An easy $100

Mickey Thompson

One weekend, in the mid 1960's, Mickey Thompson and Parnelli Jones met at Lake Elsinore CA. It's a small lake South East of Los Angeles.

Lake Elsinore CA

Imagine if you will; the "adults" are sitting on the dock, the "kids", Curt and I, come out on to the dock. Curtis says to Mickey, "Hey Mickey, can we take your boat out?" We never expected him to say yes. Neither did any of the other adults gathered there. You could tell by their facial expressions of surprise.

We were not going to wait around for a better idea to come to Mickey. We jumped in the boat, fired her up and went cruising the beach line for girls. We were in our mid teens.

Maybe this is where the boat's story comes into play. Mickey and his son Danny used this boat in a race to Catalina Island. At that time Mickey was active in developing the Salton Sea 500 marathon boat race. This was a race boat by every sense of the term. A 100 MPH+ boat powered  by a 427 CI Mickey Thompson Racing Ford Engine making over 400 HP.

Mickey and Danny Thompson with ...the boat

No big deal ...we were just out cruising for girls.

Elsinore is a small lake. In no time we were at the Eastern end. We made the turn to return home.

Her gas peddle was a big chrome foot with the "Moon" logo on it. Between the seats was a large chrome handle. We really should have known what it did. It was the planing plate control. It kept the bow in the water when accelerating.

Curt pushed on the gas pedal after the turn ...to see what she'd do. Her nose jumped out of the water, our faces were flattened and our bodies glued to the back of the seats from the G force. When she crashed back down to plain Curt's foot pushed the throttle pedal to the floor.


We must have been close to 80-90 MPH when we flew past the dock with our family on it ...watching. It was all we could do to slow her down before we ran out of water on the other side of the lake.


We broke the front deck plate. We didn't really get in any trouble for it. Why? Because as soon as we took off, Marvin, Curt's dad, looked at Mickey and said ..."you dumb trud, I'll bet you $100 right now those two come by us flat out".

We did. Even after that and years later ...giants still let us play with their toys.