A View from Broadway

The Northwest's Racing lawyer

Buzz Wilson at work in the Combat pits. See his columns in Musings from the Combat Pits. Flying Lines photo.

Yes Folks, it’s true.

Buzz Wilson, senior member of the Broadway Bod Busters, was once a lawyer for control-line Racing.

It seems like yesterday, but was in fact several years ago. Jeff Rein and I were drinking beers when the idea of Clown Race came up. We chose Clown because the other Racing events were too technical and we wanted something we could win. The engine turned up in my stash in the form of a Nelson RIRE glow. I sent it to Henry Nelson and said “H, make this a diesel.”

Henry of course did so and suggested that we arm the thing with a shutoff.

Being good Bod Busters, we promptly ignored the advice. Jeff built the airplane with input from myself. We test flew the thing and it seemed kind pokey. We played with props and the usual stuff and finally burned the engine down. Another trip to Dr. Henry and we were back in business. We built the shutoff and installed it. Without going into the whole story, we were getting better and flew it at the Northwest Regionals. Because of some very competitive fliers, we decided that Buzz should be our “rules expert.” We both had lots of Racing background, but wanted to focus on the airplane. Buzz would keep us on the straight and narrow, or so we thought.

It came to pass that the NWR race day was cold and wet. We had a diesel that took forever to warm up and run clean. Again we were slow. Me missed the finals by .2 second. We were devastated. Our lawyer was off chasing butterflies or something and we were dejected and rounding up our stuff to leave.

But wait!

As we were leaving and out of Nowhere there came a high pitched but booming voice— JOHN! (It was our lawyer.)

"JOHN! That time is wrong, It’s a .7 not a .9. We should be in the finals.”

Everything stopped. No one had considered this at all.

Buzz was holding our timesheet In front of the tired and overworked-looking contest director, John Thompson.

“You see how it’s a 7 not a 9," said Buzz. Jeff and I just looked at each other and said nothing.

They were all squinting and staring at the score card for what must have been the fifth time, when John said with finality, “It’s a 9 and you guys are out!”

As we sauntered off, we heard Buzz exclaim loudly, “You didn’t miss the finals by two tenths of a second, you missed it by bad penmanship!”

There is a champion in there somewhere and he’ll always be our lawyer. Thanks, Buzz.

— Kenny-b

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This page was updated April 6, 2025