled and you will know the penalties soon.”

Bloomquist: They ended up putting him to the pits after that and us into the lead. We had a helluva lead and had a fuel-pump belt break. It was pretty heartbreaking. I felt confident we would win the race.

Turner: After the race, I couldn’t cross the track back then. Of course, Frye is out, Bloomquist is out, so Mars and Barnett are there doing their interviews. I guess I didn’t even watch any of the victory lane ceremonies. I think I started running around turns three and four to go to the pits. I’m listening, and maybe walking near the speakers trying to record some of what Mars said, and at the same time trying to take all this in. Like, what in the world just happened? I don’t know if there’s ever been a race I covered that had so many different storylines that you knew were gonna last forever. It wasn’t like: “Oh, yeah, that was a cool race.” It was: “This race I will never forget.” That’s how big it was. You had the element of Frye and Bloomquist. You had the element of Bloomquist and the fans. You had the element of Barnett having a near-miss for what would have clearly been the biggest thing in his career. And then you have Mars — he had won the USA Nationals at Cedar Lake (in 1996) and was an accomplished driver already, but certainly not nationally accomplished like he is now. Any one of those things would’ve been a big thing, but you had all them together so it was hard to process. So that was my great challenge as a writer — to do justice to Mars winning, but recognize that everything about this is the Frye-Bloomquist thing. Those two things are just equal.

Turner: When I got to the pits, Bloomquist was hidden in his trailer … or he might have even gone out of the infield already. Frye was still there and I got a relatively extensive interview with him. He was calm, but his quotes … he was pissed. He thought Bloomquist had taken the race away from him, but he wasn’t stomping around with a tire-iron in his hand or anything like that. His persona was not seething mad, but his words were very harsh about what Bloomquist did.

Sullivan: There wasn’t nobody really talking. I don’t really remember (Frye) saying anything. He was mad, but I don’t remember him throwing anything. They just black-flagged him and he loaded up.

Turner: It’s almost like you had these two huge events: you had this race, and you had this Frye-Bloomquist thing. I remember I literally drove all the way back to my home, in Owensboro, Ky., at that time, and wrote the story that morning. I just remember struggling trying to jam all this information in the story and tell all of it at one time. If I had any sense, I would’ve put it in multiple stories because the Mars-Barnett stood alone on its own as maybe the most tense-filled battle for a lead I’ve ever seen. It’s one thing about the money that was on the line … I’m not sure that Barnett was better than Mars, but he was just all over him. I mean, I can’t describe how many times he would pull up and you’re thinking, He’s gonna get him this time. Then he’d lose momentum or whatever, but it was really because they both running the same line. Barnett was exactly right when he said it wouldn’t have taken anything for him to maybe make contact and get by. It was a tense, tense 30-some laps that they ran. It seemed like every lap, if Mars would’ve slipped at all, Barnett would’ve gotten by.

Frye: I ain’t taking this away from Jimmy (Mars), but Jimmy won that race and … well, I had the Outlaw Nationals (now USA Nationals) at Cedar Lake won the year before and Jack Boggs spun me out when I lapped him for the second time. They put me to the rear and I still run third, but Jimmy won that one. That was his first big race, and the Dream was his second. So it’s kind of funny. I’ve always thought this to myself but never said it: I was the one who made Jimmy Mars’s career.

Many people at the ’97 Dream, including Frye himself, thought that he could have still come back to win the race from the rear of the field. The belief comes from the fact that Frye’s GRT house car was so stout that night. Actually, there was speculation in the wake of the ’97 Dream — and to this day, in fact — that Frye’s machine was so fast because it might have possessed a four-wheel drive setup that pushed the rulebook to the limit.

Pierce: Was that when Frye had the four-wheel drive car? I’m not too darn sure that wasn’t the car, and Scott didn’t like that part and it might have been part of the deal that started all that up.

Bloomquist: Then later we watched the footage (of the initial tangle) and watched the left-front tire spinning (while) on the fuel, and then later we learned that he had a three-wheel drive or four-wheel drive car, which … we’ll just leave it at that.

Sullivan: I can not confirm nor deny that.

Frye: I’ve heard all them stories and all I can tell ‘em is that would be an engineering feat if that was true. They all think you got something they don’t have.

Mars: Oh, yeah, I heard that (the four-wheel drive rumors). But at the end of the day, I didn’t really care. I didn’t really care that both of them wrecked each other because I won it. If first and second place would do that more often, I wouldn’t care if I was running third.

Sullivan: What was aggravating to me was, I really think he could’ve just went to the tail and won it. If he’d have just kept his cool and went to the tail, I really believe he would’ve still won it. Back in them days, if you were good enough to win, you were half a second, three-quarters of a second, faster than the field, you know what I’m saying? There was that big a difference. It ain’t like it is today where two-tenths is big. Back then, you had two or three guys who were faster than everybody. It didn’t matter where they started, they was gonna win the race. And Frye was that good. He was gonna win it. He just let his emotions get the best of him. He’s never been one to keep his cool, but I think if he would’ve, he would’ve won.

Frye: My biggest regret is not just going to the rear of the field and coming back through there and passing ‘em all back. I had great confidence that I could have at that time. I had a better race car than any of them had.

Bury the hatchet

On the Monday after the ’97 Dream, five Eldora officials — Boos along with Baltes and Baltes’s wife Berneice, daughter Starr and son-in-law Joe — sat down to review what happened. “Earl said Frye was barred,” Boos recalled, and a letter was written and sent to Frye by certified mail informing him that he was suspended indefinitely from competition at Eldora. Frye didn’t compete in the ’97 World 100 (Bloomquist finished second to Donnie Moran in that race), but Baltes allowed him to run the 1998 Dream on the condition that Frye and Bloomquist participate in a public pre-race ceremony in which they both put the ’97 incident behind them by symbolically “burying the hatchet” on the homestretch.

Boos: During the off-season, Earl, being the genuine promoter he was, came up with the “bury the hatchet” idea. He knew it would make for fantastic publicity and re-stir the pot. He let them know that this was the only way the score would be settled — either do it, or scratch Eldora off the race list. There was hesitancy at first and a swallowing of pride, but both sides finally agreed — much to the delight of the cheering crowd.

Bloomquist: I was glad that he let him come back and race. That was one thing, I didn’t want to see that (Frye’s indefinite suspension) happen.

Frye: I agreed with that (the suspension for the ’97 World 100), and then the next year at the Dream somebody turned this into a PR deal that they could use. They said, “We’re gonna do a big ‘bury the hatchet’ deal.” That is one regret I have — I wish I had told him to kiss my ass. I was belittled right there. I think Bloomquist felt the same way. They did it on the front straight. Earl come down and we had a little meeting, said we’re gonna go out there and each take a scoop of dirt out of the ground and then we’ll throw it in there and pack it back down. We both done that, but we didn’t speak. We were still mad. We both felt bad about getting done that way. All that was was going through the motions.

Turner: My impression was that it was done almost jokingly, and Frye didn’t want to be a part of it and probably Bloomquist didn’t want to be a part of it.

Pierce: The cool thing about it was, Earl stopped it. Earl Baltes made them two stand in front of the stands and bury the hatchet, or you’re no longer gonna race here. I’m sure neither of those guys like doing it, but that was Earl’s way. Me and and Earl got to be pretty good friends back then, and every time I’d go to Eldora, he’d always come up to me and say, “Pierce, is anybody mad at me?” I said, “Earl, everybody’s mad at you, but everybody loves you.” He said, “Well, you know, I made that call one night … I don’t want to piss anybody off.” I said, “Look around you. That’s why we’re all here — because we know that’s what you do. What’s good for one is good for all, otherwise you wouldn’t have no cars. The good part about your deal at your racetrack is that you stand up,” and he proved it with Scott and Frye.

That hatchet — with Earl Baltes’s signature on it — actually ended up in an interesting resting place several years later: stuck in a Bloomquist door panel on the wall of Frye’s shop. It’s no longer there, however.

Frye: The wife of a friend of mine, a farmer who lives a mile down the road, bought (a Bloomquist door panel) a few years ago at one of them redneck auction houses where they have an auction every Saturday night. She paid 12 bucks for a Bloomquist door. She knew from her husband talking about me going to the races that me and him had that rivalry, so she made sure she bought it and gave it to me. I hung it up there in the shop and laughed about it. About a month after we hung it up one of the guys who was working for me when me and Bloomquist got into it stopped at the shop. He was laughing and said, “What are you gonna do with that door?” I said, “I think I’m gonna take a 30-30 and shoot a hole in that skull (inside Bloomquist’s No. 0) and sign the other side of it and sell it on eBay. I’d probably get more out of it.” Then he walked over and picked up that hatchet that Earl made (Bloomquist) and me ‘bury’ on the front straightaway. Well, he grabbed it and said, “Here, bury the hatchet!” and that’s when I just sunk it in that door.

Bloomquist (when informed what had become of the hatchet): Really? That’s pretty cool.

Frye: Last year I sold the door with the hatchet to a guy out in Tennessee or Kentucky or somewhere. A guy seen it on my Facebook page last year and called and wanted to buy it. I’m not even gonna say how much he paid for it, but he paid plenty.

Postscript

Twenty years later, the Bloomquist-Frye has not faded into the past. Both drivers at the center of it haven’t forgotten — especially Frye, who doesn’t provide any quaint story about going on to become good buddies with Bloomquist in subsequent years.

Bloomquist: What’s funny is, quite a few years later, Bill brought his kids by and said they were big fans of mine.

Frye: No, that’s not true. He come up to my truck a year or two later somewhere. I think we were gonna start close together in the feature and he was just trying to smooth things over so he didn’t think I’d take him out. He wanted to come up and apologize and he said, “You know, I didn’t really mean to do that.” I said, “You lying bastard, I could hear your motor screaming when you turned me around!” He’s like, “Oh, man, you know how it is if you stop under a caution … I just didn’t stop.” I said, “You can say whatever you want, but you was in the gas turning me around.” That’s when he went to cussing, I probably cussed a little bit, too. My daughter was like 10 years old, and that was as close as my kids ever got around him. That was the end of it. I don’t think we talked for years after that.

Any examination of the 1997 Dream, of course, can’t stray far from its essence: that Eldora Speedway breeds memorable Dirt Late Model moments like it — and Bloomquist usually is in the middle of them.

Michael Rigsby: I guess it was my first big, big Eldora moment. And of my top 10 Eldora moments, Scott is involved in about all of them.

Essex: It’s always weird — Bloomquist at Eldora. There’s always something going on with him there, which makes it interesting.

Bloomquist: Everybody just has looked for so long and watched us so close. There’s been a lot of incidents at Eldora with a lot of other drivers too, but not near the attention that we get.

Turner: There’s a handful of races that, quote, I’ll never forget, but that one might top the list because it was just so crazy.

Michael Rigsby: When something like that happens at Eldora, it matters more than when something like that happens anywhere else. There is just an electricity. Very rarely in Late Model racing do you feel like you’re part of something huge, and that felt like something … huge.

Turner: In a way, you think, if that exact same scenario played out again now, it seems like it would be even crazier. I’m not saying it wasn’t crazy then, but think about that part of it — back then if you weren’t there, you didn’t know anything until so long later. You had to hear the news whenever. With all the social media today, just imagine how crazy it would immediately get.